On the other hand, bagging mowers simply cut the lawn & get rid of the blades from the ground for good. It gives that vacuum cleaner aspect to your lawn. This is very attractive if you’re planning on having company.

Mulching is the ideal approach, as it adds nutrients to your soil & promotes a healthy lawn. However, if you let your grass grow too long or the mulch clippings become too cumbersome (and thus, produce thatch), you will need to start bagging. During the months where there is extra rainfall & not as much need for mulch or during those periods where there is overgrowth, bag! For all those times when your lawn is thirsty, mulch.

However, if you are especially concerned with the look of your lawn & want to stick to bagging, you can still fertilize your lawn separately (perhaps with the clippings).

So if you are wondering whether it is best to mulch or bag your lawn, know that it really depends on the season & your particular lawn. Mulching should attempt to be achieved, if only to fertilize your lawn, but it is not always a good idea.

Stephen Blades loves seeing people build great lawns & loves to teach them how to do it… Click to Mower FAQ & Grass Fanatic - 2 of his lawn care sites - for many more Mower Articles & Grass Articles.

Animals are natural hunters & carnivores. Dogs are basically descendants of the wolf. They have very short intestinal tracts geared to the consumption & digestion of raw foods. Cats, on the other hand are carnivores ? having a meat only diet - & are specially designed to hunt small animals like rodents & birds. A cats digestive tract is designed to process raw meat best.

If you enjoy a natural organic diet, there is no reason why your cat or dog can not enjoy the same organic meals with you… Organic foods offer the best of canned or tinned options as they do not contain pesticide residues & other toxins that your pet then has to eliminate through its liver & kidneys. There is more. This is particularly important for animals with a problem with their immune system.

Commercially prepared ‘organic biscuits‘ & ‘organic kibble‘ is the best choice for your pet. Regular biscuits & kibble have become the standard diet for most pets in our culture. It’s reasonably cheap & convenient.

Animal owners & Veterinarians, how ever, are becoming more aware of the nutritional needs of animals & pets & are taking a new approach to nutrition by choosing the highest quality ingredients & carefully controlled preparation over cost & convenience.

For most dogs & cats, a home-prepared raw food diet is best. A diet consisting of Raw organically farmed meat, crushed organic grains & vegetables are recommended. Cut the meat into a size suitable for the size of the animal being fed. Smaller size pieces for smaller dogs & cats & larger pieces for larger dogs.

Eric J. Smith is an Organic Gardener & passionate Environmentalist. He is dedicated to promoting the need for an Organic, Natural World. Find out more on Organic Personal Care Products for your pet here.

When you’re in your garden you’ll be easily able to breathe a healthier kind of air, the fragrance of garden plant ? life isn’t only refreshing to the senses, but also better air. You are under a sort of separation from the pollution in the air that virtually virtually everyone faces day?to?day. If you have a garden you have a healthier outdoor place to relax & unwind than public parks. Believe it or not, even a small garden is a contribution to the condition of the air around us. Plants, as most people know, create oxygen. Therefore, the oxygen emitted from the plants in your garden will improve the air quality around you… Considering the amount of pollution we know fills the air around us, people do small things every day that with any luck, will add up all together to protect the environment.

It may seem like a small gesture towards the improvement of our environment, but nonetheless, a garden can be like the five dollars $ you pledge to a cancer research facility. In many such efforts (the environment, Leukemia, Diabetes, etc.) it doesn’t seem like much to give isn’t much but when there’re enough people pitching in it can make a world of difference. And so… Some public parks have joined in the crusade (whether intentionally or not) by planting trees, installing elaborate landscaping, shrubs & other foliage, vines etc. There’re great parks springing up in certain areas in access, improving the beauty & reducing the level of air pollution around it.

Anne Clarke writes numerous articles for websites on gardening, parenting, fashion, & home decor. Her background includes teaching, gardening, & fashion. For lots more of her articles on gardening & furniture, please visit outdoorgardenfurniture.net, supplier of high quality Outdoor Furniture & Garden Swings & more.

When you buy manure, it’s likely to be pretty fresh & far too strong & hot to use. You’ll need to leave it in a heap for six weeks or so, covered with a plastic sheet to keep the rain from leaching the nitrogen out. This also allows you to assess whether the manure contains a lot of weed seeds as they will germinate in this time. Those deep in the heap will probably be killed by the heat of fermentation & any that come up on the surface can be put on the compost heap. Or if there is room in the bin you can simply dump the manure on the compost heap.

If you feel that your tomato plants would benefit from a quick boost, then manure tea is a great way to encourage them. Simply put a couple of shovelfuls of manure into a Hessian bag & then steep it like an outsize teabag in a garbage bin full of water for a day or two until the water is the colour of weak tea. Do not use it on dry soil, however as it may be too concentrated.

Keep the lid on the garbage bin, the brew smells & will attract flies. Clear? It will keep for a week or so, or you can pour any leftovers on the compost heap, along with the contents of the used teabag.

Discover which type of manure is the best - cow, horse, sheep or poultry in How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

Annette Welsford & Lucia Grimmer are the authors of the world best seller - How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes. The book has been developed following years of research & trials & is a valuable reference used by thousands of professional & amateur tomato growers.

With a Masters Degree in Plant Pathology, Lucia gives expert technical nutrition & disease advice to professional tomato growers around the globe. How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes features more than 230 photos of tomato varieties, cultivation techniques, nutrition deficiencies & pest & disease symptoms.

Annette’s writing & design skills ensure the information can be understood by non-technical readers & is professional presented.

The gardening resource guide “Gardening Made Easy” (available at our website) discusses many organic gardening techniques to protect your organic garden. Here are just some of the major techniques that it discusses.

Compost & Organic Fertilizers

To feed you plants & get your soil nourished you can use simple, natural products called organic fertilizers. You can make your own compost pile in your back yard by recycling your very own kitchen scraps, grass clippings, tree leaves, & garden cuttings.

Or, you may want to purchase compost from a local garden center.

Plants can be grown directly the your compost or you can use it for fertilizing. Even liquid fertilizer can be created from you compost. It’s an easy as taking out the garbage.

A small space in the corner of a garden is all that you need, to gather your extra garden cutting, tree leaves & grass clippings.

Pest Control & Organic Insecticides

Bugs as a whole, have gotten a bad reputation. The truth isn’t all bugs are bad.

For example, ladybugs, butterflies & bees are known to many people as beneficial insects. Moreover, wasps, flies & beetles can shield your plants from destructive insects.

When you apply chemical insecticides, or even organic insecticides, you can kill destructive & help-ful insects alike. These help-ful bugs can be purchased at many nearby garden centers or on line to place into your garden.

In the battle against destructive insects, plants can also be a great help. Mixing in certain plants with the other plants in your garden, or using them as a boundary can ward off thrips, tomato hornworm & white flies.

Even Peppermint will repel ants & encourage them to keep searching for another place to set up house.

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Tom Straub is a successful author, & webmaster of the Best Gardening Tips web site, where you can read more on Organic Gardening & more than a dozen other gardening topics.

Organic gardening is an excellent way to grow your trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetables & plants. Spring gardening color.

Organic composting comes from worms, food waste, grass clippings & old leaves. Clear? If left alone in some type of tumbler or rotating container it will eventually be consumed by bacteria. You can then use this type of “Compost” to amend your soil for your gardening needs. Humus comes from composted vegetable matter. You can make your own organic compost using a Compost Tumbler.

Mulching is another form of organic gardening. Mulch is added to the top layer of any gardening bed, tree, or plant thus keeping moisture in & suppressing weeds from growing. Do you follow? This helps in eliminating harmful herbicides & or insecticides into the environment.

Organic fertilizers are cottonseed meal, blood meal, Fish Emulsion, manure & sewage sludge. Many of these type of fertilizers are high or low on the three types of nutrients needed for your plants such as nitrogen, phosphorus, or potash.

Be sure to read labels before purchasing. In my opinion fish emulsion is the best & easiest to apply. You should also be fully aware that some organic fertilizers may burn the plants.

Manure the fresher the better over time this type of fertilizer will weaken, but do not overuse as it can burn plants. Yea I know it stinks but it works.

Cottonseed oil is the safest but is normally used for acid loving plants.

Blood meal comes from cattle blood after they have been slaughtered. Be careful not to overuse blood meal as it can also burn plants. Clear? It’s high in nitrogen & good for green foliage.

If you’re concerned about the environment then “Organic Gardening” is the way to go or should I say grow.

Gary & Paul Guzman are the authors of this article: Gary is the owner & Color Your World Nurseries Located in Las Cruces, NM. Paul is the webmaster of guzmansgreenhouse.com Comments should be sent to mgr@guzmansgreenhouse.com Visit: http://www.guzmansgreenhouse.com/organicgardeningsupply.htm

The first thing you must realize in regards to organic gardening is that nature is constantly trying to maintain a balance, & anything we do to disrupt it makes the job that much harder. Basically, plants in general, including roses, require nutrients & water from the soil to perform photosynthesis, a process that utilizes sun light & the absorbed nutrients, along with carbon dioxide, to produce carbohydrates that are stored in the leaves of the rose bushes. This reserve energy is used when your rose garden isn’t receiving enough nutrients from the soil & water.

When healthy, roses in your garden will exude byproducts that attract organisms in the soil that allow the garden to maintain a balance. With roses, these byproducts attract a friendly bacterium that can aid in battling certain types of fungi that are common diseases among roses.

Commonly used fertilizers, pesticides, & other chemicals destroy the organisms that aid in maintaining a healthy environment for the roots of your rose garden, meaning that they’re more susceptible to attacks from unhealthy agents. When you select organic rose gardens & organic materials to feed your roses, you will find that the rose garden maintains a much healthier balance. You will not need to worry about diseases creeping up on your rose garden because you have not killed the good bacteria along with the malicious agents. It is better for the environment & better for your plants.

For more information on organic rose gardens & early spring rose gardening please visit http://www.rose-gardening-made-easy.info, a popular website that gives rose gardening tips, advice & resources to include information on summer, winter & spring rose gardening.

One such development is the recent proliferation of coal-fired power plants built all over the Mid West. Within the next ten years we can expect to see dozens of coal-plants at the 1,500 MW range spewing out about a million tons of sulphur a year into the atmosphere.

The second development is the re-introduction of the Carbon Tax idea to the U.S. Congress. Dem. Pete Stark of California, for example, who proposed the first carbon tax measure 16 years ago, has again proposed to charge $25 per ton of carbon released.

The Europeans are a bit surprised that, after showing Europe how the free market forces can curb carbon emissions successfully, the US is now intending to go the other route of ‘taxation at the source’.

But the idea isn’t a new one. President Bill Clinton for example has managed to have a similar tax bill, the BTU Tax bill, go through the House of Representatives only to be stopped at the Senate. If it had cleared through the Senate, the BTU would bring tax liabilities to the ‘heat content’ of different fuels.

The attractiveness of the carbon tax is that it definitely associates a cost to the carbon content of all fuels. Polluting the environment, no matter its scale, is penalized from the get go.

In the cap-and-trade system, on the other hand, many companies might get away with carbon emissions that are below the ‘certified limits’.

(To conclude in Part 2)

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Ugur Akinci, Ph.D. is a senior writer & web content consultant with twenty years of experience.

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In order to create compost, you’ll need to dump yard scraps in a corner of the yard. Alternatively, you can also collect the yard scraps in a composter bin. An ideal blend would involve equal amounts of soft/green material (like manure & leaves) & hard/brown material (dead leaves or chopped twigs). Whenever you mow or rake your lawn, add your grass clipings & leaf rakings to your compost heap. An ideal compost pile reaches 3-4 feet high.

In order for compost to be formed, significant air is required. Aeration can be provided by moving the pile with a pitchfork. However, you can also add perforated PVC pipes the center of the pile to help aerate compost piles.

Tip: High temperatures will help to semisterilize the compost, killing disease spores & other pests.

After you have accumulated a heap of compost, add a compost started or a garden soil to help jump-start the decomposition of the organic materials. You can also speed up the decay of organic material by breaking up your organic matter (such as twigs) into smaller pieces before adding them to the pile.

Sources of Organic MatterSoft & Green

• Livestock manure
• Fruit & vegetable peels
• Grass clippings
• Green leaves
• Strips of turf
• Alfalfa
• Peat moss
• Seedless weeds

Hard & Brown

• Wood chips
• Ground-up twigs
• Sawdust
• Pruning scraps
• Brown leaves
• Straw
• Shredded bark

Go to GardenSM’s DIY Gardening Guide for many more gardening tips. Check out Holland Greenhouse Plus’ line of ergonomically-designed & affordable gardening tools! They all come with telescopic handles & inifinite position posi-locks to faciliate basic gardening tasks. There is more. Their handles are made from lightweight tubular anodized aluminum, with a soft foam grip design, & their head & blades are constructed with the finest-quality powder-coated steel.

It is vital that when choosing the location for your organic garden that it’s in a place where it gets the sun for at least ½ of the day, but it also has easy access for watering. Also it’s important that you make certain that the ground drains well or you may have to build raised bed gardens instead.

2. Removing the Weeds.

Now you have chosen the location for your organic garden you now need to mow, pull & dig out all the weeds that are there. Then you really need to till the land (either by hand using a fork or by using a tiller, but this will depend on how big your garden is going to be). Then you really need to get rid of any further debris by raking the soil over. Now you really need to wait a few days & then get rid of any more weeds that sprout up.

3. Testing the Soil.

Before you begin planting you really need to test the soil & then starting building it up using organic matter. You can add compost, bone meal or rock phosphate to the soil. But only add those that are of an organic nature. Also when sowing any plants you should add compost to it about 2 to 4 weeks prior to planting. This gives the compost time to integrate & stabilize itself within the soil.

4. Fertilizers

Now you can now start to till & dig in fertilizers & leave it for about a month in order for the nutrients to take a hold.

5. Preparing a Compost Pile

When starting an organic garden it’s a good idea to start your compost pile at the same time. You can place in it leaves, grass clippings (so every time you mow the lawn do not forget to add them to the pile), coffee grounds, eggshells & other organic kitchen waste (fruit & vegetable peelings etc). As it slowly breaks down the compost becomes a great organic fertilizer for your garden. So no longer will you really need to search your local garden center for organic fertilizer, as you’ll always have some close at hand.

Now that we have shown you how to start an organic garden you can go & select a spot in your garden & get started. Soon you’ll be on the way to producing all your own lovely organic products.

For more information on growing an organic garden of your own attempt visiting http://www.onegardens.com/ where you’ll find tips, advice & resources about topics such as how to grow an organic garden.