What Is Arrowroot Starch

Enthusiasm is contagious. « More Farm Inspiration » Tags enthusiasm , farmers , farming , inspiration , passion Fortunately, I was blessed with a moment of respite last night. The evening air was thick with Kentucky's characteristic summer humidity,...

Huegels are flexible; use what you have to cover the wood in the bed. Angle of Bed Sides While most no-till methods create relatively flat beds, permaculture expert Sepp Holzer advocates for a 45-degree (or steeper) angle on huegelkultur beds.

As I headed out to my car Monday morning, head ducked against the wind, coffee mug trembling in my shivering, gloved hand, the realization that I had to scrape a thick layer of ice and snow off of my windshield in the subzero wind chill was extraordinarily...

Life-threatening injuries and illnesses can be treated with homeopathic remedies, but it's best done under the direction of a homeopathic veterinarian. One of the complementary therapies our mom uses is homeopathy.

Take a sample of the plant to the doctor or veterinarian to aid in proper identification and diagnosis. Teach children never to eat fruit from the winterberries in your garden or your home.Whether snitching berries from the bush or off holiday decor,...

I've been chastised in the past for having my head in the clouds instead of focused on the here and now, but I take Gloria Steinem's above quote to heart: dreaming really is a form of planning.

Sometimes it's a new supplement. Right now there is a lot of buzz about a plant called ashitaba. Those who are eating a vegetarian diet often struggle with getting this nutrient because we chiefly find it in meat products, so they often turn to an aquatic...

Second, the collective social behavior of the nymphs was very telling—assassin bugs tend to be solitary hunters unlike immature leaf-footed bugs, which stay clustered after hatching from their eggs.

Unused sugars in plants are stored as starch. Starches are recognized as a major component of foods ingested into the human body, to be used as energy or stored as fat. The cells are semipermeable, which means they allow some substances to get through...

Be very leery of any early spring digging, especially if you live in a northern climate. Frozen soil feels very solid and does not give way under foot. Determining if soil is frozen can make all the difference.How do you know if the ground is frozen solid?

For instance, the fungal disease Pythium root rot occurs with cooler temperatures in poorly drained soils. Once transplanted, only those seedlings known to be especially sensitive to damping off need be misted with fungicide daily until the first or second...

Healthy immune systems can usually fight off histoplasmosis, although infections can become serious if large amounts of the toxin are inhaled, or if the infected person has a weakened immune system.Legionnaire's Disease is a respiratory infection that's...

Because there is less white meat, they can dry out while the longer-cooking requirements for dark meat are met. They are capable of walking, running, even flying, and capable of breeding by themselves.

Nevertheless, we made fun of the situation, by foretelling that even our children's children would never have to buy laurel dry leaves again! And this was practically fulfilled, since now after twenty years I still have a few remainings of those bay laurel...

This high-humidity houseplant can grow to heights of nearly five feet.Dracaena sanderiana is considered non-toxic to humans.The ASPCA's Poison Control Center lists lucky bamboo as a toxic substance to dogs and cats.Although Dracaena sanderiana is considered...

These organisms decompose plant debris and convert nitrogen, enhancing and enriching the place plants' roots call home. If an area has many species, the distance between specimens of the same species increases, and insects and diseases can't hop conveniently...

Each plant species leeches something from the soil while giving something else back. Alternating different plants helps keep that balance intact. Home gardeners followed farming examples.One of the earliest, most primitive forms of crop rotation was what...

Okoume is one of the tropical hardwoods used for exterior plywood manufactured to BS (British Standard) 1088 specifications for use in marine applications. On the Janka scale, a standard measure of wood hardness, Okoume's rating is only 380.

I might soon have to move on to asking random people walking the aisles at our farmer's market. You might have read about our new chickens in a previous post. I asked two farmer friends to take him in, and both kindly declined.

My family loves to reference an early-'90s home movie of a New Year's Eve party where a gaggle of my cousins are watching a cartoon, giggling and chatting, while I'm willingly sitting in a corner with a book, facing the wall.

In fact, the University of California rates bougainvillea as a "reasonably safe bet" when it comes to deer-resistant plants.Bougainvillea is desirable for its showy colored bracts, or modified leaves.

Test the soil periodically, because the pH of many soils will tend to drift back to the original "natural" value.Alkaline soils are more often encountered and are more problematic than acidic ones.

By now, you've probably heard that mulch is an essential component of a successful farm or garden. Keep this in mind as you work your garden. Cover crops are typically sown in the fall and turned under in the spring before planting.

While costly upfront, the spray foam would provide future savings in the form of lower heating and cooling bills, as well as tax incentives. I was curious to see how the insulation could be contained, knowing that spray foam expanded once sprayed.

Sometimes You'll Never Know If your chickens came from a feed store, the people working might not know for sure what they're selling. However, as long as they grow into the healthy egg layers he expects, their actual heritage isn't really that important.

The leaves are attached to the node. One folk remedy combines sugar cane juice with dry ginger to stop hiccups, another uses equal parts sugar and yellow soap to treat boils. It also has the highest number of calories per unit area of any plant.Sugar...

If you have a deer problem in your region, surround your vegetable garden and other plants deer eat with vinca and other plants that deer don't like. If you want to fertilize your plant or plants, use a granular or water-soluble fertilizer once each month,...