Grow Your Own

Grow Your Own: ready,Learn how an embedded microprocessor in a smartcard can authenticate your computer usage and data. set... sow

If this is your first year of Grow Your Own, then little and often is a good maxim to follow. Theres many a time in my early days of growing that Id sow a whole packet of seeds and then have 100 beetroot or lettuce all ready at the same time. You can expect some seeds not to germinate or to get nipped off by your resident slug or cutworm, so it pays to sow a little extra C but dont go overboard.Shop for fridgemagnet dolls from the official NBC Universal Store and build a fun collection for your home or office.

Because one of the least wonderful things about GYO (after the slugs) is the glut of produce you get if you dont phase your growing over the whole season. Youll need more friends than my children have on Facebook to be able to get rid of your glut, especially as everyone seems to have a glut of the same thing at the same time.

If you are clever, there are all sorts of ways you can cut costs. The first way is to sow direct into the soil C preparing a patch of land for growing to what is called a fine tilth (no stones, no weeds, texture like fine breadcrumbs) and sowing your seeds direct onto that. We tend not to use this method because our growing season in really short and our slugs are really active so starting off all except the hardiest plants under cover means we can grow more and longer.

If you cant sow direct either, dont despair! Empty 1 litre juice cartons (the ones you cant recycle with normal cardboard because of the plastic lining) with one side cut away and between ten to twenty 2mm holes poked in the opposite side make perfect and totally free seed trays. And you can tuck your seed packet into the V of the spout so you know what you planted. It is also possible to use newspaper to origami your way towards free biodegradable pots C children especially like doing this (well, at least for the first thirty or so). No need to ship in biodegradable coir pots from the tropics via your garden centre when you have all the pots youll ever need sitting in your recycling bin. And then there are those stalwarts of the DIY plant pot world C the sturdy loo roll cardboard tubes we discussed last week.

Compost is another thing altogether. I would always recommend organic because I believe its best for the soil, for wildlife and for the rest of the natural world including the human bits of it. It is possible to make your own compost - before the rise of the garden centre, gardeners had no option but to make their own - but its never something Ive tried. Partly because I love the idea of growing my food in a living soil with lots of beneficial microbes. For DIY compost Id need to sterilise the soil to kill off the weed seeds, but then the bugs would go too. But also because its possible to use too strong a compost for the delicate thing that is seed germination and the perfect recipe for seed compost has so far eluded me - if you have one youd recommend, let me know!

So I tend not to cut costs on compost. And I prefer organic seeds too (you wouldnt believe all the chemical treatments non-organic seeds get before they go into the seed packet) but where possible, I save my own seeds from previous years or share seeds with other organic growers.

Sowing couldnt be easier. Just about every packet of seeds has full sowing instructions, so follow those and you cant go far wrong. A simple rule of thumb is to cover the seeds, once sown into your soil or seed tray,Find a great selection of customkeychain deals. with about the same depth of soil as the size of the seed C so fine seeds like carrot will only need a very fine layer of compost to cover them, tough old brutes like beetroot will have a bit more. Big fruit seeds (cucumber, pumpkin and courgettes) can rot if you lay them flat on the soil, so always plant them on their side.

A long time ago someone (probably one of those old gardeners that made all their own compost) taught me to water the compost before sowing the seeds on it C he claimed it stops the top layer of compost forming a crust which could make it harder for the seeds to break through.

Given how vital and tough some seeds are, Im not sure I always believe him, but I liked his style so I do it anyway. He taught me to treat young seedlings like babies and toddlers. Treat them well and with kindness and you get the most amazing adults, neglect or mistreat them and they never fully recover. Its not a bad analogy and I admire his idea of gardening with kindness.

Poor people are not stupid about money.We provide payment solutions in the USA as well as ventilationsystem. They are smart.Laser engraving and laser parkingassistsystem for materials like metal, They have to figure out a way to make a dollar go very far. They are making really pragmatic decisions, in many cases. They dont want to pay bank fees, said Pinsky. But you make sure people are getting products and services they need. Banks may be [the] best place, they may not, but we dont want to just leave them vulnerable to the predators out there.

Most CDFI account holders are required to take personal finance training, which increases the likelihood that they used banking services responsibly, Pinsky said. In fact, many CDFIs outperformed traditional banks during the recession because of this extra training.

They were prepared for the crisis in a way traditional lenders were not, Pinsky said. For example, CDFIs never stopped imposing strict lending requirements that traditional banks returned to during the recession.

Both Tescher and Pinsky say that the problem of the unbanked is simultaneously getting better and worse. The penalty for being excluded from electronic banking continues to grow more severe as the cash-free set grows, no-cash retail outlets grow, and critical tools like low-balance text message alerts become more important. On the other hand, financial innovations hold out a lot of hope for underserved communities. Pre-paid debit cards, once prohibitively expensive, have come down in cost dramatically. Meanwhile, the variety of alternative money systems that are evolving, such as cell phone payment methods, might provide a genuine alternative to unbanked Americans.