5 Easy Ways to Grow Food

Has the food gardening bug hit you? If you’re not sowing seeds and tending tomatoes yet, your neighbors probably are. According to a report from the National Gardening Association, one in three American households are now growing food, which is a 17% increase from five years ago. The biggest jump has been from millennials – 18- to 34-year-olds – 63% more of them are gardening! For those of you who are now shin deep in radish greens, we commend you. Growing your own food is a great way to contribute to a more sustainable food system.

But for those of us who excel at killing common houseplants, gardening can be intimidating. When do I plant what? Is my soil ok? How much do I water? It may be a fear of failure that keeps even more people from joining gardening nation. With that in mind, we’ve rounded up five ways to ease into gardening. Whether you call them confidence boosters or gateway drugs, each of these products takes the guesswork out of the equation and practically guarantees success.

Petomato The clever little Petomato($14.99) lets you get started with hydroponics using a simple plastic water bottle. You just screw the Petomato filter on a bottle, add seeds, cover with sand, and add a few drops of water. In 7 to 10 days, sprouts will appear, and you’ll be able to watch the roots develop in the water. A great project for kids, you just need to keep the bottle full of water, mix in fertilizer, and pollinate some of the varieties. Available kits include cherry tomatoes, habanero peppers and sweet basil.

UrbMat Garden System The Urbmat ($69) is the next best thing to having your own personal gardener. It takes care of garden placement, plant spacing, irrigation and weeds – you just need to supply six inches of soil and a garden hose. To get started, you place the printed mat over your soil, then press GrowUps Plant Starters ($4.99/six-pack) – seeds encased chili powder, compost, worm castings – into the soil. No digging required! The company claims the mat can be reused for three years or more.

Seed Tape If you’re ready to garden in an actual garden, here’s an almost foolproof way to get started: seed tape ($4.95/roll). Seeds are embedded in a strip of biodegradable paper that you simply cover with soil. The tape ensures proper spacing, straight rows, and high germination rates. If the crop you want to grow isn’t available, you can even make your own seed tapes out of toilet paper.

Mushroom Kits Everyone from Williams-Sonoma to Whole Foods is selling mushroom kits these days. Some are actual logs pre-inoculated with spores ($29.95) that can produce up to three years worth of mushrooms crops every two to three months with only a few soaks in cold water and occasional misting. Others, like this wildly successful mushroom kit ($19.99) from Back to the Roots, grow from a box. Either way, mushrooms can be yours, almost like magic.

SmartPot If you truly want to plant it and forget it, check out SmartPots ($79.95-$129.95) from Estonian company Click and Grow. This high-tech grower uses sensors and software to deliver your plant the optimal amount of water, oxygen and nutrients. Just pop in a cartridge that contains seeds and “smart soil, ” their nano technological growth medium, and relax. It runs on a few AA batteries, and you only need to fill a water tank about once a month. You do need to make sure it gets enough light, but if your home doesn’t get good light, they also offer an LED germination lamp.

Amy Leibrock Editor – See more at: http://www.sustainableamerica.org/blog/5-easy-ways-to-grow-food/#sthash.nnsiZknA.dpuf


Remembering The Power of Words

| by Staff

In a recent article in Spirituality & Health , the editors write about the power of words: All too often, we take the people we love the most for granted: our lovers, family members, friends, and even our children. We forget the enormous power of our words, as we carelessly lash out when under stress. We stick our noses in our laptops and smart-phones, assuming our loved ones know what we are failing to verbalize, sometimes until the relationships are disconnected or damaged beyond repair.

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Companies Quietly Remove GMOs From Their Products

There is a quiet movement afoot among food maufacturers: without fanfare or publicity they are quietly removing or replacing the GMO ingredients in their food. Why the big secret? Because no one knows yet who will win the ongoing GMO battle: big agri-business with their fight to deny GMO labeling and expand their use, or the educated consumer pushing back for labeling, informed choice or removal of modified ingredients.

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Stop the Violence Within by Will Donnelly

| by Staff

On www.spirituality.com, Will Donnelly shares his experience with negative self-talk: Never speak badly about yourself. It’s a simple statement, one many of us would agree with in concept. But do you follow it’s advice? Probably not. Because our inner critic speaks to us in a voice so familiar we rarely notice it’s presence. Recently, I had a friend say out loud with absolute conviction: “God, I’m such a (expletive) idiot….”

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Join the Dream Shift: A Free Tele-Event with Robert Moss

| by Staff

On Wednesday, July 23rd, Robert will present a FREE teleseminar called: “The Power of Active Dreaming: How to Use Your Dreamtime for Healing & Transformation”. Many think of dreams as barely remembered, passive nocturnal entertainment. But around the world, shamans have pioneered a more powerful, valuable and fascinating way to approach dreaming: as a time for transformation, healing and getting guidance from higher levels of reality. In dreaming, our souls speak to us and we open portals to multidimensional reality.

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5 Ways to Let Love In by Kathryn Drury Wagner

| by Staff

“I’m no longer afraid of being hurt and heartbroken,” a friend recently told me. She’d been through a rough time: a nasty separation from her husband, a shaky reunion, and then a divorce. Now dating a wonderful new man, she says, “I am opening my heart again and it’s been an incredible feeling.” Whether you have been through a difficult breakup, a dissolving marriage or even the death of a partner, you have endured the searing pain of lost love. If you’re ready–or want to be ready–to have a new experience of love and intimacy, here are some practices that can help guide you on that journey.

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Didgeridoo: The Beautiful Sound of Relaxation and Energy

| by Michele Rosenthal

Michele Rosenthal writes on www.spiritualityhealth.com “A didgeridoo concert reveals the instrument’s powers to reduce stress, blood pressure, and pain and promote an intense feeling of peace and well-being… I’m sitting in yoga position in a darkened room lit mostly by candles surrounding a Buddha altar in the corner. On the mat to my right Julie says, ‘My boyfriend would never attend something like this. He says it’s too woo-woo.’ She sighs and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. ‘ This’ is the didgeridoo concert we’ve come to experience.”

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10 Obvious Truths That Get Forgotten

“The truth does not cease to exist when it is ignored.” You know how you can hear something a hundred times in a hundred different ways before it finally gets through to you? The ten truths listed below fall firmly into that category — life lessons that many of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of ever since, but for whatever reason, haven’t fully grasped. This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all…

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Is Spirituality “Hardwired” Into Our Brains?

| by Staff

Is spirituality “hardwired” into our brains? A recent article in Psychology Today, shares some insights: Spirituality means something different to everyone. For some, it’s about participating in organized religion: going to church, synagogue, a mosque, etc. For others, it’s more personal: Some people get in touch with their spiritual side through private prayer, yoga, meditation, quiet reflection, or even long walks.

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The Merlian News July Newsletter is Out!

The July Newsletter is out! Merlian News is now translated into over 50 languages. Just go to www.merliannews.com , upper right hand corner to Google Translate and use the drop down menu. Also, don’t forget to check us out on Facebook & Twitter and please take a look at our Website of the Month!

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