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Depression: How eating more Vegetables can help

Depression is an illness that causes a person to feel they are inadequate. It affects their minds, their bodies, moods and thoughts. Depression affects how one feels about themselves as well as other things.

Those who are affected by depression can not merely just think themselves out of it. Depress as a real disease with real problems. If not treated properly depression can last for weeks, months or even years.

Depression is a bit harder to diagnose because the symptoms are those that occur in some who may not suffer from depression at all. Some symptoms include, loss of appetite, overeating, constantly sad, anxious, a sense of helplessness or feeling worthless, low energy, fatigue, insomnia and trouble concentrating or remembering things.

Although you should always see your doctor first to obtain proper treatment, studies have shown that eating a wide variety of vegetables can help.

Vegetables are a great source for vitamins and minerals. Minerals have been shown in studies to be a key source for brain and nerve functionality. In order for your body to be healthy and get the minerals and nutrients it needs you need to ingest high quality vegetables at least 3 times per day, but some doctors even recommend up to 6 times.

Good choices for high quality nutrient rich vegetables are spinach, asparagus, and broccoli, to name a few. Not only are they rich in the minerals and nutrients your bodies need but they have an extremely low caloric count, so they are a good source for a healthy nutrition plan as well.

Because depression is a disease that affects people mentally and because minerals have been shown to increase brain functionality, many experts believe that eating more vegetables can assist with doctor’s recommended prescription treatments.

Unlike other processed foods and meats, vegetables are one of those food sources that we can actually make ourselves (unless of course you herd of cattle in your yard). Through gardening during the warmer months we can literally grow our own treatment for depression in our backyards.

Just remember raw vegetables have a higher nutrient and mineral content than cooked, so eat them fresh whenever possible. Try to make half of each of your meals some kind of vegetable to ensure you are getting ample amounts of nutrients and minerals. As a rule of thumb starchy vegetables are ones grown underground (potatoes, carrots, beets etc.), so limit your intake of those to keep your carbohydrates to a minimum.

Eating vegetables won’t cure depression, but a higher intake combined with your doctor’s recommended treatment prescription can go a long way to making depression a lot easier to handle.

About the Author
Mike is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person. It is a practical easy to follow book that teaches gardeners everything from composting techniques, aeration and frost conditions, to choosing the right tools and picking the right seeds.

Vegetable Gardening: Improve Your Soil’s Conditions with these Four Items

I have been vegetable gardening for a very long time. In that time I have come across a lot of things I should have been doing, and many things I should not have been doing. For example on the “do not” front, I should have stayed away from chemical fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers (some not all) might assist your vegetables in the short term, but in the long run they will actually harm your soil.

Your soil is a living ecosystem with bacteria, enzymes, worms, other insects and fungi. They all work in the food chain to improve your soil’s conditions. For example, bacteria feed on decomposing organic material, and then worms feed off the bacteria. Think of it as the whole “circle of life” thing going on beneath your feet.

Here are some things you can do to start improving your soil conditions.

Compost
Compost is the result of organic material breaking down. It breaks down through bacteria and other microscopic creatures feeding off of it. The end result is dark black rich mulch that contains valuable nutrients and minerals that your soil needs. You can use grass, leaves, twigs, food scraps and even cotton clothing (with metal and plastic removed) as a source for compost. Once it turns into the black mulch mix it in with your soil with a rake or pitch fork.

Avoid Chemicals
Chemical fertilizers help in the short run but harm in the long run. They can wipe out colonies of microscopic organisms in the soil and also send creatures such as worms and nematodes packing for a better place to live. Your soil needs these creatures in order to improve its conditions. If you remove them with these chemicals you may never get them back. When done properly, nature can provide your soil with everything it needs.

Aeration
Many experts say that tilling too much could actually damage your soil, the only problem is they never define what “too much” means. Larger worms in your soil such as night crawlers are deep burrowing and create large tunnels which allow for better water drainage and better systems for your plants roots to grow into. However, many people do not have overloads of night crawlers in their soil so tilling the land is good practice. What is too much? Who knows, but in my experience turning over the soil once every two and a half to three weeks is good practice. It creates for better drainage and allows more air to get deep into the soil so the ecosystem can flourish.

Watering
Obviously you must water your plants if you want them to survive but more importantly you want them to get stronger, specifically their roots. In order to do that you do what is called “deep watering” which is a fancy term for watering your garden for a lengthy period of time (45 minutes to an hour). This creates deep pockets of water in the soil that your plants roots need to dig for. The more they dig the stronger the plant.

Successful vegetable gardening doesn’t happen in one growing season. It is culmination of many seasons of composting, aerating and building up the ecosystem underneath. The stronger you can make that ecosystem, the harder they will work for you. When this happens you will experience great tasting vegetables and fruit for many years.

About the Author
Mike is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person. It is a practical easy to follow book that teaches gardeners everything from composting techniques, aeration and frost conditions, to choosing the right tools and picking the right seeds.

PhillyBurbs.com: Gardens bloom in tough economy

PhillyBurbs.com:  Gardens bloom in tough economy

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Tips for your Vegetable Garden

If you love to plant a vegetable garden every year like me then you know the amount of work that can go into it. With all of that hard work there are some things you can do to lesson the “pain” of gardening and make it more enjoyable which is what it is supposed to be. Here are some tips and advice that you can start following today.

Timing is Everything
If timed perfectly you can take your growing plants from the indoors to the outdoors without much worry. Timed poorly and move them too soon and all of that growth and hard work will be wiped out in a matter of minutes. So what causes this? Bugs? Your Neighbor? No! One of the worse enemies of a gardener, frost! Frost occurs when temperatures go low enough to where overnight dew freezes. This condition will kill your new plants. To avoid this look up frost maps online at the United States Department of Agriculture to find when the first and last frosts occur in your area and then calculate your timing.

Compost
Compost is organic matter that has decomposed and when mixed with your soil provides many nutrients that your plants will absolutely love. You should be making compost throughout the year and mixing it in with the soil as new batches are completed. You could also buy compost, but where is the fun in that.

Plant Rotation
You should never plant the vegetables in the same location every year. Certain vegetables use more of some nutrients then others and by rotating them (combined with composting) you will never deplete an area of your soil from any one specific nutrient. So if you planted tomatoes in row 1 last year, move them to row 3 this year. Mix it up and your plants will love you for it.

Know your Limits
In my first garden I planted 6 grape tomato plants. Little did I know that they produced hundreds of tomatoes per each plant! I could not pick nor give them away fast enough. I learned the hard way to know my limits and not plant more than I can handle. Again gardening is supposed to be fun and enjoyable not a fulltime job. Plant only what you need and can pick in a reasonable amount of time and you will be sure not to overwork yourself.

Water
Next to oxygen, water is the most important part of any living organism and plants are no different. Yet, even though it is important, most people never give plants the ample amount of water they truly need. You should give your plants a good one hour per week of watering, and I don’t mean nine minutes every day, I mean sixty minutes in a single session. When you water like this, deep pockets of water are created underneath the soil which forces the roots of the plants to reach for them. When they do that the roots become stronger creating a healthier vegetable plant.

So there you have it. Five tips for vegetable gardening where you won’t have to alter your lifestyle in order to use. Simply follow these suggestions and gardening can be relaxing, fun, enjoyable and rewarding.

About the Author
Mike is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person. It is a practical easy to follow book that teaches gardeners everything from composting techniques, aeration and frost conditions, to choosing the right tools and picking the right seeds.