ANSON DESIGN

Less Toxicity: Organic gardening ensures that chemicals and toxins that come with pesticides are kept away from the food chain. Organic farming depends upon completely organic methods of pest control. While chemical pesticides are never used, naturally occurring plant oils and minerals are used to drive away pests that are harmful to the plants. This ensures that no contamination of food occurs due to chemical pesticides, which can result in a variety of health problems like birth defects, cancer, etc.

Soil Biomass: Just like our body contains good bacteria and bad bacteria, the soil does too. While it is important to destroy organisms that can affect the health and well being of your plants, it is also important to ensure that organisms that are good for the plants and soil remain alive. This helps maintain high fertility of the land. Most people use chemical fertilizers and pesticides that kill both good organisms and bad organisms indiscriminately. It is important to consider alternative options like crop rotation to ensure that the fertility of the soil remains intact.

Nutritional Value: On one hand, organic farming ensures that our food does not get contaminated with chemical pesticides and fertilizers. On the other, it ensures that the nutritional value of the food increases manifold. When completely organic methods of gardening are used, the food that comes from it is highly natural and full of nutrition. This is because no depletion has taken place due to artificial and toxic products.

Choose plants that engage all the senses. Use a variety of textures, scents, colours, as well as plants that make pleasant sounds as wind rustles their leaves. Providing seasonal interest allows people to connect with the cycle of nature. Choosing plants that attract select wildlife, such as birds or butterflies, can add value and interest to the garden. Thoughtful plant selection will keep the flora intriguing in all four seasons. The use of some evergreens plants will aid in sustained winter interest.

Provide a comfortable social environment with plenty of places for families and staff to sit and share the space. Ideally the garden will provide a variety of spaces to accommodate different activities and levels of privacy to allow group activities as well as spaces that allow solitary contemplation. Where ever possible ensure the garden offers both sunny and shady areas for people with varying tolerances to light. Frail patients may be particularly sensitive to cold, heat and wind and a sheltered outdoor area will extend the use of the garden.

Most importantly, healing gardens are meant to provide pleasant surroundings to produce restorative effects for its users. In addition to plants, secondary elements such as water features, outdoor musical instruments and bird feeders can help animate the garden with life and bring sound to the patients, family members and staff both inside and outdoors. Outdoor Musical Instruments in a healing garden can provide an outlet for creative and emotional expression, are perfect for music therapy session that encourages patients to use music to deal with emotional issues, especially when they are unable to express them through speech. Where words fail, music may be a medium through which to explore one’s inner world and experiences.

You can buy mushroom growing kits for only a few different species of mushroom – you can get button mushroom grow kits and you can get oyster mushroom grow kits. These two are the most common and can be purchased at most garden centres and usually on garden centre websites. However you can also grow other varieties from more specialist websites, allowing you to grow your own mushrooms like Shiitake, Portobello and more. These kits usually cost around £5 to £10 and will probably provide you with around £5 worth of mushrooms (if grown in the best possible environment, and depending on the variety as some mushrooms cost more then others in the shops).

I don’t understand why people moan when it costs more to buy a mushroom growing kit then it does to buy the mushrooms themselves. Most of the supermarket mushrooms are grown massively in bulk and are usually grown in other countries and imported across, where it is so much cheaper for them to grow them. Then theres the fact that in a kit you get a box and get the substrate (compost or straw) as well as a small bag of spawn. When you buy mushrooms from a shop you aren’t left over with excellent compost for your garden (mushroom compost is one of the most expensive and nutritious forms of compost as the mushrooms break down and recycle many nutrients present in the substrate). And then there’s the fact that you are growing mushrooms yourself – surely the excitement and fun factor are worth paying for too.

However, farmers have been using a method of manure disposal for hundreds of years. So, what have these farmers done with all that cow waste? The manure has been turned into compost and fed to plants and vegetable crops with impressive results.

To make use of the cow manure it must first be removed through a pressure washing from where the cows are kept. At this point it has turn into sludge, and directed into holding ponds for its final disposal, which can be carried out through the following methods.

The sludge can be spread across a large field with the use of a truck, resulting in a thin layer of compost. Or, the cow manure sludge may be diluted with water and used feed the plants. Both methods provide plants, crops and grasses easily absorbed, nutrient packed fertilizer. The manure is a food plants love.