Create Your Soil for Urban Gardening

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In the previous post, Mommy shared how she declutter and organized our kitchen. Wondering where I was?

I was in the rooftop organizing my small urban garden.

Living in a subdivision , like us, lots for planting crops are limited. But this will not hinder your passion for gardening.

I made several attempts in growing vegetables in pots but none of them are successful since the place has only limited sunlight and teh soil I used in not good which are the most important things in growing plants.

Our kitchen roof is made of concrete and used only to store unused materials at home, this can be a perfect place to grow vegetables. There is also enough sunlight in this area.

But how to have your urban gardening?

I posted some tips on how to start urban gardening in the Chemist Dad site. Aside from the tips mentioned, picking the right soil is also important. Living in a suburban area will be quite difficult to find good soil for gardening. Doing your compost will be a great help but you will not have enough amount of soil to be used.

Where do I get my soil? Here are some ideas:

Rice Hulls

Eggplants and Tomatoes grown in soil with ricehulls

Our hometown is Nueva Ecija and it was known to be the rice bowl of the Philippines. When we go home, I get a few sacks of rice hulls and bring them to Bulacan. You can mix this with a regular soil or with chunks of decaying wood.

Saw Dust

Lettuce transplanted to soil with saw dust

There is a lumberware near our home here in Bulacan. I asked if I can buy some of the sawdust they produced in cutting lumber. Luckily, they gave it to me for free. The same with the rice hulls, you can also mix this in regular soil, either sandy or clay type of soil.

Home Rubbish

Trash coming from the peeling of fruits and vegetables are great materials to make healthy soil. All you need it to chop it into a smaller size to make decomposing faster, place in a container, cover with soil, and water. Keep doing this layer by layer every time you have rubbish from your kitchen. Using dried leaves or twigs can be included in your compost.

Animal Manure

Animal (chicken, cow, pigs, horses) have been used as organic fertilizer on farming. It is better if you are going to mix this first with regular soil. The manure can help improve the soil for it to hold more water and nutrients making it more fertile.

Cow dung are good source of nitrogen and organic carbon while chicken manure is highly concentrated with nitrogen and phospate which are essential for plant growth.

Having your vegetable garden at home will give you lots of benefits. You can have freshly-picked vegetables and cook them directly in the kitchen.

Here are some of the harvested vegetables straight to the kitchen.

Tortang Talong Special

Ginisang Munggo with Ampalaya and Sili

Ginisang Talbos ng Kamote

Adobong Sitaw

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Urban Gardening: Simple Tips on How to Start

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Living in an urban or suburban areas provides only a limited space that seems to be impossible to have vegetation at our own home. This is not a hindrance if you wanted to have your own garden at home.

But before starting your own garden at home, I would like to share some basic things to consider.

Begin with small ones

Mint

Start with easy-to-grow veggies like basil, pechay, mustasa, chili or bell pepper. Once you mastered growing simple plants, you can now grow tomatoes, spring onions, amplaya, sitaw, eggplant and ecen watermelons.

Think of R-R-R
Using the Reduce-Reuse-Recycle principle does not only help saving Mother Nature.

Urban gardening does not reqire to use earthen pots, recycling PET bottles, buckets and worn tires are already perfect as long as it can hold enough soil to grow plants.

Do composting
Rubbish does not always go to garbage bins. You can use this to create your own nutrient-dense soil which supports the growth of plants.

These watermelons actually came from the seeds that I put here to decompose.

Adding rice hulls, saw dust, dried leaves, or cow dung (if available) can enhance the quality of the soil.

Cover your soil

Soil covered with richulls

Adding a layer of rice hull or saw dust on soil helps reduce evaporation of water. This also serves food for good micro-organism in the soil and protection from direct sunlight.

Enjoy planting!

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How To Organize The Perfect Health Insurance Coverage Plan – Budget-Friendly Options

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Four Primary Steps

When it comes to choosing the best possible healthcare package for you or your family, there are a few different schools of thought. Generally, doing the job right will be a four step process. You need to chose your healthcare marketplace, explore the plans inside that marketplace, explore how large covered networks are, and determine out-of-pocket costs.

Between these variables you can find which solution best fits your needs. Some will be more expensive on the front end, but provide you more coverage in out-of-network areas. Some will be less expensive on the front end, but come with limited options. For example, you may not get a choice of your primary care physician.

This was the case with the ACA. Many patients were outraged that the bureaucratic realities of the Affordable Care Act impacted the doctor they could work with. Even though ACA represented itself as an affordable alternative, many saw premiums increase, and many were forced to change doctors—not all, but many. Baring that, taxation was required.

This is surely intolerable. The average cost of health coverage in America presently is $574 per individual, and over $1,500 for families. Now some packages will include things like dental coverage, many won’t—not unless you pay extra. So $574 a month often isn’t even representative of your total needs.

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Serious Expenses

When car insurance is $100 a month and healthcare is $574 a month, on top of rent averaging $800, if you’re single, you’re looking at $1,474 a month before you buy food, water, or other necessary items to live on a regular basis. If you’re making $2k a month, you would be lucky to save anything. Even if you were making $3k a month, things are hard.

So what are your needs, and what is the healthcare market that best represents you? Well, there are a few options you might want to consider. For example, if you’re single, you probably shouldn’t be paying $574 a month. Every year, that’s $6,888—just at the average level; you could pay more, though you might pay less.

In contrast, a trip to Urgent Care is going to cost you about $100. If you went once a month for a year, that’s $1,200. But you’re not really compelled to pay at that rate. Basically, if you spend less than $6,888 a year in testing, experts, and referral as provided by options like Urgent Care, you might as well not even get a healthcare option.

The cheapest thing you can do is eat food that is healthy and exercise regularly. The vast majority of medical conditions develop owing to lifestyle. Death by despair constitutes alcoholism and drug use. Obesity is another big killer, as is smoking. Just being sedentary can severely reduce your lifespan.

Considerations In Healthcare Cost Reduction

First, consider your lifestyle. If you regularly eat poorly, and you seldom exercise, it’s key that you change these habits for the better. When you keep physically active and carefully control your food intake, your body will naturally remain healthy longer. If you don’t have pre-existing conditions, you can coast for decades off healthy living and the occasional Urgent Care visit.

From adolescence until your late sixties, you’re in a prime window for health wherein the majority of your needs will be minor, unless you’re injured, have a congenital illness, or acquire some sickness incidentally. So if you take care of yourself, you can save tens of thousands of dollars in healthcare.

However, even if you’re healthy, having a family changes things considerably. Children can get injured, breaking bones. They can catch illnesses that are life-threatening. Your spouse may contract something like cancer. Though some lifestyle choices contribute to such ailments, sometimes they seem to come out of the blue.

Families must have some sort of healthcare solution, and it may be best not to go with traditional options like the ACA, or an HMO through a well-known insurance provider. You might want to look into other healthcare markets, like the healthcare sharing trend that’s been going around for a few years.

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Exploring “Shared” Healthcare Markets

Essentially, in a healthcare market where costs are shared, those under a “plan” pay into a pool which is used to cover the needs of the infirm when they develop. Plans like Medi-Share start out as low as $199 a month--$375 cheaper than the national average. That’s a savings of $4,500 a year. You could buy a used car for that.

Cheap networks do exist, but they’re going to have higher out-of-pocket costs for specialists or provisions outside your network. Additionally, their networks will be smaller. You might have a physician chosen for you who refers you to specialists outside your network owing to specific conditions. That’s just how it works sometimes.

The long and short of it is, health coverage is expensive no matter how you slice it. However, there are ways you can reduce costs, and you can explore healthcare markets for health insurance that will allow you to make the most affordable choice from the available data.

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An Informed Choice

Determine if you’re single, or buying healthcare options for a family. Determine whether you’re willing to go with a healthcare market like that under the ACA, that outside the ACA, or that where those under the plan share costs such as in Medi-Share. Decide whether or not you’d rather just avoid a health plan altogether and pay at Urgent Care when needs arise.

You can save money, but it will require a bit of strategy. If you’re clever, you can be fully covered as an individual for under $2,400 a year. Also, don’t neglect coverage options through employers or government agencies. You can definitely reduce what you pay for healthcare. Seek advice, and know all your options to maintain savings.

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Urban Gardening Another Try

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A few months ago, I posted one of my projects – Urban Gardening using pots hang on the wall. Unfortunately, this didn’t work. Why?

Tomato Seedlings

The soil I used is not good. It hardened when dried up. Another is that plants did not receive enough sunlight.

With this, I put the Urban Gardening Project on top of the roof. I used the old plastic door jamb as the border to create plots.

I put plastic liners before placing the soil. The soil I used is made of decaying rice hulls which I got from Nueva Ecija pa when we got home a few weeks ago.

There is also an old wooden ladder turned into small plots. Good for small plants like pechay, lettuce, spring onions, and other herbs.

I also planted eggplants and tomatoes in an old pail.

After two weeks, here they are!

Yesterday, I started making “balag” for the sitaw and amplaya to cling on. 

While I was documeting, Mommy was also doing the same pala.

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Flex ko lang yung asawa kong matiyagang nagtatanim ng nga gulay. Sana ay makaani ka mahal @chemist_dad 😘 . . #urbangardening #urbanplants #home #homeandliving #hobbies

A post shared by Maye Domencil (@mommymaye) on Feb 16, 2020 at 4:14am PST

The next project is to used old tires naman as plots or pots for kamote, sili, or other. Any suggestions?

Hopefully, with all the efforts, this project will be okay and will harvest fresh veggies soon.

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How Do You Treat An Injured Tooth?

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The first step in treating an injured tooth comes long before the tooth is injured. It starts with good dental care, this will help to keep your teeth strong.

For good dental care, you need a reliable and professional dentist Neutral Bay, then, if you do ever have an injured tooth, you’ll have someone you can contact immediately. That really helps when dealing with an injured tooth.

Types of Injury

The most common tooth injuries are the tooth being knocked out, a tooth being chipped, and a cracked or broken tooth. All of these scenarios need dental help.

However, it should be noted that a cracked tooth without pain does not necessarily constitute a medical emergency.

Treatment Methods

The approach to treatment will depend on the damage done:

Chipped Tooth

If the damage is only small then you don’t need to rush to your dentist, unless it’s painful or starts to become painful. Small chips can be reattached to your tooth. This means you’ll need to make an appointment and the dentist will decide whether a filling will suffice or if you’ll need a veneer or even a crown.

In some cases, it's possible just to smooth the damaged tooth and you’ll barely notice the difference

Cracked or broken

Cracked teeth need to be looked at quickly and they should be X-rayed to ensure there is no additional damage that isn’t obvious at first.

Your dentist should be able to do this as an emergency appointment. If this type of injury is left then it will cause decay and may necessitate the removal of the tooth.

In fact, in some cases, tooth removal is necessary simply because of the damage caused.

However, the usual approach is to fit a crown to protect the damaged tooth and restore the look of your mouth. This will also prevent bacteria from entering the tooth and causing an infection.

You should be aware that a cracked tooth is not always visible, hence the need for an x-ray. If you’ve hit your tooth on anything but it doesn’t appear damaged then you should still seek dental help, just to be certain. The most common symptoms are tooth pain while chewing and increased sensitivity.

Knocked Out

If your tooth is knocked out it can actually be re-implanted into its socket. However, successful implantations are only usually possible if the tooth is reattached within 30 - 120 minutes.

This gives you several options.

The best course of action is to rinse the tooth with just water and then push it back into its socket n your mouth while heading for the dentist. It is important to only touch the crown of the tooth, not the root.

If you’re not able to get it back into its socket then you should hold the tooth in your mouth, close to the gum line and get to the dentist. This will help it to stay alive as it will still be in its natural environment.

The third option, if you can’t manage either of the above, is to immerse it in milk. Again, you should handle it as little as possible and get to the dentist immediately.

The faster you have dental help the more likely I is that the tooth will be saved. If it isn’t you’ll need to look at an implant or bridge, it’s important to retain structural stability in your mouth.

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