Kitchen garden

Grow Your Own Anti-Aging Skin Care

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“. . . if you’re looking for a natural remedy for hair loss, rosemary is the herb to try. To create a therapeutic hair oil, press rosemary with a spoon and let it soak overnight in a cup of coconut oil, jojoba, and olive oil. Apply to the roots of your hair, massaging the mixture into the scalp.” ~Dr. Richard Foxx 

plant_rosemary
Rosemary

Why spend hundreds of dollars on anti-aging skin care products when you can grow a herb garden and get all you need to fight the effects of aging? In addition to enhancing the taste of food, many herbs also have strong anti-aging properties. And best of all, you can find many of them at your local grocery store year-round. Now that it’s summer, you can also look at a farmer’s market in your area where naturally grown herbs are for sale. Or, if you’re feeling ambitious and have the space, why not plant your own anti-aging herb garden?

The following are the top three herbs you can use to fight the effects of aging for younger-looking skin.

Mint: Consuming mint can soothe skin conditions like rosacea, eczema, and acne. You can also take a handful of mint, place it in two cups of hot water, and refrigerate the mixture for a soothing toner. Continue reading →

Fruit And Veg Growing In VERY Un-Ideal Conditions

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ReadyNutrition  April 26 2014

CarrotsGrownInFlowerPotWell just for a change we have had some decent weather here in the UK so I have been able to move the garden on quite a bit. I am fortunate, I have a fair sized space for a veggie garden, by UK standards at least. My ‘patch’ is 35 feet by 60ft and my aim, ultimately is to produce the vast majority, if not all of our vegetables. There are a few things that I have had to overcome before I could even begin to plant.

  • The ground has not been worked for over 30 years.
  • It is full of metal cans that have rusted releasing oil, diesel and God knows what else into the soil.
  • Even rotavating failed to get out the exceptionally deep bramble roots.
  • The foundations of two old buildings mean the topsoil is very shallow in places.

So, over the last year I have developed what I hope is a strategy for dealing with these issues.

  1. I will garden in raised beds. These will be built from old bricks and the one ton build bags that sand and gravel is delivered in.
  2. The bulk of the contamination is in the centre of the patch so I have removed the soil to a depth of two feet around the edges of the patch, ‘washing’ the trench out and replacing the soil with fresh topsoil. Raspberry and blackberry canes can now be planted to grow up the fences as well as Rosa Rugosa, which produces fabulous hips for rosehip syrup.
  3. All the rubble collected from the garden as a whole will be used as hardcore for the base of a small shed and a greenhouse, we can’t plant in the ground inside the greenhouse so having a hard base won’t be a problem.
  4. A dead but sturdy tree in the far left corner has now got a variety of pots fixed to it allowing me to vertically garden. Small herbs with shallow roots do fine as long as they are kept moist. Larger pots around the base of the tree can take the heavier stuff with deeper roots.

Continue reading →