RECYCLING "STUFF" FOR YOUR GARDEN

----BE NATURE FRIENDLY----

I ‘ve got Spring on the brain so I thought I might share some of the stuff I am doing to get ready for planting season.

There are actually many things around the house that can be used to get seedlings started and it makes use of garbage you have around the house, effectively recycling things to give them another use.

First off…to start seedlings you need some little pots. There is no need to buy them…you may already have them. You can make little planters from toilet paper rolls, newspaper, and eggshells.

To make planters from toilet paper rolls:

1. Cut each roll in half and press it flat.


2. Make four, half-inch to three-quarter-inch slices on one end of the roll to create four equal-sized flaps.


3. Open up the roll and fold in the four little flaps like a box bottom.


4. Fill with soil and plant your seeds!

You can grow these indoors next to windows (for light) or under grow lights and then when it comes time to plant them in the garden just unwrap the bottom and stick it in the ground. The paperboard of the toilet paper roll will disintegrate over time.

Egg shells can also be used for smallish seedlings and be put directly in the ground for planting. It is easier to manage them if you keep them in an egg container so if you get egg containers from the grocery make sure to save them AND the egg shells. If you get fresh eggs (like I do part of the year) then ask a friend to save their egg containers for you. Freecycle is also a good place to ask people for their garbage, LOL.

Newspaper is another super easy planter. Just take a piece of newspaper and fold it in half once or twice lengthwise. Then roll it around a can or a glass to make the basic “tube” shape. Pull the can or glass out and then fold one half in to make a bottom. Now you are ready to add soil and seeds and these planters can also go directly in the ground and you don’t need to unravel the bottom as newspaper will disintegrate pretty fast.

If you want to get a jump on your outdoor planting but worry about an unexpected frost I have a solution for that too. Save your plastic juice or milk jugs … or ask neighbors for theirs if you don’t use them… and then cut the bottom 2-3 inches off so that you have the perfect cloche to put over your seedlings in the garden. You need transparent milk jugs though not the white or yellow ones that won’t let light through. Also, the 2-3 inch section you cut off can now be used as a tray to start more seeds.

This cloche will protect your seeds from cold, frost, and bugs while allowing them to grow still. Using cloches for bug management also helps you keep to your organic intentions too.

......HOPE YOU LIKE IT......

NOT A JOKE DUDES...

LET'S CELEBRATE SOMETHING TOGETHER...

It does, doesn’t it? If you think so, you aren’t alone. On 12 April 2008, you can celebrate space with others all over the world. The global event is called Yuri’s Night Out, in honor of the Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who became the first person to venture into space on 12 April 1961.

Here in Northern California, the party will be held at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California — 30°16′02″N, 097°45′50″W to be more precise. Or, you can catch the party in Croatia (Zagreb: 45°49′00″N, 015°59′00″E) or maybe Ethiopia (Addis Ababa: 09°02′00″N, 038°42′00″E). A complete listing of parties is available if you’re interested.

Naturally shooo away acne...

.....HOME MADE REMEDIES....

Garlic Remedy for Acne

Garlic has been used successfully to cure acne. Rub with raw garlic several times a day. Garlic is known to cure the toughest of acne problems. The external use of garlic helps to clear the skin of spots, pimples and boils. To cure acne further, eat three seeds of raw garlic once daily for a month. This purifies the blood stream and ensures basic cleansing of blood & keeps acne away.

Acne Fenugreek Treatment

Fenugreek is another useful remedy for acne. Make a paste of fenugreek leaves and apply over the face every night before going to bed. Wash off with warm water in the morning. This prevents pimples and blackheads.

Orange Peel Remedy for Acne

Homemade Acne Treatment with orange peel has been found very effective. Pound the orange peel with water on a piece stone and apply on acne affected areas.

Lemon Cure for Acne

A simple remedy at home for acne: Apply lemon juice regularly to reduce pimples and acne. This has proven beneficial results

Coriander and Mint Juice Therapy for Acne

A teaspoon of coriander juice, mixed with a pinch of turmeric powder, is another effective home remedy for pimples and blackheads. Apply mixture on the face after thoroughly washing it every night before retiring. Use mint juice in a similar manner as coriander juice.

....ACNE DIET....

All-fruit Acne diet
To begin with, the patient should take only an 'all-fruit' diet for a week, taking three meals a day, of fresh juicy fruits, such as apples, pears, grapes, grapefruit, pineapples, and peaches. Only unsweetened lemon or plain water, either hot or cold, should be drunk and nothing else.

Avoid strong tea/coffee, soft drinks and processed foods
Meats, sugar, strong tea or coffee, condiments, pickles, soft drinks, candies, ice cream, refined and processed foods should be avoided as far as possible.

....Other Acne natural treatments....

Warm-water enema
During the initial one week 'all-fruit' diet, a warm-water enema taken daily cleanses the bowels. Apply hot fomentation locally to open up the pores and to bring out the waste matter. Then rinse the affected parts with cold water.

Hot Epsom salts bath
A hot Epsom salts bath twice a week is beneficial in all cases of acne. This bath is prepared by adding 1 ½ kg of Epsom salts to 60 litres of water having a temperature of about 37.8° C. The patient should remain in the bath tub for 25-35 minutes till he sweats freely. After the bath, the patient should cool off gradually.

FOR MORE INFO PLEASE REQUEST AT...(e-mail at balaji_khanna@yahoo.com)

Astronomers look for exploding black holes

Extra dimensions in spacetime could Trigger Blast.

The despite being too small to see, the little brother of conventional black holes such as this may be a source of cosmic explosions.NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
A group of radio astronomers has begun looking for signals from small, exploding black holes. The search is a long shot, but if it finds anything, it could be the best evidence yet for extra dimensions beyond the paltry four that we live in.

The Universe as we see it is made up of three dimensions of space and one of time, but some theories predict that many more dimensions exist beyond the ones we experience. In particular, string theory, which suggests that the Universe is composed of tiny, vibrating 'strings', suggests that several extra dimensions might exist beyond our own.

The despite being too small to see,

the little brother of conventional

black holes such as this may

be a source of cosmic explosions.

To date, observations have failed to turn up these dimensions, and most theorists suspect that if the dimensions do exist, they are 'curled up' in tiny closed loops around a billionth of a nanometer (10-18 m) in size. Some theorists believe that the Large Hadron Collider, a giant particle accelerator now nearing completion at CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland, might be able to spot them.

But now John Simonetti and colleagues at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg are investigating another way to look for these dimensions — in the explosions of 'primordial' black holes. The team outlines their plan in a paper preprinted at http://arxiv.org1/.

Little holes

Forged in the earliest days of the Universe, primordial black holes are microscopic in size,

despite having the same mass as a small mountain. Because of their small size, the holes are all but impossible to spot directly. Still, some experts believe that they can produce a unique radio signature.

Like all black holes, primordial black holes undergo 'evaporation', a process that causes them slowly to lose their mass. As they shrink, they evaporate more quickly, and theorists predict that their ever-accelerating evaporation might lead to a sudden explosion. To date, however, astronomers have yet to see signals from such a burst.

In a new twist, Simonetti and colleagues are betting that an extra spatial dimension might trigger a black hole to blow up. A primordial black hole would initially be bigger than the curled-up extra dimension, Simonetti says. But as it evaporates, it would get closer and closer to the scale of the dimension.

"Eventually," he says, "it will find itself in a very peculiar state." The black hole will begin to be stretched around the dimension, something like a rubber band. When it evaporated enough, the hole will suddenly 'snap' into the tiny dimension, triggering an explosion.

5-D explosions

The blast would be smaller than those predicted from normal evaporation, but Simonetti believes they still should be detectable as radio waves. Using an 8-metre antenna array in North Carolina and a second array under construction in Virginia, his group hopes to look for exploding primordial holes up to about 300 light years away.

The search is a long shot, says Martin Rees, an astronomer at Cambridge University, UK, who made some of the early predictions of primordial black holes. The existence of the holes isn't assured, nor is the presence of extra dimensions. Nevertheless, Rees says, the survey will have merit: "It's worth looking for them."

Roger Blandford, a physicist at Stanford University in California who has also worked extensively on primordial holes, adds that the search will have other merits. Because it is sensitive to other short-lived sources, it might spot radiowaves from supernovae or colliding neutron stars. "I would be very supportive of the investigation, independent of the theory," he says.

"Who knows what we're going to see," Simonetti says. The group hopes to run the search for five years or more.

special thanks to www.nature.com