Organic Materials as Nitrogen Fertilizers

by K.A. Barbarick ¹

Quick Facts...

• Organic materials usually are added to soils to provide such plant nutrients as nitrogen and to improve the physical nature of the soil.
• Organic residues that have a low nitrogen content can cause nitrogen deficiencies in plants as microorganisms decompose the organic compounds.
• Inorganic nitrogen must be added with some organic fertilizers to prevent nitrogen deficiencies in Crops.

Crop residues and organic wastes commonly are added to soils as sources of plant nutrients and to improve the physical properties of the soil. These materials do not contain the same quantity of nutrients. In fact, incorporating some organic materials into the soil can induce nitrogen deficiencies in plants. The composition of the added material determines whether nitrogen is released for plant growth or tied up in an unavailable form by the microorganisms that decompose the organic fertilizers.

¹ Colorado State University professor, soil and crop sciences. 9/96. Reviewed 1/06.

Feeding Your Green Baby

Source: By Cheryl Tallman and Joan Ahlers

If you are looking to reduce your carbon footprint, making organic baby food is a great way to go. Consider the green facts:

Organic—Organic fruits and vegetables are the best choice for making baby food. They are the most natural ingredients, and organic foods drastically reduce harm to the environment.

Less waste—When you make your own baby food, there are no jars, labels, or metal lids to dispose or to recycle.

No factory required —Just a little energy to steam foods and run a blender is all you need to make your baby’s meals! Did someone say near “zero” greenhouse gases?

Local—Your baby’s food does not need to trucked to you from a factory thousands of miles away. Instead, you can simply buy organic produce from your local farmers market and get started.

Healthy—Homemade baby food is safe and nutritious. Baby food jars are often lined with bisphenol-A, a controversial hormone disruptor that should be avoided. In addition, homemade baby food has no preservatives, additives, or chemicals—it is pure and natural goodness.

Homemade Baby Food and Healthy Meals in Less Than 30 Minutes per Week

To prepare: Wash, peel, and cut fresh fruits or vegetables, then stovetop steam or microwave in less than 10 minutes. Create a very-smooth texture with a blender or food processor. Add a little water, if needed to reach pudding-like texture. Pour into baby food storage trays, cover, and freeze overnight. Pop cubes out and store in freezer in an airtight container or freezer bag. Frozen baby food cubes last up to 2 months.

To serve: Select frozen baby food cubes from the freezer place in a dish and thaw or warm. Stir food before serving and check the temperature. If you want to thicken something, use baby cereal, yogurt, or mashed banana. For thinning, use breast milk/formula, 100% juice or low-sodium soup stock.

Making healthy meals: You can mix different baby food cubes together to create tasty, healthy meals. You can also add yogurt, melted cheese, ground nuts, or mashed pasta/rice to introduce new flavors and textures. Here are a few ideas:
• Green peas and sweet potatoes
• Butternut squash and mashed banana
• Broccoli, cauliflower, and melted cheese
• Peaches, pears, and oatmeal baby cereal
• Black beans, corn, and rice
• Strawberries, apples, yogurt, and ground pecans

The bottom line: Making baby food is a great gift to give the environment and your baby. Plus homemade baby food tastes great. Who knows? Your baby may even grow up to like the taste of Brussels sprouts and mangoes!

Apple Purée

6 medium golden delicious apples

Step 1: Prep —Wash, peel, core, and cut apples into one-inch slices.

Step 2: Cook —Place apples in a microwave-safe dish. Cover. Cook 5 minutes and let stand for 5 minutes. Cook an additional 5 minutes. The apples are done when they can be pierced easily with a fork.

Step 3: Purée —Place apples and cooking juices into a blender or a food processor. Purée to a smooth texture.

Step 4: Freeze —Spoon into So Easy Baby Food Trays or ice cube trays. Cover. Place in freezer 8 to 10 hours or overnight. Remove cubes from trays, place in storage container or freezer bag, and return immediately to the freezer.

Makes 24 (1-oz.) servings. Stays fresh for 2 months in the freezer.

To serve, select frozen apple cubes from the freezer, defrost, and warm—check the temperature and feed.

Age to introduce: About 6 months.

About the authors: Cheryl Tallman and Joan Ahlers are sisters, the mothers of 5 children and founders of Fresh Baby ( www.FreshBaby.com ). They are the creators of the award-winning So Easy Baby Food Kit and Good Clean Fun Placemats, available at many fine specialty stores and national chains, including Target and Whole Foods Markets.

Electrolux Organic Cooker

Combine innovative student minds just after graduating with the electrical giant Electrolux and you get the cutting edge home appliances of the future. Formally wrapped up in the guise of the 2006 Design Lab contest contestants from all over the world vie for top honors.

The Organic Cooker was one such entry and managed to claim one of the top prizes for its flexible and oil-free cooking in the home. The future of home cooking is a table top appliance that combines infrared technology and vacuum cooking to help create healthy meals within a fraction of their traditional cooking time.

The peanut shaped appliance allows consumers to cook food whichever room they desire or on any surface without the fear of setting fire to everything. It uses high-efficiency radiant energy that sends high frequency electromagnetic waves from the invisible end of the light spectrum, allowing food to cook without the need to heat the air around it.

The vacuum system ensures that all flavors are held within the food and do not escape and infiltrate the whole house. The Organic Cooker offers oil-free frying, grilling and boiling options, all in the one appliance and the internal cooking pad is comprised of four separate sections in order to adapt to your desired style of cooking, and the digital dial operation around the circumference of the hood allows you easily set and adjust the cooking temperature.

This brings the ability to cook healthy food into every home – definitely one to watch.

Organic Coke

Historically, the organic farms have been relatively small family-run farms — which is why the retro-food was once only available in small stores or farmers’ markets. However, since the early 1990s organic food has had growth rates of around 20% a year, far ahead of the rest of the food industry. With the market share of organic food outpacing much of the food industry, many big corporations have moved into the market of retro-food production.

So for over a hundred years, while we thought we were always drinking the real thing, we were in fact consuming a spin-of version of the original health drink; a Fake! Only with this historical information one realizes the new Diet Coke Plus health drink might just be the most original coke produced in our lifetime. As I see it, Coca Cola Company is moving in an interesting direction with Diet Coke Plus, but they still have to push further in order to truly return to their origins. In their upcoming Coke product they should drop all the chemically engineered additives and produce a truly authentic old fashioned soft drink. After Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Classic Coke, Coke Zero, Diet Coke Plus and Coke Splenda, I want my Organic Coke! Because you can’t beat the original thing.

Organic Myths

Source: Organic.org

Myth: Organic food is too expensive

Fact: In general, organic food costs more than conventional food because of the laborious and time-intensive systems used by the typically smaller organic farms. You may find that the benefits of organic agriculture off-set this additional cost. At the same time, there are ways to purchase organic while sticking to your budgets Consider the following when questioning the price of organic:

• Organic farmers don’t receive federal subsidies like conventional farmers do. Therefore, the price of organic food reflects the true cost of growing.
• The price of conventional food does not reflect the cost of environmental cleanups that we pay for through our tax dollars.
• Organic farming is more labor and management intensive.

Myth: Eating organic food is the same as eating natural food.

Fact: Natural foods do not contain additives or preservatives, but they may contain ingredients that have been grown with pesticides or are genetically modified. In other words, the ingredients in the ingredient panel will look familiar, but they have not been produced organically. Natural foods are not regulated and do not meet the same criteria that organic foods do.

Myth: Organic food tastes like cardboard.

Fact: This may have been true of processed foods at one time—take crackers or pretzels for example—but this stereotype is as outdated as the hippie connotations that follow it. Today many organic snack foods taste the same as their conventional counterparts, while most people agree that fresh, locally grown organic produce does not compare to the alternative. Even organic produce that is not in season and has been shipped thousands of miles to reach our grocer’s shelves cannot compare to the produce found in our own back yard or at farmers markets. Taste is certainly an individual matter, so give organic a try and see what you think!

Try baking a couple batches of cookies or prepare a couple of bowls of fruit or vegetable salad; use organic ingredients in one and conventional ingredients in the other.

Madonna Health Secret

Madonna, is maybe the most famously strict organic-lover around. Her disciplined regimen made headlines a few months ago when she laid down the edict to her ex-husband, Guy Ritchie, that when their children were with him, they had to adhere to a macrobiotic and organic diet.Madonna’s not just some megalomaniacal mommie dearest; she’s actually just looking out for her kids’ health, maybe more rigidly than most, but c’mon she’s Madonna, the woman uses whips as props.These demands for her children include a ban on newspapers and TV, a diet of only organic non-processed food, and regularly disinfected hands.

Deadly Pesticides

Over 86 per cent of the public say that they do not want any leftover pesticides in their food Government tests suggest that one in every four items of food you buy contains traces of pesticides 150 of the commonly used pesticides are potentially cancer causing some cannot be washed off.

How do organic pesticides compare with conventional pesticides?

A recent study compared the effectiveness of a rotenone-pyrethrin mixture versus a synthetic pesticide, imidan. Rotenone and pyrethrin are two common organic pesticides; imidan is considered a "soft" synthetic pesticide (i.e., designed to have a brief lifetime after application, and other traits that minimize unwanted effects). It was found that up to 7 applications of the rotenone- pyrethrin mixture were required to obtain the level of protection provided by 2 applications of imidan.

It seems unlikely that 7 applications of rotenone and pyrethrin are really better for the environment than 2 applications of imidan, especially when rotenone is extremely toxic to fish and other aquatic life.

It should be noted, however, that we don't know for certain which system is more harmful. This is because we do not look at organic pesticides the same way that we look at conventional pesticides. We don't know how long these organic pesticides persist in the environment, or the full extent of their effects.

When you look at lists of pesticides allowed in organic agriculture, you find warnings such as, "Use with caution. The toxicological effects of [organic pesticide X] are largely unknown," or "Its persistence in the soil is unknown." Again, researchers haven't bothered to study the effects of organic pesticides because it is assumed that "natural" chemicals are automatically safe.

Organic Electronic

Electronics today are dominated by inorganic materials, especially silicon. Development of organic electronic devices, necessary for that desired flexibility, has been stymied until now because ordinary solvents used in the photolithographic process are very damaging to active organic materials. The researchers have developed a new process that instead employs supercritical CO2--a far gentler solvent with properties midway between a gas and a liquid.
In the future, organic electronics are expected someday to compose a multi-billion industry. With organic, electronic much more efficient and lighter than the current technology, making them much cheaper to produce and easier to mount on buildings.

Organic for Beauty

Our bodies deserve the best treatment we can provide them. Yet, every day, we pummel our bodies with chemicals. The things we eat, drink and breathe contain a massive assortment of foreign compounds that would give us pause were we to actually know the content of what we consume. Some of these chemicals are virtually harmless. They pass through our system causing little damage. Others, once introduced into our bodies, begin wreaking havoc almost immediately. It's ironic then how readily we expose our bodies to chemically-laced cosmetics.

Organic cosmetics exist to give us a choice. No longer are we forced to use products on our faces and bodies that have more chemicals than our household cleansers. We can choose to use natural cosmetics.

Avoid The Use Of Chemicals

Most cosmetic products contain a diverse collection of chemicals with varying levels of toxicity. You won't notice most of them. They'll be absorbed into your body silently. Some of the most common chemicals include coal tar (a known carcinogen), diethanolamine (disrupts the hormones), lead and mercury. That's merely a small sample. These chemicals are included in most cosmetics under the facade of making you look attractive. By contrast, using organic cosmetics doesn't leave you vulnerable to the carcinogens, toxins and nanoparticles in conventional products. That means they won't be absorbed into your body.

Better For The Environment
The reason is because the chemicals aren't biodegradable. That is, the environment can't absorb them harmlessly. Many of the chemicals in traditional cosmetics are similar. You may be able to throw old cosmetics in the garbage, but they're still harmful to the environment. Organic cosmetics lack these chemicals.

Use organic cosmetics. They're better for you and better for the environment in which you live.

10 Organic Diet Secrets of the Stars

How Angie Said Bye-Bye, Baby Weight

Judging from her eyes, lips, cheekbones and profession, a lot of Angelina Jolie’s magic has its origin in her genes, but it also could be her post-twins organic diet that snapped her into Hollywood-worthy shape so quickly. She strove for an eating plan that was heavy on the veggies and Omega-3s. According to a source, Angelina’s post-baby menu included organic salmon with tomatoes, brown bread and herbs for breakfast, and mackerel or grilled fresh tuna with watercress, spinach and tomatoes for lunch or dinner. Not only is Angie’s diet good for her figure, eating organically is, as Tim LaSalle, CEO of The Rodale Instititute, tells Sprig, “the biggest weapon against climate change.” The biggest. “If we were to convert all of the U.S. farm acres to organic, we’d sequester 25 percent of all of our emissions. That’s the equivalent of taking most of the cars off the highway,” says LaSalle.

Grade A+: Angelina’s menu is about as perfectly assembled as she is: healthy proteins, “good” fats and fresh fruit and vegetables are the most winning combination without a pesticide or hormone in sight.

care2.com