Looking for the healthiest, most comfortable pillows? Check out my youtube video about buckwheat pillows.

In the ideal world, when you plant your bean seeds and tomato seedlings as you start your garden, the soil is so healthy that pests want nothing to do with your crops. But the fact is, despite your best efforts, pests will show up. Which ones and how many will depend on such things as the nutrient-richness of the soil and the climate.

Regardless of which critters decide to bug you any given year, the following oranic vegetable gardening tips will help you to reduce the amount of pests and ensuing crop loss.

1. Grow seedlings as large as you can before setting them out. Otherwise fela beetles and other hungry pests can deovour an entire plant overnight.
2. Grow extra plants. If you have more than enough, losing a few plants to insects isn’t as biga disappointment as it would have been otherwise.
3. Buy and release parasitic wasps and beneifical nematodes early in the season (especially your first two or three years). They will eat the larvae of many garden pests.
4. Se row covers for shorter plants. Row covers will keep cabbage moths from laying eggs on your Brassicas (kale, broccoli, cabbage, etc.) and grasshoppers from munching on bean leaves.
5. Sprinke diatomaceous earth over the soil around the plants. This deceptively powedery subastance kills dirt-dwelling creatures, such as pill and sow bugs, and slugs and snails. This will also discourage aphids, and prevent ants from climbing up plnats to help the aphids multiply.
6. Continue to enrich your soil with compost and/or composted manure and/or mulch.
7. Check your garden for pests and pest damage daily. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

These vegetable gardening tips have saved my sanity; put them to use in your garden and they will save yours, too!

If you were to take out every kind of insurance there is, you would end up in debt up to your eyeballs trying to pay all the monthly premiums. If you’re serious about saving money, some kinds of insurance will be beneficial to that goal, while others would likely end up being a total waste of money.

Boiler, pet and sometimes even dental insurance, for just three of many possible examples, can end up costing you much more in premiums than in actual payout.

But a few types of insurance – other than the required auto and home (if you still have a mortgage) – could save you money in the long run.

1. Term life insurance. This is especially recommended for people with families who have under $500,000 in a nest egg.
2. Short-term health insurance. ShortTermHealthInsurance.net explains under which circumstances you might want to carry health insurance for a limited time.
3. Natural disaster insurance, such as for earthquakes or flood. If your home is at high risk of damage by nature, you could save up to hundreds of thousands of dollars by carrying the relevant policy.
4. For seniors over 65, both Medigap and long-term care insurance can pay off big, both for the senior themselves and for their children, who may otherwise have to carry the extra financial burden.

Of course, the best insurance is taking care of yourself, living simply, cultivating authentic friendships and knowing God. When you do these things, you have much less to worry about.

My garden as of early April 2012. Hope it inspires!

Green cleaning has become all the rage. (Forget baking soda for colds; how about for cleaning almost anything?) Even conventional grocery stores and Big Box discount department stores carry well-known brands that have gone “green”. But there are two big problems with buying household cleaners that claim to be good for the environment. First, those brands that actually are good for the environment – completely chemical-free – are expensive. Second, conventional brands that claim to have a healthier counterpart to their better-known toxic cleaners still contain toxic chemicals.

The solution? Make your own green household cleaners, of course! You will not only save a lot of money, but will avoid those chemicals that increase your risk of developing cancer, cause eye and skin irritation, disrupt hormone production, and so on. To help you on your way, I want to give you five green cleaning recipes I personally use – and that really work!

1. Toilet bowl cleaner

This works best if you turn off the water valve to the toilet and flush it first. But honestly, I never do.

Pour one cup vinegar into the toilet bowl, followed by ¼ cup either baking or washing soda. Let sit for a couple of minutes, and then scrub clean.

2. Laundry detergent

Mix one part Borax and one part washing soda in a container. When it’s time to do laundry, put ½ to 1 tablespoon of the mixture in the washing machine, then add a squirt (about a teaspoon) of liquid castile soap. This is the cheapest laundry soap ever – and it works great!

3. All-purpose surface cleaner

This is a complicated green cleaning recipe, so get a calculator ready to figure out some complex mathematical formulas…KIDDING!

Mix one part vinegar with one part water. To boost its disinfectant properties, add a couple drops of either lemon or tea tree oil.

4. Homemade “Bon Ami”

This works great for burned-on foods in stainless steel saucepans, as well as any other hard surface. Sprinkle baking soda over the stain or rough spot. Sprinkle enough water over the soda to get it damp and pasty, but not runny. Let it sit for several minutes, then scrub.

5. Natural air freshener

We use this in the bathroom after someone has gone “number two”. It knocks the odor right out! Alos works great for getting rid of any other kind of offensive odor.

Fill a spray bottle with vinegar. Add a drop or two of lemon oil (make sure it doesn’t contain chemical fragrances). Spritz around foul-smelling air.

Put these green cleaning ideas to the test. They will not only save you money, but keep you and your family healthier. Enjoy!

In this video, I explain an easy, inexpensive homemade laundry soap recipe. Enjoy!

I believe in simple living. I believe that the complexity of our modern world not only takes a toll on both our mental and physical health, but also distracts us from our priorities – spending time with family and friends, searching for that dream career, having time to do something just for fun.

While I don’t advocate that everybody moves to the middle of nowhere, throws out every electrical gadget and appliance, and lives on deer meat and weeds, I do encourage you to ask yourself, “Where can I cut back that will reduce my stress and make life more enjoyable?” with that in mind, I offer the following ten tips to more simple living.

1. Eliminate, or cut back on, magazine subscriptions.

Magazines add clutter to your house and take away from your household expenses. In addition, the subscription renewals are one more thing to keep track of.

2. Buy a house that is only one fourth of your household take-home pay.

That is,  with a fifteen-year fixed-rate mortgage. (Yes, I do listen to Dave Ramsey.) This will save you oodles of stress and money.

3. Eat simply.

It’s healthier and usually more inexpensive than eating more elaborate meals. Four ounces of meat, a lettuce salad and some steamed vegetables take little hands-on preparation time.

4. Cut back on extracurriculars.

This goes for both the children and the adults in our family. Families are meant to hang out together – a lot. Change everyone’s schedule to meet that goal.

5. Exercise several times a week.

You may think that this will make your life more complicated, but combined with healthy eating, this practice will result in fewer work hours lost to illness and fewer doctor visits.

6. Make a budget, and stick to it.

This will keep you from overspending and keep unnecessary things from piling up in your house.

7. Consolidate errands.

You’ll save time and gas if you do several errands over the course of a couple hours, rather than spreading them out over the week.

8. Plan a weekly menu.

Remember to keep it simple and healthy, and to take your list with you to the grocery store!

9. Make a daily flexible schedule.

Life is a lot simpler when you prioritize your activities on paper, then use the list as a guide to working on various tasks and activities.

10. Grow some of your own food.

While learning how to set up a garden takes some upfront time and effort, once you get in the groove you see how much simpler it is to go out to your backyard to harvest some veggies for dinner, than to drive to the store.

There are, of course, many other ways to practice simple living. Use these ideas as a springboard for developing some of your own. Life will never have been so good – or simple!

An ant invasion is not usually welcomed in your living space, whether inside or out. But knowing the cumulative effects of toxins in the body, you want to avoid using chemicals of any kind. Are there any natural insect repellents or pesticides that really work? Because believe me, there are some that just plain don’t, whether they are store-bought and have all kinds of claims, or whether they are a homemade remedy.

However, there are two very effective non-chemical ways to get rid of ants, inside or out.

1. Diatomaceous earth

DE is basically ground-up shells of these teeny organisms called diatoms. While the finished product you see in the bag feels like a fine flour, it is actually hard enough to scratch the tender soft bodies of insects, causing them to dry up and die. (Because of this quality, you want to avoid inhaling it, as it will scratch and dry up your lungs, as well.)

A couple of years ago Jerry discovered a fire ants nest in our attic (!). He crawled through the crawl space and sprinkled DE everywhere, and the ants disappeared from our house within a day or two.

Buy the food grade kind, like what the company Soil Mender provides, so that you don’t have to worry if your toddler or pets get into any that you might spread around.

2. Essential oils

Specifically, peppermint and oregano (undiluted). Ten drops of each in two and a half cups of water, shake together in a spray bottle, and spray the the area where they are entering your house. Direct contact will kill them; the smell will keep them from crossing over the essential oil border.

If you have an ant problem and want to avoid chemicals, either of these two ant-i-cides will work great.

For the moment, I live in a suburb that does not allow its residents to have backyard hens.

Even though across the street from our subdivision there is a house with a donkey, a cow, and several other farm animals. It’s a one-acre lot in another city.

And the suburb to our south also allows hens.

So I totally empathize with this group in Billings, Montana. Having even just two or three backyard hens could take a nice chunk out of our food budget. Not that we would even try on this postage-stamp of a backyard, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Hens don’t make noise. They are nice pets. They create good manure for the garden (provided you compost it). And besides, our city’s motto is “Live Green In [city name].”

I don’t want to call anyone a hypocrite, but…

Anyway, what about your city? Are they too chicken for chickens, too?

Having experimented with vegetable gardening the past several years, there are perhaps a couple dozen organic vegetable gardening tips  I could throw out there to help you get your own successful garden started. But when it comes down to it, after you’ve learned the basics of growing your own food, there are three vital principles to keep in mind. To help you remember them, let’s call them the “Three Ps.”

1. Patience.

You will probably have limited success your first year of gardening. It will be a time of learning from many mistakes. Don’t give up on yourself; this is normal, and does not mean you have a “black thumb.” Your second year will be a little better, and your third year you will likely start to feel competence.

2. Plant more than you need.

As an organic grower, you will not have any easy out when pests come along. Spraying everything once a week could be a solution, but even organic sprays will kill all the beneficial insects, including the critical pollinators. Instead of getting angry and going on a rampage about some of your harvest being taken out prematurely by bugs, simply plant extra so that when some plants get destroyed, you will still have the amount of harvest you had hoped for.

3. Protect your seedlings.

This is near the top of all vegetable gardening tips. Seedlings are at their most vulnerable state ever, and can be taken out quickly by flea beetles, slugs and snails, and caterpillars. Sprinkle diatomaceous earth around and over baby plants after every rain or watering until they are about four weeks old. Cover them with row covers. Spray them with garlic pepper spray.

You don’t want to apply organic pesticides forever, as that will keep away the “good guys”, but if you take measures to protect your seedlings you will end up with a much greater harvest than you would have otherwise.

There you have the Three Ps of vegetable gardening tips: Patience, Plant extra, and Protect. For more detailed information on getting started with your new garden, click here to read a more comprehensive post.