Save Hundreds of Dollars By Growing These 7 Plants
You may not be ready to buy an acre lot, build a chicken coop, and start living off the land. But, with a small yard or even a sunny balcony, you can start growing your own fresh food and save hundreds of dollars each year in supermarket bills. But which plants to have in your garden?
Check out this really quick list.
Herbs
I cringe every time I spend $3 on a tiny plastic case of herbs.
Rosemary, thyme, and oregano can be tucked in any sunny corner of your yard. They require almost no maintenance and can be harvested throughout the year.
When it comes to saving money, basil is the king. 2 plants are enough to provide you with several batches of pesto and fresh leaves throughout the spring and summer.
Basil can be grown in a pot on a sunny balcony or windowsill.
Summer Squash
Summer squash includes zucchini and yellow squash. Having them in your garden means being able to test out squash casseroles and zucchini bread recipes anytime you want.
Check your plants every other day for new fruit. Remember to harvest them when they are about the size of your hand. They quickly get huge and tough so make sure to keep an eye out for them.
Cucumbers
Like summer squash, cucumber plants are prolific producers. You can save space by growing the plants vertically on a trellis.
There are two broad categories of cucumbers: slicing and pickling.
Slicing cucumbers are the ones commonly found in stores. They are large and meant to be eaten fresh.
Pickling cucumbers, on the other hand, are usually smaller, more difficult to find.
I have seen jars of “gourmet” pickles sold for over $15.
With your own cucumbers, some vinegar, salt, and homegrown herbs, you can create your own pickles better than any “gourmet” ones.
Lettuce
Instead of spending $4 a week on a sealed bag of lettuce, grow your own. 10 plants are enough for a family’s salad needs.
Harvest the outer leaves and in about one week, the plant will be ready for another harvest.
Remember this:
Lettuce likes cool weather and will die once the heat of summer arrives.
Sugar Snap Peas
These are the peas with an edible pod that can be eaten right off the vine. Pea vines grow rapidly and the more you harvest, the more they produce.
Their sugar content starts to turn to starch once harvested. They taste the sweetest when freshly picked.
Tomatoes
After you taste a tomato picked from your own vine, you will never buy from the store again.
Expect to harvest anywhere from 10 to 30 lbs of medium sized tomatoes in its growing season. At the store, tomatoes run $3 to $4 per lb. It’s like growing money.
Hot Peppers
If you like to put hot sauce on everything, start growing your own peppers. They are small and easy to grow.
Experimenting with novel varieties like the Carolina Reaper (currently the hottest pepper in the world) is fun and saves extra money. Create your own chili powder, hot sauces, and chili oils for even more savings and to give as gifts.
More Ways to Save Money in the Garden
Preserve your harvest: Fruit and vegetable prices spike when out of season. Save even more money by preserving your harvest. This can include freezing basil pesto, canning tomato sauce, and making chili oil.
Mulch: Mulch can be any organic material that covers the soil around your plants, such as straw, wood chips or fallen leaves. It prevents evaporation and will save you money on your water bill. Conserve even more water by installing drip irrigation.
Start plants from seed: Seed packs run around $3 and can contain hundreds of seeds. Furthermore, you will have access to a much wider variety of produce.
Garden on a Friday Night: Gardening is fun! Skip going out and spending money. Instead, spend the weekend with your plants or host a garden party.
The best place for any new gardener to start is by growing food you love to eat. This will save you extra money as you buy less of them. With these 7 plants to have in your garden, you might enjoy growing your own food so much that you end up buying that acre lot after all.
The post Save Hundreds of Dollars By Growing These 7 Plants appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
via Dumb Little Man – Tips for Life
Save Hundreds of Dollars By Growing These 7 Plants
Spread of Breast Cancer Linked To Compound In Asparagus and Other Foods
Asparagus and other foods like potatoes, nuts, legumes and soy contain a compound known as asparagine, which researchers believe helps drive the spread of breast cancer to other organs. "When scientists reduced asparagine in animals with breast cancer, they found that the number of secondary tumors in other tissues fell dramatically," The Guardian reports. "The spread of malignant cells, often to the bones, lungs and brain, is the main cause of death among patients who are diagnosed with breast cancer." From the report: Asparagine is an amino acid that is made naturally in the body as a building block for proteins. But it is also found in the diet, and in high levels in certain meats, vegetables and dairy products. The international team of cancer specialists from Britain, the U.S., and Canada studied mice with an aggressive form of breast cancer. The mice develop secondary tumors in a matter of weeks and tend to die from the disease within months. Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers describe how they reduced the ability of breast cancer to spread in the animals by blocking asparagine with a drug called L-asparaginase. To a lesser extent, by putting the animals on a low-asparagine diet worked too. Inspired by the results, the scientists examined records from human cancers and found that breast tumors that churned out the most asparagine were most likely to spread, leading patients to die sooner. The same was seen in cancers of the head, neck and kidney.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
via Slashdot
Spread of Breast Cancer Linked To Compound In Asparagus and Other Foods
Photographer captures amusing coincidences on the streets of New York
Photographer captures amusing coincidences on the streets of New York
For the past decade, photographer Jonathan Higbee has been photographing the streets of New York. In the chaos of the busy city, he manages to capture the fleeting moments of perfect coincidences. Thanks to his keen eye for these moments, he has created a series of photos that show fantastic and amusing coincidences.
As Jonathan writes, he moved to New York almost a decade ago. He lived in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Kansas City before. After moving so often, he has realized that the best way for him to explore his new hometown is through art and creativity.
For Jonathan, experiencing New York for the first time was “an intensely surreal experience.” So many sounds, sights, and smells; so many people flooding the streets all the time. Some might find it intimidating, but Jonathan loved every moment of it. And he began capturing the moments on these busy, ever-living streets.
Over time, Jonathan’s street photography from New York has become the project he named Coincidences. The artist explains that it’s an attempt to “filter the madness and confusion” and “tame the anarchy.” In the sensory overload that never fades away, he managed to extract moments in time and preserve them in a series of fantastic photos.
Jonathan has lived in New York long enough that he got used to its pace. But, his Coincidences project keeps growing. He calls it “his love letter to New York” and to “the infinite number of magical, ephemeral and serendipitous moments that make it a city unlike any other.” And indeed, I believe photos like this are a wonderful way of paying a tribute to the city he has grown to love so much.
I now leave you to enjoy more of Jonathan’s photos. If you’d like to see more, make sure to visit his website, Instagram, and Facebook. You can also follow him on Twitter and subscribe to his YouTube channel.
via DIYPhotography.net – Photography and Studio Lighting – Do It Yourself
Photographer captures amusing coincidences on the streets of New York
TurboPatent lands $3.25M to help companies protect their inventions using automation
Seattle startup TurboPatent has raised $3.25 million to bolster its growing suite of automation tools for patents and intellectual property.
TurboPatent focuses on corporations and law firms, automating tasks like formatting or document preparation, for example, freeing up people to work on more complex issues. The service is designed to cut costs, save time and lead to more accurate patent documentation.
In addition to the $3.25 million round, the company is working on closing another $1.25 million.
Investors in the round include Voyager Capital, IP management software company Anaqua, former president of Paul Allen’s Vulcan Bill Savoy and John Amster and Geof Barker, co-founders of patent risk management company RPX. Savoy and Bob Romeo, CEO of Anaqua, have joined TurboPatent’s board of directors.
Today, TurboPatent employs 20 people out of its office in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood. The company says aims to have the same impact on the patent industry as CAD (computer-aided drafting) did for engineering, the cloud for IT infrastructure, and robotics for manufacturing.
TurboPatent raised $1.4 million in funding last year and introduced several new products that use artificial intelligence to improve the patent application process. TurboPatent’s latest product is called Invention Hub, a place for companies to track ideas from developers, engineers and others. A beta version of the program is available now. It lets companies see where they are in the patent process and use analytics to figure out how likely an idea is to win a patent.
Formerly known as Patent Navigation, TurboPatent has an experienced team led by co-founders James Billmaier and Charles Mirho. Billmaier was previously CEO of Melodeo, a cloud-based media platform company that sold to HP in 2010. He also teamed up with Paul Allen in 1999 to launch home-entertainment technology company Digeo, which was eventually sold in 2009 to ARRIS Group Inc.
Mirho, meanwhile, is a patent law veteran, having worked as a patent counsel at Intel and later as a managing partner of a patent law firm.
via GeekWire
TurboPatent lands $3.25M to help companies protect their inventions using automation
Why We Need The Second Amendment: A Looney Tunes Cartoon Explains
The 1959 Looney Tunes episode titled Mexicali Shmoes exemplifies why the 2nd Amendment is of such importance when it comes to equality for all. The episode shows the usual wacky adventures of the titular character Speedy Gonzales . . .
In this case two Mexican alley cats named Jose and Manuel are giving him chase and constantly failing due to Speedy Gonzales being able to outrun them. The show introduces Speedy Gonzales’ cousin; Slow Poke Rodriguez. Who happens to be the slowest mouse in all of Mexico. Yet somehow Slow Poke Rodriguez is able to stay alive and not be eaten by Jose the cat.
On an adult level, this shows that Speedy Gonzales is able to beat his attackers because he is faster and stronger than his attackers. He has the benefits of age, health, and genetics at his advantage. Slow Poke Rodriguez is slow, weak, and an easy mark.
In the world of the gun grabbers you have two choices: fight off your attackers with your bare hands or call the police and hope they arrive soon enough to save you, your family and other innocent life. But as The People of the Gun know already, waiting for the police to save you isn’t a reliable strategy. You might even call it a Hail Mary.
Slow Poke Rodriguez equalizes his faults with Speedy Gonzales’ physical traits by carrying a revolver to defend himself. No different than a senior citizen or someone that happens to be smaller and weaker would carry to defend themselves.
As shown, Slow Poke Rodriguez walks out of his home, is suddenly attacked and what does he do? He defends himself with a gun. No different than my 64-year-old father today. He might be older, weaker, and slower due to age. But he is still dangerous and can defend himself.
Carrying a firearm is all about equalizing what nature has made unequal.
The 2nd Amendment is all about creating a level playing field. It gives strength to the weak to fend off violent attacks from criminals and gives We The People the ability to fend off violent government from usurping rights and liberties. What’s not to love?
via The Truth About Guns
Why We Need The Second Amendment: A Looney Tunes Cartoon Explains
Comic for February 08, 2018
Icertis raises $50M, looks to become the Salesforce of contract management
Samir Bodas, co-founder and CEO of Bellevue-based Icertis, thinks the contract-lifecycle management industry his company serves could become as large as the customer-relationship management industry that propelled Marc Benioff into the Salesforce Tower. He just raised $50 million in additional funding to prove that theory.
The Series D round, led by Meritech Capital Partners, brings the total amount of money raised by the company to just under $100 million. The round also included the company’s current investors as well as two new ones, PSP Capital Partners and Cross Creek Advisors, and GeekWire has learned that the new round values the company at a little less than $500 million. (Bodas declined to comment on the valuation.)
It marks one of the largest venture capital rounds in a Pacific Northwest company so far this year.
Icertis built software delivered over Microsoft’s Azure public cloud that helps companies keep track of deals with suppliers and customers that require extensive contracts. Given how the legal system works, that’s a lot of contracts, and Icertis’ software also helps companies negotiate better contracts by highlighting ways to save money or move faster.
“There’s tremendous opportunity to tease out risk, to tease out more value, to look at the text of the contract and say, ‘this clause doesn’t look right,’” Bodas said in a recent interview. He compared contract-lifecycle management software to the emergence of cloud-delivered CRM software used by a lot of companies to manage their sales cycles.
Both those services used to be handled as part of a huge enterprise-resource planning software package companies bought from vendors like IBM or SAP and installed on their own servers, but cloud computing has upended that market much the same way it has everything else. Icertis counts companies like Microsoft and Daimler among its customers, and has around 600 employees, including 400 or so based in India working on its technology.
The company has about 100 people in the U.S., 75 of whom work in Bellevue. Like most startups with fresh cash, Icertis plans to open new offices (mostly in Europe) and expand its work on sales, marketing, and customer support, Bodas said.
Icertis is also working on technology improvements that will bring machine-learning capabilities into its products, which is also something the CRM industry is trying to do. As noted above, such technology could be used to help customers find problems in contracts before it’s too late, and it could also make it easier to do the most important part of managing contracts: making sure the other party is living up to their end of the deal.
via GeekWire
Icertis raises $50M, looks to become the Salesforce of contract management
Watch ‘Starman’ drift: SpaceX’s Tesla reaches the ultimate cruising altitude and rides off into space
This might be the ultimate space oddity.
High above his home planet, where millions of people are no doubt sitting in traffic in cars of their own, “Starman” drifted effortlessly through a wide open expanse on Tuesday.
The mannequin in a spacesuit — launched aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket on Tuesday — sat in the driver’s seat of Elon Musk’s cherry red Tesla Roadster. With the top down, Starman drove off toward a deep-space orbit listening to David Bowie’s “Life on Mars.”
SpaceX beamed a live internet view of the unprecedented adventure via its YouTube feed, where more than 200,000 viewers were watching at one point.
Assorted camera angles captured views from inside the Roadster over Starman’s shoulder; from out in front of the hood looking back; and from off the driver’s side of the car looking back toward Starman.
Earth continuously moved into the frame to serve as a dramatic blue backdrop against an otherwise deep, black setting.
Clearly amused by his own stunt, Musk tweeted that “apparently, there is a car in orbit around Earth,” later adding that the Tesla was over Australia.
Watch the video below for as long as you can — Musk has said Starman and the Tesla could drift for “maybe in excess of a billion years.”
via GeekWire
Watch ‘Starman’ drift: SpaceX’s Tesla reaches the ultimate cruising altitude and rides off into space
Watch the live feed from SpaceX’s Roadster-driving Starman in space
SpaceX now has a live feed of its Mars bound simulated astronaut, a dummy wearing the private space company’s new crew uniform. There are cameras mounted on the Tesla Roadster the dummy is “driving,” which was the primary payload for SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch, which went off almost perfectly as planned by SpaceX earlier today.
The livestream switches between cameras, including one mounted on the hood, one behind the Astronaut’s shoulder, and one facing back down to Earth. It’s quite the view, and it’s amazing.
This is easily the most fun payload ever sent to space, so good job Elon. Also, kudos on the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ref.
via TechCrunch
Watch the live feed from SpaceX’s Roadster-driving Starman in space