Published by: almanac.com

During a cold spring, it’s better to delay sowing a little to ensure the soil temperature is warm enough than to jump the gun and get disappointing results. 

Which Seeds to Start Indoors?

Not ALL seeds should be started indoors. Most vegetables grow perfectly well when started outdoors and even prefer not to be transplanted. Ultimately, it’s important to consider how each type of vegetable grows in addition to where you’re growing it.

Remember that there isn’t a hard-and-fast rule about what you can start indoors and outdoors; it varies by your experience, personal preference, location, and the plant itself. In general, we find that:

• Crops that are best started indoors include broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, and tomatoes.
• Those with slower root development, like cauliflower, celery, eggplant, and peppers, should also be started indoors.
• Tender vegetables like tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers are very susceptible to the cold temperatures of spring, so it’s best to start them indoors and keep them safe from unpredictable weather.
• Plants that do not transplant well and are, therefore, best started in the garden (or in outdoor containers) include cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, and squash. These are all tender, however, so refrain from sowing them outdoors while frost is still a threat.
• Some plants truly resist transplanting. Root vegetables, like carrots, turnips, and beets, don’t like having their roots disturbed, so it’s usually safer to just start their seeds outdoors in the ground rather than transplant them later on. Plants with long tap roots also dislike being transplanted; examples include dill and parsley.
• Finally, plants like radishes and peas are so fast-growing and cold-tolerant that putting them right in the ground makes sense!

The post When to Start Seeds Indoors appeared first on C-Medisolutions.

Making smart food choices is an important part of healthy aging. Understanding the different food groups — and how much of each should make up your diet — can help you form a healthy eating pattern over time.

Vegetables

Vegetables come in a wide variety of colors, flavors, and textures. They contain vitamins and minerals, carbohydrates, and are an important source of fiber. The vegetable food group includes dark green vegetables, red and orange vegetables, starchy vegetables, and legumes (beans and peas).

Dark green vegetables include broccoli, collard greens, spinach, and kale. Red and orange vegetables include acorn squash, carrots, pumpkin, tomato, and sweet potato. Starchy vegetables include corn, green peas, and white potatoes. Other vegetables include eggplant, beets, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, celery, artichokes, green beans, and onions. Legumes include black beans, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), kidney beans, soybeans, and tofu. Legumes can also be counted in the protein foods group.

Fruits

Fruits bring color, flavor, and important nutrients to your diet. There are so many choices — citrus fruits like oranges and grapefruits; different kinds of berries; fruits that grow on trees, such as apricots, cherries, peaches, and mangoes; and others like figs, grapes, and pineapples.

Grains

Any food made from wheat, rye, rice, oats, cornmeal, barley, or other cereal grain is a grain product. This includes bread and pasta, breakfast cereal, grits, tortillas, and even popcorn. Grains — along with fruits, vegetables, and dairy — contain carbohydrates, the body’s main source of energy.

Read food labels to find grain choices that are low in saturated fat and added sugar. Be especially wary of options labeled “low-fat,” which can be high in added sugar.

Protein foods

Proteins are often called the body’s building blocks. They are used to build and repair tissues, and also help your body fight infection. Your body uses extra protein for energy. Older adults should try to eat a variety of nutrient-dense proteins. Choose lean (low-fat) meats and poultry. Keep in mind that you can also get protein from seafood, eggs, beans, nuts, seeds, and soy products.

Dairy

Consuming dairy helps older adults maintain strong bones and provides several vital nutrients, including calcium, potassium, and vitamin D. For your heart health, pick from the many low-fat or fat-free choices in the dairy group. These give you important vitamins and minerals, with less fat. Certain fortified dairy alternatives can provide similar nutritional content to dairy.

The post Healthy Eating as You Age: Know Your Food Groups appeared first on C-Medisolutions.

If you like to garden, be careful in extreme heat. Here are seven sensible tips to keep in mind during hot and humid weather. Whether you like it hot or not, it is important to take care while working outside.

Do your heaviest work early in the morning, as early in the day as possible, or in the evening. It’s good for both you and the plants. Take a cue from South American and Mediterranean countries where it is siesta time from 11 to 2 in the afternoon. Sit in the shade, relax, and enjoy your garden, listen to the birds, and watch the butterflies. The weeds will still be there waiting for you once the day cools down.

Slow down and pace yourself. Take frequent breaks. It’s okay if you can’t get as much done during a hot, muggy day as you can on a cooler day!

Keep hydrated. Drink plenty of cool water before, during, and after working outside. Don’t wait until you are thirsty to drink. And no alcohol. It just dehydrates you. Get in the habit of bringing a water bottle with you if needed. Drink in small sips to avoid getting waterlogged. If you’re feeling dehydrated, consider a sports beverage that will place the salt you’re sweating out.

Don’t forget the sunscreen! Apply the sunscreen 30 minutes before going outdoors. (I apply when I get up in the morning as part of my routine.) You may have to reapply it after sweating.

Wear a hat—a proper sun hat shades not only your face but your ears and neck as well. Wear light-colored clothes to reflect sunshine, too.

Tie a wet bandanna around your neck or even drape a wet cotton dish towel over the nape of your neck. If you have considered buying one of the fancy cooling towels, save your money. Consumer Reports tested several along with an ordinary kitchen towel (smooth, not terry cloth) and found that they only varied by about 2 degrees. Better yet, pop the wet bandanna or towel into the fridge or freezer for a while.

Go inside if you feel yourself getting overheated or breathing too heavily. Take a cool shower or spray yourself with the garden hose!

The post 7 sensible tips to cope with heat when gardening appeared first on C-Medisolutions.

There’s nothing quite like the taste of homegrown tomatoes.  But they aren’t a plant that you can just leave to grow. Some knowledge and care is required in order to avoid common pitfalls. We’ll run through 10 tips and tricks for trouble-free tomatoes.

1. Choose the Right Variety

It may seem obvious, but the varieties you grow need to be suited to your climate. Choose cool-climate varieties for regions with shorter growing seasons and hot-climate varieties for very warm regions in order to ensure they can still produce fruit in summer.

2. Provide Heat and Full Sun!

Tomatoes are heat lovers. Be careful not to plant tomatoes in the ground too soon. Your soil temperature must be consistently over 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit (15 to 18°C). Warm the soil with black plastic a couple of weeks prior and protect seedlings from the cold with sheets or row covers.

3. Provide The Right Growing Conditions

Add plenty of organic matter in advance of planting. Quality garden compost or well-rotted manure applied lavishly, can supply enough nutrients to last the entire season, and will help with retaining moisture—a lifesaver during the heat of summer! Two weeks before planting your tomato plants outdoors, beef up that soil! Dig into the soil about 1 foot deep and mix in aged manure or compost.

4. Plant Deeply and Provide Support

Most plants need to be planted at the same depth they were growing at as a seedling or young plant. But not tomatoes! When you plant tomatoes, plant a little deeper than they come in the pot, all the way up to the bottom few leaves! Tomatoes root along their stems, so this trick helps them develop stronger roots.

5. Mulch Your Tomatoes

Don’t forget to add a blanket of mulch! It helps to conserve moisture (tomatoes love their water!) and keeps soil-borne disease spores from being splashed up onto the plants. There are many good mulches to choose from—shredded pine bark, straw, shredded leaves, grass clippings, composted leaves, or even a thick layer of newspaper. Oddly enough, red plastic has been found to increase the fruiting of tomatoes by 12 to 20%.

6. Remove Leaves and Suckers

“To pinch or not to pinch?” is a debated question. All tomatoes have suckers or side shoots that form between the main stalk and the side branches during the early growth of their plants (the crotch joint).

You definitely do not want to pinch determinate (bush) varieties, or you will have only a few fruit clusters. Since determinates bear fruit only on the ends of their branches, never clip them off, or you won’t get any fruit at all!

However, most gardeners do pinch indeterminate tomatoes (the type that keeps growing). You can pinch out the side shoots or suckers when they are young and tender. The best time is first thing in the morning when the plant is turgid. Just snap them off with your fingers.

7. Water Consistently?

Watering is one area where getting it right counts! Juicy tomato plants need 1 to 2 inches of water per week. But not all at once. Aim for consistent moisture as plants are establishing, and then, once they begin to set fruit, let the soil or potting mix just about dry out between waterings. It’s okay for the foliage to show early signs of wilting before watering, but don’t push it too far.

8. Feed, Feed, Feed

The tastiest tomatoes are gleaned from plants that have access to all the nutrients they need.

Besides prepping the soil with organic matter (compost), most gardeners also apply a slow-release organic fertilizer to the soil at planting time or apply regular liquid feeds using a product specifically formulated for tomatoes (which often has extra calcium).

9. Defend Against Disease?

Blossom-end rot is a common complaint typically caused by a lack of calcium in the fruit. Often, though, the simple cause of blossom-end rot is irregular watering, which makes it harder for the plants to absorb all the nutrients they need. To boost the calcium content of your soil, consider using eggshells, which are full of calcium.

Blight is a far more serious threat. This disease can lay waste on an entire crop within days. Good airflow will help reduce problems, as well as water at the base of plants to avoid wetting the leaves. Many gardeners even remove the lowest leaves specifically to improve airflow and minimize splashback when watering. Laying a mulch of clean, dry organic matter such as straw can also reduce splashback.

10. Harvest for Maximum Flavor

Harvesting tomatoes is an art in itself. You can harvest once the tomato is red and gives slightly to the touch. Don’t wait until it’s soft! Or you can actually harvest earlier when the tomato is half green and half pinkish-red (called the breaker stage) and ripen off the vine with no loss of flavor, quality, or nutrition.

The post How to Grow Your Best Tomatoes Yet appeared first on C-Medisolutions.

Published by: AARP

Cutting is critical when you’re trying to lose weight. You cut calories. You cut fat. Basically, anything that’s crammed with carbs, sweetened with sugar, or dipped in a deep fryer is suddenly off-limits.

But dieting doesn’t have to require deprivation. Many delicious (and healthy) foods can still be part of your dining repertoire. Some members of the product family are so light in calories and fat that you can eat them with (relative) abandon.

Vegetable love

The one category of foods that you can eat loads of without suffering the consequences of weight gain are nonstarchy vegetables, says Alexis Supan, an outpatient dietitian with the Cleveland Clinic Center for Integrative & Lifestyle Medicine. “Mostly any vegetable besides potato, corn, and peas, you can eat endlessly,” she says.

A cup of chopped broccoli or a grilled portobello mushroom contains just 30 calories and less than 1 gram of fat. You can chow down on two entire cups of lettuce and consume less than 16 calories. Because of its high water content, a whole tomato has a mere 22 calories. Cauliflower, kale, carrots, and sprouts are similarly nutrient-dense and light in calories.

These produce mainstays bring a few other things to the table. “What makes them so incredible and so beneficial for weight maintenance and weight loss is they are high in macronutrients [such as carbohydrates] and micronutrients [vitamins and minerals]. And they’re rich in fiber,” says Beata Rydyger, a registered nutritionist based in Los Angeles. Fiber keeps your blood sugar levels stable, which helps you avoid sudden attacks of the munchies that might otherwise make you crave junk foods.

If vegetables aren’t your favorite foods, you might be thinking how unappealing this way of eating sounds. But there are ways to spice up your veggies to make them more palatable.

Roast them in olive oil spray, then add a blend of garlic and other herbs and spices, Supan suggests. If you love to dip, which tends to be high in fat, use salsa instead to add even more vegetables into the mix. Or blend a ranch flavor packet into plain Greek yogurt. “Now you have a really high-protein, very healthy dip that you can use along with your vegetables,” she says.

What about fruit?

Fruits are a different story. With most of them, you don’t want to go overboard. “Grapes are a perfect example. A lot of people love to snack on grapes and could eat the whole bag in the afternoon without really thinking about it. But grapes are a high-sugar food,” Supan cautions. “Keeping most fruits to a cup-and-a-half for the day is a good goal to have.”

The exceptions are berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries), kiwi, and grapefruit. These fruits are high in fiber and low on the glycemic index — which means they won’t boost your blood sugar too much. Just be careful before eating grapefruit to make sure it doesn’t interact with any medications (such as statins) you take. And don’t load it up with sugar to make it taste sweeter.

Filling up the healthy way

If you’re looking for all-you-can-eat foods, it may be worth revisiting your entire diet to make sure it’s satisfying. “When people eat the right meals throughout the day, that tends to fill them up much more, and they don’t have that constant hunger,” Supan says.

Many other foods pack a powerful nutritional punch for their calorie count. Examples are healthy proteins such as fish, chicken, tofu, or beans, which should be part of each meal. You also want to add healthy fats from nuts and olive oil, vegetables, and whole grains such as quinoa or brown rice to your meals. “These foods will create satiety, and you can go longer without feeling that urge to snack, so you won’t overindulge,” Rydyger says.

Snacking on other high-protein, high-fiber foods will help to hold you over until dinnertime. A can of tuna, an apple with a tablespoon of peanut or almond butter, a handful of nuts, a cup of plain air-popped popcorn, a half-cup of cottage cheese, or a hard-boiled egg all make excellent options. Though they do contain calories, they’re high in protein, so you won’t be tempted to overeat at your next meal.

Drinking a glass of water or having a cup of bone broth (which contains protein in the form of collagen) might also help fill you up before a meal.

Revamping your diet

When you’re used to eating a certain way, making large-scale changes to your diet can feel overwhelming. “That’s why I recommend for clients start very slow. Make a few swaps each week, and see if that works. Maybe add one vegetable into a meal once a day,” Rydyger suggests. “Starting very small and building your way toward a lifestyle change is important.”

When it comes to dieting, the aim is not “How low can you go?” Your body needs calories for energy. Try to focus less on the numbers and more on the overall quality of your diet. The most important thing is to eat whole foods — ones that aren’t processed in a factory.

Eating nothing but low-calorie foods could rob your body of the nutrients it needs, such as the calcium that keeps your bones strong. Plus it could leave you starving and have the opposite of the intended effect. 

“Those low-calorie diets lead to blood sugar instability and harsh crashes,” Rydyger says. “You’re bound to crash at some point and overcompensate with even more food than you had originally planned to eat.”

When making changes to your diet, you don’t need to go it alone. It’s preferable to get some help from your primary care doctor or a dietitian. Your doctor can check your vitamin and cholesterol levels to make sure you safely embark on your new way of eating. A dietitian can assess your needs and create a meal plan that’s not only tailored to your goals but also sustainable over the long term.

Can Foods Have ‘Negative’ Calories?

Some fruits and veggies, notably celery, grapefruit, and cucumber, have been touted as “negative-calorie foods.” The premise is that these foods are so low in calories that the very act of chewing and digesting them burns more calories than the foods contain.

It might seem a logical assumption. After all, celery is mostly water, and a whole stalk contains less than 6 calories. For a while, drinking celery juice on an empty stomach was all the rage with dieters. But what limited research exists on the subject has pretty much debunked the negative-calorie claim. Researchers tested out the negative-calorie hypothesis by feeding celery to humans, as well as to bearded dragon lizards, and in most cases, it was a bust.

Bottom line: Celery certainly won’t make you gain weight, but it won’t take the weight off, either.

The post Foods You Can Eat Without Gaining Weight appeared first on C-Medisolutions.