Monthly Archives: August 2008

Collecting Nutrients From The Soil

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Soil

A few days ago this bed was planted with corn and peas, as you would see on my garden tour post, but as the bed was prepared late there was not much of a chance that those plants would produce much before harvest. So I gave up on them and cleared the soil in order to sow white mustard. You might as well have something growing all the time, since the plants will extract and store nutrients from the soil that would otherwise be washed away from the soil by rain.

I don’t know the exact word in English for these kind of plants but the group consists of clover, lupin, wheat, oat etc. In the spring you dig the plants down into the soil and let them decompose to enrich the soil.

These are the plants I’ve sowed until now for storing nutrients:

  • White mustard
  • Lupin (collects nitrogen)
  • Crimson clover (collects nitrogen)

Others I’m planning on sowing:

  • Buckwheat
  • Rye
  • Common vetch

Some of these plants also attract bees to your garden and the flowers are nice too.

What Is RSS And How To Use It

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RSS Feed

RSS is the next big thing after raised beds. I think it has something to do with Web 2.0, i.e. the next generation of the Internet.

You have all of these websites, that you visit again and again, because the content is updated periodically. I used to do this and waste a lot of time visiting sites that where not updated since my last visit.

When you use the RSS system you use a program (RSS feed reader), which presents you with a sort of custom “newspaper”, with updated content from your favorite websites only. The number of articles in this newspaper is different from day to day. It depends on how many websites you subscribe to in your RSS feed reader and how often they are updated. I use Google Reader as RSS feed reader, but there are many others. The good thing about Google Reader is that it is online, so I don’t need to be at home on my PC.

Most websites today allow you to fetch their new content with a RSS feed reader. Some provide the full blog post or article, and some only provide the headline and introduction.

Using a feed reader can be quite addictive since the content you’re reading is highly customized for you, and you know you don’t waste time visiting sleeping websites. Soon you’ll be adding websites to your reader like a madman, because the system is good and effective, so just remember to use it with caution, or it will start to consume more of your time than you really want it to.

In order to use Google Reader you need to have a Google account. Go to google.com and in the top choose “more” -> “Reader” -> “Create an account”. With your account you sign in to Google and open the Reader function:

Google Reader

On the left you add new RSS feeds and have an overview and on the right you have the content of the different websites fetched from all over the Internet and presented in your custom “newspaper”.

Here are a some examples of the particular address you put into your RSS reader in order to subscribe to a website:

http://happyfarming.com/feed/

http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/feed/

http://whenicomeupforair.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

often found behind a RSS logo button like on the front page of happyfarming.com

So the format can be very different. Sometimes websites have buttons for subscribing looking like this:

RSS Subscribe Buttons

Then you just press the “Add to Google” button to subscribe.

Please leave questions you may have regarding RSS in the comments and we’ll try to find the answers.