Flavorful Landscapes – It’s a Growing Trend
Milwaukee, WI (PRWEB) March 27, 2012
Nothing beats the flavor of a fresh-from-the-garden tomato; warmed by the sun, plucked right from the plant and eaten in the garden. “And the good news is gardeners don’t need much space to grow their own edibles,” explains gardening expert, TV/radio host & author Melinda Myers. “Many gardeners have and more will continue to grow food in containers or mixed in with their flowers, shrubs, and other ornamental plantings.”
Myers provided some suggestions when growing edibles to ensure a bountiful harvest this season.
Gardeners should save the sunniest spots in their landscape for tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers and other vegetables where people eat the flowers or fruit. They produce their best and have the fewest disease problems when grown in eight to twelve hours of sunlight. Root crops such as beets, radishes, and carrots can get by with about a half of a day of direct sunlight and leafy crops like lettuce and spinach can still produce in a shady location with only 4 hour of sunlight.
Get gardens off to a good start. Use a quality potting mix when growing in containers. It should have good drainage and retain moisture. In the garden, prepare the soil before planting. Add several inches of compost, peat moss or other organic matter to the top 6 to 12 inches of soil. This improves drainage in heavy soils and increases water holding capacity for sandy or rocky soils.
Add a slow release fertilizer like Milorganite (http://www.milorganite.com) to the soil or potting mix. This goof proof organic source of nitrogen meets the EPA Exceptional Quality standards and will help encourage growth without interfering with flowering and fruiting.
Jump start the season with the help of floating row covers. These polypropylene fabrics let air, light, and water through, while trapping the heat near the plants. The best part, you won’t need a hammer, nail, or other tools. Simply lay the fabric over plantings, leaving enough slack for the plants to grow and anchor the edges to the ground with stones, boards or other items.
Increase harvest with intensive planting techniques. Succession planting, several plantings of short season crops in the same space, can double or triple your harvest. Interplant quick-to-mature crops like radishes and lettuce, in between longer maturing plantings of cabbage, tomatoes or eggplant. The short season vegetables will be ready to harvest just about the time the bigger plants are crowding them out.
Consider planting vegetables closer together in wider rows. This wastes less space for pathways, putting more room in plantings. Make sure each plant has enough space to grow and that all planted areas are within reach for weeding and harvesting.
Provide proper care and get ready to enjoy a bountiful harvest from the garden this season.
Gardening expert, TV host and author Melinda Myers has 30 years of horticulture experience and has written over 20 gardening books, including Can’t Miss Small Space Gardening. She hosts the nationally syndicated Melinda’s Garden Moment segments which air on TV and radio stations throughout the U.S. She is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine, hosted “The Plant Doctor” radio program for over 20 years as well as Great Lakes Gardener on PBS. Melinda has a master’s degree in horticulture, is a certified arborist and was a horticulture instructor with tenure. Myers’ web site is http://www.melindamyers.com
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URAC Seeks Public Comment on Standards for Disease Management Accreditation
URAC Seeks Public Comment on Standards for Disease Management Accreditation
Washington, DC (PRWEB) August 12, 2011
URAC, a leading health care accreditation and education organization, today opened a call for public comment to share input and opinions on proposed revised and new standards for its Disease Management Accreditation program. Purchasers, policy makers, consumers, health care management organizations, employers, and health plans are encouraged to provide their comments on the proposed URAC standards at http://www.urac.org/publiccomment/. The deadline for public comment is 6:00 p.m. EDT on Friday, September 23, 2011.
“URAC’s Disease Management program works to equip all types of organizations that provide services for individuals with chronic illness with the tools they need to better assess and respond to the needs of consumers,” said Alan P. Spielman, president and CEO of URAC. The revised and new disease management standards reflect the growing trends in the changing disease management industry.”
URAC’s process for the review, development and selection of standards is done collaboratively with multiple stakeholders working through a multi-stage process that includes public comment. The URAC Disease Management Focus and Advisory Groups, and Health Standards Committee have been actively engaged in the process of revising the current standards and developing new ones.
The standards open for comment are categorized in the following domains:
Disease Management (DM) Program Scope and Objectives
Disease Management (DM) Staffing
Disease Management (DM) Performance Reporting
Consumer Rights and Responsibilities
Evaluating Eligible Populations
Disease Management (DM) Program Design
The current standards were carefully reviewed and revised to best reflect recent trends within the disease management industry, in particular concepts related to managing multiple chronic conditions, increased patient activation and engagement, increased family and caregiver support, increased care coordination and processes for transitions of care – including working with the patient centered health care home (i.e., medical home), as well as the inclusion of process and health outcomes reporting.
Another major change to these standards is the requirement to report on specific cross-cutting and disease-specific performance measures, which will be released near the end of August under a separate public comment period.
For more information, please contact URAC’s Senior Manager for Product Development, Terri Moore, at (202) 326-3950 or email at tmoore(at)urac(dot)org.
About URAC
URAC, an independent, nonprofit organization, is well-known as a leader in promoting health care quality through its accreditation, education and measurement programs. URAC offers a wide range of quality benchmarking programs and services that keep pace with the rapid changes in the health care system, and provide a symbol of excellence for organizations to validate their commitment to quality and accountability. Through its broad-based governance structure and an inclusive standards development process, URAC ensures that all stakeholders are represented in establishing meaningful quality measures for the entire health care industry. For more information, visit http://www.urac.org.
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