Buddy Quinn

Using organic gardening methods does not mean that you have to learn to live with insect chewed fruit, vegetables and flowers.
You can learn to protect your garden from destructive insects and maintain healthy soil and healthy plants without the use of chemical insecticides and fertilizers in the new e-book “Gardening Made Easy” available at our site.

Here’s an overview of organic gardening from “Gardening Made Easy.”

Organic Fertilizers and Compost

Organic fertilizers and compost are simple natural products that feed your plants and nourish your soil. You can create your own compost heap in your back yard, recycling grass clippings, tree leaves, garden cuttings and even kitchen scraps. You can also buy compost at local garden centers.

Compost can be used as fertilizer or you can grow your plants in pure compost. You can even create your own liquid fertilizer from compost.

Creating your own compost is as easy as taking out the trash. All you need is a small space in a garden corner to pile your left over grass clippings, tree leaves and garden cutting.

Organic Insecticides and Pest Control

Not all insects are bad for your garden. Most of us know the benefits of ladybugs, butterflies and bees. There are also wasps, flies and beetles that can protect your plants from destructive insects.

Using chemical insecticides, even using organic insecticides can kill the destructive insects but will also kill the beneficial insects. You can also buy beneficial insects at your local garden center or online to import into your garden.

Plants can also help in the war against destructive insects.

Planting certain plants as a border around your garden or mixed in with the plants in your garden can repel thrips, white flies and tomato hornworm. Peppermint will even repel and discourage ants from taking up residence in your garden.

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Tom Straub is a successful author and webmaster of the Best Gardening Tips website. Discover everything you ever wanted to know about gardening… but never dared to ask.

Copyright ? 2007 Ed Bagley

Unlike Dr. Robert Atkins and his low-carb diet plan, Dr. Peter D’Adamo’s clinical findings have not yet been validated and popularized on a national level, and this is why so few people are even aware of the connection between your blood type, your diet and your health.

Dr. Atkins’ research and diet plan were denounced nationally by the mainstream medical research community and physicians alike for years.

Only today do the same critics, some 30 years later, reluctantly admit that Dr. Atkins was right about his diet of eating more protein and fats and less carbohydrates.

Dr. D’Adamo’s findings are critical to understanding why Americans have become some of the most unhealthy and overweight people in the world. An inordinate amount of our children are walking about today as examples of obesity before they are even teenagers.

When you know that there are more O blood types than any other type, you can then better appreciate the extent of our problem.

This article cannot address all of the issues involved, but I will focus specifically on runners who are an O positive blood type and why is it so difficult for them to lose weight.

Despite the numerous diet fads available to us today, D’Adamo says we can no more choose the right diet for ourselves than we can choose our hair color or gender. It was already chosen for us many thousands of years ago.

We have been so busy looking at the characteristics of food that we have failed to examine the characteristics of people, says D’Adamo.

D’Adamo separates foods into 16 distinct groups and then divides them into three categories: highly beneficial (acts like a medicine for the specific blood type), neutral (acts like a food), and avoids (acts like a poison for the specific blood type).

In essence, highly beneficial foods increase your metabolism and avoid foods slow it down.

Because D’Adamo’s Blood Type Diet is tailored to the cellular composition of your body, specific foods will cause weight gain or weight loss for you, even though they may have a different effect on a person of another blood type.

Here are the two important weight-loss factors involved:

1) As your body makes the dramatic shift of eliminating foods that are poorly digested or toxic, the first thing it does is try to flush out the toxins that are already there. Those toxins are deposited mainly in the fat tissue, so the process of eliminating toxins also means eliminating fat, therefore losing weight in the process.

2) The effect that specific foods have on the bodily systems that control weight.

The effect of lectins on O positive blood types is very negative, for example:

Lectins, which are abundant and diverse proteins found in foods, have agglutinating properties that can affect your blood.

Simply put, when you eat a food containing protein lectins that are incompatible with your blood type antigen, the lectins target an organ or bodily system (kidneys, liver, brain, stomach, intestines, etc.) and begin to agglutinate blood cells in that area.

This is especially true for O positive blood types.

The lectin activity of certain foods on O positive blood types may do the following:

Inflame the digestive tract lining, disrupt the digestive process, slow down the rate of food metabolism, compromise the production of insulin, and upset the hormonal balance.

(Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of a 5-Part Article.)

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Ed Bagley’s Blog Publishes Original Articles on Current and Past Events with Analysis and Commentary on 6 Subjects: Movie Reviews, Sports, Lessons in Life, News and Comment, Jobs and Careers and Internet Marketing. My intention is to inform, educate, delight and motivate you the reader. Find my Blog at:
www.edbagleyblog.com
www.edbagleyblog.com/MovieReviewArticles.html
www.edbagleyblog.com/LessonsinLifeArticles.html

There’s a reason why ultimate fighting is getting to be so popular - it’s bloody great to watch. And I do mean bloody. The action is real, the intensity is palpable and you feel just a little bit less civilized (in a good way) after watching it.

And if you watch even a little bit of mixed martial arts, and you start to get hooked, you’re inevitably going to start trying to figure out who the best fighters are. Here’s my attempt to do just that with my top 10 pound-for-pound MMA fighters. Though the UFC is obviously the top of the MMA heap, and will be the source of most of the fighters on my list, I’ll also draw fighters from PRIDE. There are a couple of reasons - the two groups are closely aligned since UFC bought PRIDE, and PRIDE has some truly scary buggers in their ranks.

A quick disclaimer before I start - making a list like this is almost impossible. It would be very subjective at the best of times. It certainly doesn’t help that recent upsets have totally thrown things out of whack - Matt Serra over Georges St. Pierre, Rampage Jackson over Chuck Liddell, Gabriel Gonzaga over Mirko Cro Crop. Without further ado:

1. Fedor Emelianenko - PRIDE’s heavyweight champion is the kind of guy that shows up in your nightmares. He only lost once, and that was back in 2000. Since then he has run roughshod over his opposition, and he has rarely needed more than a single round to do it. The fight that really showed how good he was was when he beat Cro Crop despite having a hand injury that severely limited his ability to go for a submission. It was also impressive that he beat Mark Hunt in December with a broken toe. His last fight was for BodogFight, and he has shown little desire to move to UFC. However, a fight with Randy Couture would certainly be worth paying for. He’s not the biggest guy out there, but he may be the nastiest, and he is certainly the best.

2. Mauricio Rua - Some might argue that I have Shogun too high, but there isn’t a better light heavyweight out there. He really showed his might when he dismantled Quinton Jackson in the first round in 2005. What makes Rua so dangerous is his versatility. He’s an excellent striker, but his game doesn’t suffer once he goes to the ground. He has just two losses in his career, and one was only because he broke his arm by falling awkwardly. On the other hand, he has 13 knockouts. Rua signed with UFC at the end of May, and I can think of about a hundred fights I’d love to see him have.

3. Anderson Silva - The Brazilian has only been in the UFC for a year, and he was relatively unknown when he arrived. What he has done since his arrival, however, is nothing short of amazing. He knocked out Chris Leben in his debut, and Leben has gone on to win five straight since. His second UFC fight was, remarkably, a middleweight title fight against Rich Franklin. He won in convincing fashion. He has defended once, and will defend again in July. His performance to date, plus his record in all the other organizations he has been in, has to get you excited about what is in the future for Silva.

4. Quinton Jackson - Jackson wouldn’t have been this high a couple of weeks ago, but he certainly deserves it now. Chuck Liddell would have probably been higher on the list back then, but Rampage dismantled the champ in impressive fashion. The light heavyweight champion is the only guy in the world that can say he has beaten Liddell twice. He has several other impressive wins on his record, too, and he certainly can’t be accused of backing down from a challenge. It remains to be seen how Jackson does as champion, but you can’t argue that he doesn’t deserve it.

5. Georges St. Pierre - You could argue that I’m disrespecting Matt Serra by not ranking him ahead of the man he beat to win the UFC Welterweight championship. I’m okay with it, though, on the logic that I don’t think Serra could beat St. Pierre again. The Canadian fighter was very impressive in beating Matt Hughes to win the title, and wins prior to that against B.J. Penn and Sean Sherk make for a pretty impressive streak. It’ll take a while for St. Pierre to get another title shot, but chances are more than good that he’ll have another reign before it’s all over for him. He’s the class of a very tough welterweight division.

6. Paulo Filho - It’s hard to argue against a guy that is undefeated in 14 career matches. He’s yet another Brazilian. Filho is coming back from a knee injury, but he should be back in action at any time. In fact, we should have been watching him in the middle of June, but Rich Franklin refused to fight him at UFC 72. Franklin’s fear is testament to the ability and the potential of Filho. UFC needs to work harder to find a spot for this guy, because he could make some serious noise if given a chance.

7. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira - This heavyweight is nasty, and you certainly don’t want to get in an argument at his family reunion - his twin brother is a light heavyweight. Minotauro is excellent at drawing submissions, but he is a solid striker as well. He trains every year with the Cuban National Boxing team to sharpen his striking skills. His 29 wins have been over many of the biggest names in MMA. He has four losses, but the three most recent are more than respectable. Most recently he lost to Josh Barnett in a split decision, but he came back three months later and avenged that loss with a unanimous win. The other two losses are against Fedor Emelianenko. Both were by decision, so Minotauro handled himself better against the champ than pretty much anyone else has. Nogueira has signed with UFC and will make his debut at UFC 73.

8. Matt Hughes - The world’s toughest farm boy would have been much higher on this list before his loss to St. Pierre. Though he lost the title at that time, he still clearly has the ability to beat almost any welterweight out there. In an organization full of incredibly strong athletes, Hughes may be the strongest fighter UFC has. He came back from his loss to St. Pierre to beat Chris Lytle convincingly, and he is on track for another title shot in November. Regardless of who he fights you have to like his chances of winning it.

9. Dan Henderson - You have to respect a guy that has held both the middleweight and welterweight titles in PRIDE, and you really have to respect Henderson because he currently holds both titles at the same time. He won the middleweight championship in impressive fashion in February by upsetting Wanderlei Silva by KO, thanks to a crushing left hook. Henderson will have a chance to raise his profile dramatically next time out - he is scheduled to challenge Quinton Jackson for the UFC light heavyweight title.

10. Chuck Liddell - Despite his recent embarrassing loss, you really can’t have a list like this without the Iceman, He is probably the most popular fighter in the UFC, and deservedly so. A case can be made that the loss to Jackson was the best thing that could happen to Liddell. He obviously wasn’t focused going into the fight, given that he spent the night before out in the clubs. Hopefully the loss will cause him to concentrate on his job more to take even better advantage of his immense skill. His next fight will be against Wanderlei Silva, and that will provide and excellent opportunity to begin a climb back to the top.

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Doc’s has all your NFL schedules for the 2007 season, including the Atlanta Falcons schedule and the Baltimore Ravens schedule. Doc’s is also your home for up-to-the-minute NFL odds and NFL picks.