tomato grilled cheese sandwich

Jazz up a grilled cheese sandwich by serving it open-faced with sliced tomatoes and a sprinkling of oregano. Feel free to include other vegetables, such as sliced avocado, thinly sliced onion or roasted red pepper strip

Ingredients:
 
4 slices multigrain bread, lightly toasted
8 slices part-skim mozzarella cheese (1 ounce each)
2 plum tomatoes, cut into 16 thin slices
1 teaspoon  oregano leaves

Directions:

1. Top each bread slice with 2 cheese slices, 4 tomato slices and 1/4 teaspoon of the oregano.

2. Broil 4 to 5 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Garden Bed

It doesn't take a spacious yard to introduce your kids to the joys of gardening. With just a couple of wooden boards and a handful of screws, you can quickly construct a raised bed like the one shown here. It provides about 8 square feet of planting area -- enough room for a child to grow a variety of vegetables and flowers without being overwhelming. The portable frame lets you skip the hard digging (you simply fill it with good-quality soil), and it tends to warm up faster than the ground.

Materials

Two 10-foot-long 2 by 8 red cedar boards
1 pound of 3-inch stainless steel screws
Pencil
Tape measure
Saw
Drill
5/32-inch drill bit

Instructions

Cut each of the cedar boards as shown. Mark the lines on the side pieces, then drill three 5/32-inch screw holes centered between each pair of lines. Drill seven 5/32-inch screw holes in each bench, spacing them as shown, 3/4 inch from the edge.

Assemble the base of the bed by arranging the side and end pieces on edge, as shown, and screwing all the pieces together. Next, set the benches atop the ends of the frame and screw them in place.

Finally, select a level spot that gets at least 6 hours of sun a day. Loosen the soil in that area with a garden fork or spade and set your wooden frame over it. Mix in equal parts good-quality topsoil and well-composted organic material, and you're ready to start planting.


Tips: Here are three colorful veggie-and-flower combinations. Go to territorialseed.com or cooksgarden.com for more ideas.

Green and Gold

1 bush bean, such as Blue Lake, in a back corner
4 French marigolds (which repel pests) in front of the bush bean
4 compact peppers, such as Jingle Bells, beside the bean and the marigolds

Fruit and Veggie

1 compact bush cucumber, such as Salad Bush, in half of the bed
1 or 2 chive plants in the opposite corners
3 everbearing Alpine strawberries (Golden Alexandria has supersweet fruit and colorful foliage) between the chives

Salad Bowl

2 dwarf tomato plants (Patio Hybrid or Husky Cherry Red), in one half of the bed

3 or 4 lettuce plants (compact butterhead or colorful red leaf) in one quarter of the bed; once they're used up, replace them with herbs

1 packet of radish seeds (Easter Egg has 3 colors per package), in the remaining quarter; after you pick them, plant more

How to grow an organic vegetable garden

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFsSlS7IHBg&feature=related

Raising Green Kids/ criando ninos ecologicos

Here are 10 easy activities to help your kids grow up "green" and remind them of their relationship to the Earth


1. Plant a Seed                                          

2. Have Off-the-Grid Fun

3. Eat Real Food--Together

4. How Green Was My Bookshelf

5. Make Treasures from Trash

6. Talk About the Circle of Life

7. Sing, Dance, Stretch Every Day

8. Feed the Animals

9. Go Outdoors

10. We're All Made of the Same Stuff



Activity for childrens??? fallow the link..
http://www.beliefnet.com/Love-Family/Parenting/2009/01/Raising-Green-Kids.aspx

HOW TO BUILD A NO DIG GARDEN

Here's a guide following natural gardening basics. It is only a guide remember, and your circumstances may be such that making a vegetable garden exactly the same would be difficult. You want an easy to build vegetable garden, in fact any garden, so don't go blowing a gasket trying to find this and that, or putting this on top of that.

It's worth reading about Lasagna Gardening to show you how to throw out the manual for building a vegetable garden.

But back to the main guidelines: Begin with a newspaper layer of at least 5 pages — or 20 or so pages if you like (or packing, wrapping paper, cardboard, sacking, natural carpet etc) to at least 5mm (¼ inch) thick.

If you have those really tenacious, weedy dudes such as onion weed, couch or buffalo grass, docks, convolvulus, ivy and other nasties, definitely put down a strong first layer such as well overlapping cardboard or at least 20 plus layers of newspaper.

It helps to surround the garden with some sort of border material. This can be bricks, logs, planks or rocks and can be 20-25cm high (8-10 inches) or more. See these suggestions here: Ways to contain raised garden beds.

A raised border contains the organic material within, discourages invasion of surrounding lawn or weeds, deters various people and critters, and means less back-bending.

Lay down a layer of pads of lucerne hay (alfalfa) leaving no gaps, to a height of 10cm (4 inches). Layer some good organic fertilizer on top to a height of roughly 20mm (1 inch). This can be just about any sort of good quality material like well rotted chicken, horse, cow or sheep manure. If you don't have this sort of material available, sprinkle a layer of good natural commercial fertilizer. No need to go the full 1" depth with commercial material.

Add a thick layer of loose straw to the garden 20cm (8 inches) and another layer of fertilizer and then top it off with 10cm (4 inches) of compost.

Water the garden until it's wet but not soaking. You can now start planting your seedlings immediately for an instant garden!

Here's a diagram of the process when starting a vegetable garden the no dig way.

It will NOT look neat like this! You also do NOT have to have these exact layers, materials and quantities. Nature does not use a tape measure — use whatever you have at hand or can easily buy.

Building a vegetable garden like this (seriously messier than these pictures) can be achieved in a couple of hours if you have the materials on hand. Build several garden beds in different shapes to add interest and variety to your gardening.

No dig gardens are just the same as other gardens... just easier to build and maintain. Here are some step-by-step photos of building a no dig garden using a slightly different approach.


mor info:http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com/build-a-garden.html

Building a Vegetable Garden

Your Complete Instructions for Natural Gardening Success

The No Dig Garden is built on top of the ground, so you can start building a vegetable garden anywhere. This is natural organic gardening at its simplest and best


Preparing a vegetable garden of this sort is extremely attractive for those sites that have poor soil or invasive weeds.

It's also a great way to build a garden for those that can't, or don't want to, dig a good size vegetable garden!
Follow the natural gardening no dig diagram below, but first thing of course, is to choose the site for building a garden. Make sure the site is level and ideally most of the area gets at least 5 hours of sun a day.
If it's not reasonably level, roughly smooth out the humps and bumps, then fill the gaps and any lower edges with soil, sand or whatever organic material is at hand, such as bark, leaves, twigs, washed seaweed, paper, jute, wool carpet or similar. As this rots down, you will need to add more compost to these low areas and gradually build them up.
If the ground is on too much of a slope, build some terraces for an easy vegetable garden to maintain. You can make a grand affair with formal retaining walls, or just shore levels up with branches, bricks, rocks, planks, corrugated iron or other obtainable materials.
When preparing soil for a vegetable garden and it is over lawn or weeds, you can mow the area to ground level and build the garden on top, or you can leave the vegetation to decay underneath in time — as long as you cut out light to kill off the grass and weeds underneath.
If you are building a vegetable garden on a hard surface, such as dry clay, an old stony yard or driveway, put down some cushioning organic material first (as above, bark, leaves etc).

More info:http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com/build-a-garden.html