Do you live in the city and would love to have a vegetable garden, but are constrained by a small garden space? If you really want to grow your own fresh vegetables, then there is an answer for you. You may want to plant a vertical vegetable garden right there in your small area. A vertical vegetable gardening can easily produce as much vegetables as a normal garden.Remember, you don’t need to limit yourself to only growing outdoor vertical gardens. While caring for a vegetable garden in your apartment or other confined area could be a little tricky, it’s not impossible and very rewarding. Gardening indoors will allow you to grow vegetables that aren’t found in your region’s climate, offer you better variety to choose from when planting. It has also been demonstrated that live plants can improve the air quality in small spaces. While it maybe necessary to have proper ventilation to prevent any possible odors, others felt that they can breathe better and are generally calmer because of the refreshing oxygen emitted by your plants.Vertical vegetables gardens are not a new ideal however at times they are mistaken with a living wall. Since both living walls and vertical vegetable gardens could be used for producing vegetables and fruits, living walls are more focused on beauty than production of food. This form of gardening could be done either in your apartment or in your small backyard garden.In vertical gardening you train the vegetable plants to grow upwards. They have designed specific structures that contain the entire garden within a small area. With the proper frames and cross shelving setups, you will find it’s rather simple to train your plants to grow vertically.There are ready-made vertical gardening kits you can buy that will eliminate the guess-work in constructing your setup, however if you want to you can do-it-yourself route. If you decide on a DIY method, be sure that the design structure you”re using to build your vertical vegetable garden is capable of holding the materials, soil, water, and the plants you want to grow in your garden as well as the vegetables it will produce. While you can find detail information online as to the weights of the different parts to your new garden. We have found that such ready-made kits can often save a lot of time – not only with setup, but also they prevented lost “growing” time that you may encounter with wilted plants that did not get the proper amounts of water or soil.If you decided to build an indoor vertical vegetable garden, spend some time looking for the ideal location, as your plants will need enough sunlight to thrive. If you are in the city area where large buildings block most of the natural light coming from your patio or windowsills, you will need to buy lamps that produced specific light to help in growing plants and vegetables.If you want a true organic garden, you will want to research how you can apply composting ways to the soil used in your vertical gardens. A proper drainage system is important, as well as good air circulation (whether indoors or out). NASA scientists have researched a variety of vertical gardening methods, which suggest that the supplies and processes of how to grow vegetables and herbs vertically will continue to get better with advance technology. While large grid systems and advanced hydroponic watering techniques may not offer possible solutions for your cement porch, we can use the concepts and the ideas they create and can scale them down to fit our own needs.It would be good to stick to some simple steps to make sure your success as you begin to learn how to work with your space and your climate restrictions when you grow your first garden. For starters, consider growing peas, green beans, cucumber, squash, lima plants, and tomatoes, as they are great climbing plants in nature. As you become more comfortable you can grow other types of vegetables in your vertical garden.Also, be sure you have the supplies you’ll need before planting your garden. This is important for plants that need vertical support, because seeds begin germinating almost immediately and it is best not to disturb the dirt by adding supports at a later time. Also make sure that your vertical vegetable garden is not entwined with shrubs or other plants that may divert water away from your plants or block out their sunlight. Once again, after some time, these issues may not be of a primary concern, as a beginner looking to start their first vertical garden you should keep these issues in mind.Vegetable and herb gardening has always been known to offer “green” ways to lower environmental footprint, but those opportunities has been limited by space and region. Fortunately, with the new fun trend of vertical vegetable gardening, those who live in urban area can enjoy a similar level of increased self-sufficiency as they raise their own, healthy, fresh grown vegetables.
What Are The Greatest Changes In Shopping In Your Lifetime
What are the greatest changes in shopping in your lifetime? So asked my 9 year old grandson.
As I thought of the question the local Green Grocer came to mind. Because that is what the greatest change in shopping in my lifetime is.
That was the first place to start with the question of what are the greatest changes in shopping in your lifetime.
Our local green grocer was the most important change in shopping in my lifetime. Beside him was our butcher, a hairdresser and a chemist.
Looking back, we were well catered for as we had quite a few in our suburb. And yes, the greatest changes in shopping in my lifetime were with the small family owned businesses.
Entertainment While Shopping Has Changed
Buying butter was an entertainment in itself.
My sister and I often had to go to a favourite family grocer close by. We were always polite as we asked for a pound or two of butter and other small items.
Out came a big block of wet butter wrapped in grease-proof paper. Brought from the back of the shop, placed on a huge counter top and included two grooved pates.
That was a big change in our shopping in my lifetime… you don’t come across butter bashing nowadays.
Our old friendly Mr. Mahon with the moustache, would cut a square of butter. Lift it to another piece of greaseproof paper with his pates. On it went to the weighing scales, a bit sliced off or added here and there.
Our old grocer would then bash it with gusto, turning it over and over. Upside down and sideways it went, so that it had grooves from the pates, splashes going everywhere, including our faces.
My sister and I thought this was great fun and it always cracked us up. We loved it, as we loved Mahon’s, on the corner, our very favourite grocery shop.
Grocery Shopping
Further afield, we often had to go to another of my mother’s favourite, not so local, green grocer’s. Mr. McKessie, ( spelt phonetically) would take our list, gather the groceries and put them all in a big cardboard box.
And because we were good customers he always delivered them to our house free of charge. But he wasn’t nearly as much fun as old Mr. Mahon. Even so, he was a nice man.
All Things Fresh
So there were very many common services such as home deliveries like:
• Farm eggs
• Fresh vegetables
• Cow’s milk
• Freshly baked bread
• Coal for our open fires
Delivery Services
A man used to come to our house a couple of times a week with farm fresh eggs.
Another used to come every day with fresh vegetables, although my father loved growing his own.
Our milk, topped with beautiful cream, was delivered to our doorstep every single morning.
Unbelievably, come think of it now, our bread came to us in a huge van driven by our “bread-man” named Jerry who became a family friend.
My parents always invited Jerry and his wife to their parties, and there were many during the summer months. Kids and adults all thoroughly enjoyed these times. Alcohol was never included, my parents were teetotallers. Lemonade was a treat, with home made sandwiches and cakes.
The coal-man was another who delivered bags of coal for our open fires. I can still see his sooty face under his tweed cap but I can’t remember his name. We knew them all by name but most of them escape me now.
Mr. Higgins, a service man from the Hoover Company always came to our house to replace our old vacuum cleaner with an updated model.
Our insurance company even sent a man to collect the weekly premium.
People then only paid for their shopping with cash. This in itself has been a huge change in shopping in my lifetime.
In some department stores there was a system whereby the money from the cash registers was transported in a small cylinder on a moving wire track to the central office.
Some Of The Bigger Changes
Some of the bigger changes in shopping were the opening of supermarkets.
• Supermarkets replaced many individual smaller grocery shops. Cash and bank cheques have given way to credit and key cards.
• Internet shopping… the latest trend, but in many minds, doing more harm, to book shops.
• Not many written shopping lists, because mobile phones have taken over.
On a more optimistic note, I hear that book shops are popular again after a decline.
Personal Service Has Most Definitely Changed
So, no one really has to leave home, to purchase almost anything, technology makes it so easy to do online.
And we have a much bigger range of products now, to choose from, and credit cards have given us the greatest ease of payment.
We have longer shopping hours, and weekend shopping. But we have lost the personal service that we oldies had taken for granted and also appreciated.
Because of their frenetic lifestyles, I have heard people say they find shopping very stressful, that is grocery shopping. I’m sure it is when you have to dash home and cook dinner after a days work. I often think there has to be a better, less stressful way.
My mother had the best of both worlds, in the services she had at her disposal. With a full time job looking after 9 people, 7 children plus her and my dad, she was very lucky. Lucky too that she did not have 2 jobs.
Business Loans In Canada: Financing Solutions Via Alternative Finance & Traditional Funding
Business loans and finance for a business just may have gotten good again? The pursuit of credit and funding of cash flow solutions for your business often seems like an eternal challenge, even in the best of times, let alone any industry or economic crisis. Let’s dig in.
Since the 2008 financial crisis there’s been a lot of change in finance options from lenders for corporate loans. Canadian business owners and financial managers have excess from everything from peer-to-peer company loans, varied alternative finance solutions, as well of course as the traditional financing offered by Canadian chartered banks.
Those online business loans referenced above are popular and arose out of the merchant cash advance programs in the United States. Loans are based on a percentage of your annual sales, typically in the 15-20% range. The loans are certainly expensive but are viewed as easy to obtain by many small businesses, including retailers who sell on a cash or credit card basis.
Depending on your firm’s circumstances and your ability to truly understand the different choices available to firms searching for SME COMMERCIAL FINANCE options. Those small to medium sized companies ( the definition of ‘ small business ‘ certainly varies as to what is small – often defined as businesses with less than 500 employees! )
How then do we create our road map for external financing techniques and solutions? A simpler way to look at it is to categorize these different financing options under:
Debt / Loans
Asset Based Financing
Alternative Hybrid type solutions
Many top experts maintain that the alternative financing solutions currently available to your firm, in fact are on par with Canadian chartered bank financing when it comes to a full spectrum of funding. The alternative lender is typically a private commercial finance company with a niche in one of the various asset finance areas
If there is one significant trend that’s ‘ sticking ‘it’s Asset Based Finance. The ability of firms to obtain funding via assets such as accounts receivable, inventory and fixed assets with no major emphasis on balance sheet structure and profits and cash flow ( those three elements drive bank financing approval in no small measure ) is the key to success in ABL ( Asset Based Lending ).
Factoring, aka ‘ Receivable Finance ‘ is the other huge driver in trade finance in Canada. In some cases, it’s the only way for firms to be able to sell and finance clients in other geographies/countries.
The rise of ‘ online finance ‘ also can’t be diminished. Whether it’s accessing ‘ crowdfunding’ or sourcing working capital term loans, the technological pace continues at what seems a feverish pace. One only has to read a business daily such as the Globe & Mail or Financial Post to understand the challenge of small business accessing business capital.
Business owners/financial mgrs often find their company at a ‘ turning point ‘ in their history – that time when financing is needed or opportunities and risks can’t be taken. While putting or getting new equity in the business is often impossible, the reality is that the majority of businesses with SME commercial finance needs aren’t, shall we say, ‘ suited’ to this type of funding and capital raising. Business loan interest rates vary with non-traditional financing but offer more flexibility and ease of access to capital.
We’re also the first to remind clients that they should not forget govt solutions in business capital. Two of the best programs are the GovernmentSmall Business Loan Canada (maximum availability = $ 1,000,000.00) as well as the SR&ED program which allows business owners to recapture R&D capital costs. Sred credits can also be financed once they are filed.
Those latter two finance alternatives are often very well suited to business start up loans. We should not forget that asset finance, often called ‘ ABL ‘ by those Bay Street guys, can even be used as a loan to buy a business.
If you’re looking to get the right balance of liquidity and risk coupled with the flexibility to grow your business seek out and speak to a trusted, credible and experienced Canadian business financing advisor with a track record of business finance success who can assist you with your funding needs.