Thursday, July 14, 2022

Top Five Tips to Start a Vegetable Garden from Maggi


Sharing some urban farming tips from the MAGGI Sarap Sustansya Garden to inspire Filipino families 
to grow vegetables at our home.



From the Press Release Kit:

The Food and Nutrition Research Institute, in its latest survey, found that micronutrient deficiency persists in all age groups with over 75 percent consuming less than the recommended allowances, especially on iron, calcium and vitamin C; while more than 70 percent of teenagers and 65 percent adults have inadequate Vitamin A intake. These micronutrients are vital to health and can easily be acquired by consuming enough green, leafy, yellow and orange vegetables.  

As the trusted ally of homecooks, MAGGI encourages Filipinos to start an ‘edible garden’ in their homes to increase the vegetable intake of their family members. Through the MAGGI Sarap Sustansya Garden, its Urban Agriculture partnership with the Department of Agriculture (DA), MAGGI has put together five useful tips to help Filipinos start growing their own vegetables. 

Don’t be discouraged by small spaces 

Vegetables can grow in small plots or even pots on window sills. In the early stage, it’s likely you will need only small pots to grow seedlings, which can be placed in low-light corners of the home or yard. When seedlings mature, they can be transferred to bucket-sized containers and moved to sunnier spots or directly planted in a plot. Make sure pots have good drainage to avoid root rot.

Choose low-maintenance staples

Tomatoes, sitaw, and eggplant are the most commonly used vegetables in Filipino dishes and also some of the most nutritious. They can thrive in 7-to 10-liter pots, as long as they have a good support structure such as a trellis, stakes, cages or hoops. 

Don’t throw away stems and roots

Some vegetables can be grown from cuttings. For example, after cutting its root portion, pechay, kinchay and Chinese cabbage can be soaked in water to grow new sprouts. This can be transferred to pots when leaves are grown and roots are longer. After cutting away its leaves, kangkong can also be replanted in soil, and a small bulb of ginger can be re-grown in a pot of soil.

Use a good planting medium

Nutrient-rich soil promotes healthy and rapid plant growth so it is important to start with a good substrate made with compost, coconut coir dust and garden soil.  

Grow organic and make use of food waste

Avoid using chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and instead, opt for natural insecticides and compost. You can make your own compost by mixing soil with kitchen waste such as peelings, coffee grounds, unbleached paper towels, newspapers, and eggshells. Water used to rinse rice can also be used to water plants as these contain minerals that promote healthy soil bacteria.

MAGGI believes gardening empowers families to take control of their diet and their health and enables them to save on food-buying expenses. Based on the DA’s sustainable urban agriculture practices, these tips focus on simple ways to grow food in small spaces.

“It’s important to start simple,” said Rosalyn Simba. “Homecooks will appreciate how convenient it is to have vegetables right at their fingertips, and how their family’s diet can be improved with sarap-sustansya meals every day.”
 
The Bureau of Plant Industry of the Department of Agriculture (DA-BPI) also gives out free seeds and seedlings so be sure to check out their website for announcements on how to avail of them. 
MAGGI has also created an urban gardening video demonstration with the help of DA-BPI, featuring the best practices used in the MAGGI Sarap Sustansya Garden. 

In celebration of Nutrition Month, catch the livestream on MAGGI’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/MaggiPhilippines) to learn how to start your own edible garden, along with veggie-cooking tips from Chef Erik Magtanong, on July 21, 2022 at 4:00 PM.


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Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Top Tips to Ship Larger Items Successfully

 

When you are shipping larger items for any reason whatsoever, you are going to need to work extra hard to ensure that you are left in the type of situation in which they arrive in one piece. There is plenty that you can be doing on this front, but the following blog post will talk you through a few top tips that you can put into practice to make sure it all works out successfully.

Work Out if You Can Dismantle it 

Sometimes, you are going to find yourself in a much easier situation if you go through the steps of ensuring that the items are properly dismantled rather than trying to force them through the shipping process all in one go. While it may well feel like it is a lot of effort to go through at this initial stage, it is also going to be the case that you can end up in a situation in which it will move around from A to B an awful lot easier.

Choose the Right Moving Firm (or Get Help)

Next up on the list, you are certainly going to need to take your time to choose a moving firm that is going to be able to take care of the job in a successful manner. This means that if you are going to be looking at furniture shipping, it is certainly going to be worth going to https://www.shiply.com/us/furniture-shipping as a great example of a firm that can help you out. At the other end of the scale, if you are going to choose to take care of it all for yourself, it is worth getting help from people sooner rather than later. After all, you do not want to end up in a situation in which the item gets damaged – or worse still – someone gets injured by trying to do too much.
 
Choose the Right Box and Don’t Skimp on the Tape

If you are going to box it all up, you should be choosing one that is sturdy enough. Not only this, but you also need to ensure that it is only slightly bigger than the item that you are trying to ship. Beyond this, you should also ensure that you are using plenty of tape to seal it all up. Otherwise, there is always going to be a risk that it will spring open during transit. As a further point to this, you need to make sure that you have enough packaging materials that keep it all cushioned and not at risk of breaking for any reason at all.

These are just a few of the top tips that are going to help you out when it comes to ensuring that large items are shipped from A to B in the most successful manner possible. So, now is certainly the time to put a combination of different tips and tricks into practice in one go to ensure that your items are delivered successfully. 

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