When it comes to Green Cleaning Products, it doesn't get any Greener than This

The next time you make your way to a Whole Foods Market outlet anywhere in the country, you might come across store staff using what could appear to be a somewhat high-tech looking spray bottle,   to spray every surface in sight. Look closer, and you'll find the cleaning spray that they use is mere water. And it isn't just Whole Foods that does this either.  Restaurant kitchens, hotels and prisons everywhere, have taken to this new trend in green cleaning products - plain water.

The secret to understanding what they are doing using water, of course, is to realize that it isn't just plain water they use. It's electrically-charged water. And it's the latest thing in environmentally friendly cleaning – all you need to do is to charge a container of water with a few volts of electricity, and you have a disinfecting product on your hands that could easily zap all the bacteria on a surface and while being harmless to you. The best part of course is that water is free. It practically sounds like everything you would hear said about a miracle cleaning agent on one of those infomercials. So is this breakthrough in green cleaning products as easy and as wholesome as it appears?

The thing is, using electrically charged water, while it can be light on your pocket to use, can be quite expensive to set up initially. And it isn't the best kind of choice for every cleaning job. Not to mention, electrically charged water loses its potency after a while. An alternative to using charged water is to use electrolyzed oxidizing water, which is water that packs an electric charge and that also has salt dissolved in it. While critics find these products to be more snake oil than science, studies do prove that they work. And once you incur the expense of setting the system up, it can be practically free to run from that point forward. In some cases, electrolyzed or charged water can be even more powerful as cleaning or disinfecting agents than bleach.

So how much does it cost to set a system like this up in one's place of business? Electrically charged water or EO water is not cheap to set up. Usually, these green cleaning products cost $5000 for a small unit - suitable for small businesses or the home. In a time when people have been repeatedly warned about how E. coli is breaking out all over the place and killing hundreds of people, using charged water to disinfect fruits and vegetables could be a useful way of employing the technology as well. It's great for the environment as well.

Ladybug Insect - A Ladybug's Got to Eat!

Stalking You Garden up with the Super Pretty Ladybug Insect Eating Machine

If only all good things came in such pretty packages; the ladybug insect happens to be one of the prettiest ways anyone could think of to adorn their garden. Few things can cheer people up the way these industrious and impossibly cute little bugs can. Ladybugs are the weapon nature gives you in your fight against bothersome garden pests - aphids, spider mites, and all the rest of them. Ladybugs go on sale at mail-order gardening supplies businesses and nurseries right before spring and in every gardening season. A containerful for your garden is often all you need for a thoroughly agreeable way of protecting your plants.

Before you decide on how much you need really, you do need to know something about the kind of appetite the ladybug insect owns. For such a tiny and dinky-looking thing, the ladybug certainly has a staggering appetite - most can polish off several dozen aphids everyday. That certainly makes them sound aggressive, which they are. But they are only that way with their prey. For humans, the ladybug insect is about as amiable and harmless as they come. So how do you know that your purchase of ladybugs won't just fly away to your neighbor’s garden?

Like any living being, ladybugs need to be shown the money. For as long as your garden has pests for the ladybugs to munch on, they'll stick around. They live for a full two years too, which happens to be a long lifespan for an insect.

Ladybugs happen to be so effective at pest control that organic farms and orchards that stay away from any use of pesticides often depend exclusively on the voracious appetite these little cuties have. The problem with pesticides is that they'll not only kill pests, they'll kill beneficial insects as well, making your pest problem even worse the next time around.

The promised two-year lifespan that ladybugs have is only possible of course, when they have a way of protecting themselves from the cold during winter. Usually, ladybugs march into every home nearby for warmth, come winter. Gardeners who like to protect their ladybugs during winter often buy a kind of warm ladybug home to set up in their gardens for the winter. Without such an arrangement, these little bugs can infest your home, get underfoot and cause quite a bit of trouble.

Ladybugs are the gift that keep on giving. They breed constantly - producing up to five generations in a single year. There are about 350 species of ladybug in America, you should probably ask your mail-order provider for the right kind for your part of the country. Once you get your shipment, make sure you don't release them in your garden until the sun’s set. Spray your garden with a hose for a while after you release them to freshen them up after their trip with UPS.