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No matter what time of year, or whether they are saved seeds or packaged, it is easy to grow your own seedlings. You’ll need a sunny windowsill or grow light, planting medium, and some kind of container that allows good drainage. And of course, you’ll need the seeds.

When you grow your own seedlings you don’t need to plant the whole package, or all the seeds you have. Just plant a few more than you can use and save the rest or give them away. You could even trade them with a neighbor for a small quantity of other seeds you need. If all else fails, wrap them tightly in plastic and keep them in your refrigerator for another time. As anyone who has ever weeded a garden knows, seeds will keep for years, especially in a dry cool place.

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Today the popular Intuit QuickBooks accounting software company launched a new product called Cash Register Plus Free Edition. It is designed to help businesses keep track of things like sales reports, customer information, and end-of-the-day bookkeeping chores such as reconciling cash receipts. If you would like to try it out, there is a free version which you can download by clicking on the little square banner in the upper left corner of this paragraph (don’t worry — the affiliate link does not bite). Meanwhile, here is the official QuickBooks “marketing copy” that explains more details about the new software package.

Intuit QuickBooks Cash Register Plus Free Edition allows you to move beyond a cash register – and it’s FREE. Simply manage sales, customers, and credit cards all in one place.

1. FREE and Easy to try
2. Faster to ring up sales and track how you’re doing
3. Put sales and customer information at your fingertips
4. Simplify end of day closing and bookkeeping

Disclaimer: The free edition of Cash Register Plus lets you track up to five departments, forty items & forty customers. When you’re ready, get an unlimited number of departments, items & customers with Cash Register Plus 2009.

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About one week ago, I was interrupted while preparing an article for publication here by someone on Yahoo Messenger who was selling press release submission services. Interestingly, this did not start out as a typical sales pitch; a person who was posting under the username of “sagar.best” apparently recognized me from the DigitalPoint forums and wanted me to post in his/her thread where the services were being offered. The advantage of this is that the thread would be “bumped” to the top of the relevant forum section and attract more viewers.

Out of curiosity, I asked this “Sagar” what he/she wanted me to post and the reply was something like “just request some samples of my work and make it look like you’re interested.” Normally I would have ignored the person after this because it was clear by this point that we were dealing with one of those quasi-spammers who tries to get people to post positive or neutral reviews in forum threads so that their business looks more legitimate. I have run into these types of people many times before and even managed to get scammed by one of them who was offering article writing services and had what appeared to be high quality samples. After making payment, I discovered much to my chagrin that the articles delivered to me afterward were actually poorly plagiarized garbage that was nowhere near the quality of the samples.

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While I have never really thought of paid surveys as a “green” thing, MySurvey.com seems to be jumping on the environmental bandwagon in the latest edition of Opinion Matters, the company’s monthly newsletter. This particular issue was timed to coincide with Earth Day, which occurred this Wednesday on April 22. MySurvey points out various things they are doing to lessen their impact on the environment while providing us with the opportunity to make some extra money on the surveys. They also suggest some things that we can do to “save the planet” — while I am not sure that agree with all of these (for example, low flow toilets and shower heads often wind up wasting more water and time because they’re not effective enough to get the job done), I understand that when it comes to politics and publicity, for many people keeping up appearances and making everyone feel better often takes precedence over actually being more efficient or saving more of the environment.

Nevertheless, as a paid survey company MySurvey has always been one of the good ones that is reliable about payments and does not waste too much of your time with repetitive questions or non-paying surveys. In case you haven’t joined yet, you can do so by clicking on the banner below and filling out the standard registration. There are no costs or obligations incurred by simply joining the program.

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An attractive plant, sporting tall spikes of small yellow flowers and cockleburred fruit, agrimony is often found growing wild in fields, woods, and roadsides in its native Europe, the USA, and southern parts of Canada. With a long history of medicinal uses, agrimony has been called an “all-heal” in many different cultures, and has been used to treat everything from eye ailments to slow healing wounds. With a wealth of various uses, agrimony remains a commonly used medicinal plant even to this day.

Agrimony as a Wound Healer

It is believed that early Anglo-Saxons were the first to use agrimony as a method of healing wounds. Taking the leaves and seeds of the plant, a solution was then made from them and applied to the injuries. Used in such a fashion, it would not only aid in the cleansing of the wound, but also served to help bleeding wounds form clots, thereby staunching the flow of blood. This practice was used throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, the preparation coming to be known as eau d’arquebuscade, or “musket-shot water” due to its common usage for healing those who had been shot by muskets.

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Electricity is one utility that most of us can’t live without, but how can we bring the costs down? As well as the incentive to save money during a recession, saving on electricity also means you are helping the environment. Electricity sourced from coal powered stations is nonrenewable and linked to high carbon emissions, so there is more than one reason to turn out the lights. But saving money on electricity requires everyone in the household to help out. Here are a few strategies you can start implementing right away.

In a typical U.S. household, home heating and cooling can account for just over half of a household’s energy use, with the other half being fairly evenly split between appliances and water heating. So make the most of big decisions regarding heating and cooling options if you are at the stage of purchasing, but if that is not possible you can still reduce your overall bills by focusing on appliance use and limiting your use of heating and cooling whenever possible.

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Relocating back to San Francisco? No problem. Rising rents and lack of availability are relics of the past in San Francisco and renters now have the upper hand. With soaring unemployment rates and massive layoffs, people are moving out of the city in search of less expensive digs. Renters are also filing out of the city in droves towards the suburbs, leaving vacancies aplenty in the city.

When foreclosures began pushing people out of their homes, rents quickly increased. Add layoffs to the housing crisis and you get a growing number of people abandoning the high cost of the city. An increasing number of ads on Craigslist state that layoffs are the reason for moving. While the rents rapidly rose due to foreclosures and the resulting demand for rentals, the sky-high prices of the rental market have quickly shifted to a renter’s market because of the exodus from the city. Many apartments have been vacant for a number of months. Landlords are resorting to “first month rent free” offers or reducing monthly rent altogether.

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In today’s difficult economic climate, many borrowers feel a certain foreboding aura when applying for credit of any kind. A personal loan — that is, a loan without some collateral securing the bank’s interest — can be considerably more difficult to obtain than car or home financing. With some preparation, however, you can greatly increase your chances of getting approved for this kind of loan.

Start by evaluating your current situation. Although it may seem like a non-issue, the first step in getting approved for a personal loan is to evaluate whether you are actually in a position to take on additional debt. If you currently have significant credit card debt, loan debt, or vehicle financing, banks may view your debt to income ratio (DTI ratio) as a detrimental factor. In addition, compounding an already high debt load may make it more difficult to repay your debts, creating an undesirable situation. If possible, pay off any credit cards or other consumer debts before applying for a personal loan.

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In a recent newsletter sent out last week to its panelists, GlobalTestMarket dropped an interesting little nugget of information implying that the company may be getting ready to offer PayPal payments as a redemption option to members within a few weeks.

If this actually materializes, it will be a welcome feature for me because this happens to be one of my more reliable sources of paid survey income. Currently we receive payments by check, but these are relatively slow because they take about a month to arrive and must be routed through my bank and over to my PayPal account before I can use the funds for outsourcing article writing and other services. Receiving the funds via PayPal directly would save a lot of time and avoid the risk of checks getting lost in the mail.

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Spyware consists of malicious software that is installed on a personal computer without the owner’s consent. This software can take partial control over the computer system or otherwise work to detract from its performance. Spyware is not the only name by which this sort of offensive software is known, as it has also been labelled adware, foistware, malware, or crapware by particularly frustrated victims. Whilst these different varieties of software accomplish diverse goals, they are grouped together under the title of spyware. Because spyware is an annoying and unwanted addition to any computer, it resorts to trickery to convince the user to install it. No computer owner will knowingly install malicious software on their computer –- spyware succeeds in deceiving them either by attaching itself to a more desirable download or by pretending to be a useful program.

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People who need to eliminate their debt or legally negotiate their payment plans go through the judicial process of filing for bankruptcy. It is an option taken by many people who no longer have means to repay their debts and solve their financial problems. Even though filing for bankruptcy may be the best option for some, you must understand that it involves a lot of negative implications. The fact that you have filed for one will appear on your credit rating for a certain number of years and most lenders will know that some of your previous debts were probably unpaid. For this reason, any type of credit may no longer be available to you in the future.

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