Bearded Dragon Facts

Some of these handy Bearded Dragon facts could help you make sure your new Beardie has a long and healthy life. If you're already an old hat at keeping these pet lizards, there are a few tips you can glean from the facts to give your pet a life of contentment. Go through the checklist and make sure you have these suggestions covered. Since home is where the heart is, let's start with your lizard's home.

What makes the best home for a Beardie? There are different types of homes for a pet Beardie but the one that's best for yours is the one he thrives in. An enclosure that's too small is not good, especially for an adult Beardie no matter how much money you spend on it or how nicely you take care of the inside of it.

Don't make the mistake of buying your Beardie's home based on his juvenile size. Just ask teens outgrow bedrooms with cute little kid themes, so do reptiles outgrow their once suitable area.

Within this place for him to call home, you're going to have to place a way to keep an eye on how warm or cold his surroundings get. Beardies cannot handle wild swings in temperatures and you don't want to wait until you notice he's acting sick before you realize there's a problem.

These Bearded Dragon facts [http://beardeddragontips.blogspot.com/] can help you try to stay on top of situations in the enclosure before they affect your Beardie. Make sure your lizard has a way to perch near the warm side of the tank. If you notice pictures of Beardies in the wild, you'll see them sitting in the sun on rocks.

This isn't so they can work on a tan but rather because they use the warmth of the sun to help regulate their inner temperature. That's also why they need a cool side to the tank. When they get too warm, they know instinctively to seek shade. You can replicate the warmth for him by using a light source but for the cooling off part, you'll need to give him a shelter in the cage.

Since Beardies are healthy eaters, many new owners make the mistake of thinking they can eat anything or any type of insect. They mistakenly feed their pet insects like hard shelled beetles that can lodge in the Beardie's digest tract and cause not only discomfort but health issues requiring the services of a veterinarian.

Even though not all of them are poisonous, spiders also are not good for a Beardie. It can be too difficult to tell which ones will cause him to become ill and which ones won't, so it's best to avoid them all. Give your Beardie a choice of vegetables-avoid certain parts of the plant like the tomato vines and stems-and also give your Beardie a selection of fruits but without the seeds.

Learn as much as you can about how to make your exotic pet thrive from sites like http://www.bearded-dragon-setup.info/ because knowing the right Bearded Dragon facts can help you give the kind of care in captivity that your Beardie would get in the wild.

Tomato Rotation

Introduction

I never thought much of crop rotation in my small vegetable garden and especially never thought to rotate tomatoes, except I did rotate my potatoes. A little research showed that I should not only be rotating potatoes, but also my tomatoes and the rest of my vegetable garden.

Why Rotate And The History Of Crop Rotation

There are a couple of reasons to rotate crops. One reason is to return nutrients to the soil that was removed by the previous years crop. Another reason is to prevent the build up of organism and pests that are attracted to one type of crop.

Rotation of crops is not new and has been around since ancient times. Based on literature from the era of the Romans, it was done in their time. It started off with a two-crop field rotation, where one field was planted and the other left fallow for the year. Then the next year the planted field was left fallow and the field not planted the year before was planted.

In the 19th century it was found that instead of leaving a field fallow to restore nutrients, planting the field with different crops could restore the nutrients to the soil that were removed by the crops in the previous year. With this discovery the fields could be utilized every year, allowing for more crops each year.

Tomato Rotation

The key to any crop rotation is not to plant the same family of plants in the same place year after year. Family means those plants have something in common with each other.

The tomato belongs to the Solanaceae family, which has such common household names a potatoes and peppers.

So in planting tomatoes, do not plant potatoes, eggplant or peppers in that spot the next year. Try planting lettuce or cabbage the year after you plant tomatoes.

Rotation In A Greenhouse

I had a greenhouse in Alaska, and because of the cold weather, I had to plant tomatoes in the greenhouse. This was because the soil outside never really warmed up during the summer.

Rotating the tomatoes in the greenhouse was a must, because the soil in the greenhouse could not receive the nutrients provided by the environment. So one year I would plant cabbage, lettuce and tomatoes and then the next year rotate them.

I also changed the soil out about every five years. What I would do is take the soil out of the greenhouse and place it in a corner of my property and then take the soil I had taken out five years previously and place back in the greenhouse.

This gives my greenhouse fresh soil to grow better vegetables.

Conclusion

Rotation of tomatoes is important to prevent depleting nutrients and growing organisms that may be detrimental to the plants. Growing crops not in the same family as tomatoes will restore nutrients to the soil.

I have placed a picture of my greenhouse and a picture of a cabbage I grew in my greenhouse in Alaska at this site http://www.squidoo.com/buildinggreenhouse. The cabbage is over 35 pounds!