Blog Lafayette

Yesterday I wrote about tornado preparedness. What to do before, during, and after a tornado strike on your home or vicinity. I left out one important topic. First aid and trauma treatment.

If you are unfortunate enough to be in the path of a direct hit by a tornado, chances are you or someone close by will need some level of first aid treatment. This could range from minor treatment of cuts and bruises to treating major cuts, breaks, and shock.

One important note: Always call for an ambulance if injuries are more than minor cuts and bruises. Any major first aid that you perform is only to stabilize a person until professional help arrives.

Basic First Aid

Basic first aid for minor cuts and bruises is easy. The following is excerpted from the Mayo Clinic website at http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/first-aid-cuts/FA00042.

1. Stop the bleeding. Minor cuts and scrapes usually stop bleeding on their own. If they don’t, apply gentle pressure with a clean cloth or bandage. Hold the pressure continuously for 20 to 30 minutes and if possible elevate the wound. Don’t keep checking to see if the bleeding has stopped because this may damage or dislodge the clot that’s forming and cause bleeding to resume. If blood spurts or continues flowing after continuous pressure, seek medical assistance.
2. Clean the wound. Rinse out the wound with clear water. Soap can irritate the wound, so try to keep it out of the actual wound. If dirt or debris remains in the wound after washing, use tweezers cleaned with alcohol to remove the particles. If debris still remains, see your doctor. Thorough cleaning reduces the risk of infection and tetanus. To clean the area around the wound, use soap and a washcloth. There’s no need to use hydrogen peroxide, iodine or an iodine-containing cleanser.
3. Apply an antibiotic. After you clean the wound, apply a thin layer of an antibiotic cream or ointment such as Neosporin or Polysporin to help keep the surface moist. The products don’t make the wound heal faster, but they can discourage infection and help your body’s natural healing process. Certain ingredients in some ointments can cause a mild rash in some people. If a rash appears, stop using the ointment.
4. Cover the wound. Bandages can help keep the wound clean and keep harmful bacteria out. After the wound has healed enough to make infection unlikely, exposure to the air will speed wound healing.

First Aid for Severe Cuts

For injuries that are more serious? A severe cut or puncture wound can cause significant blood loss and worse. A broken bone is very painful at the very least and dangerous in some situations. Untreated shock can cause death. According to the Mayo Clinic at http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/first-aid-severe-bleeding/FA00038 to treat severe bleeding you should take the following steps:

If possible, before you try to stop severe bleeding, wash your hands to avoid infection and put on synthetic gloves. Don’t reposition displaced organs. If the wound is abdominal and organs have been displaced, don’t try to push them back into place — cover the wound with a dressing.

For other cases of severe bleeding, follow these steps:

1. Have the injured person lie down and cover the person to prevent loss of body heat. If possible, position the person’s head slightly lower than the trunk or elevate the legs. This position reduces the risk of fainting by increasing blood flow to the brain. If possible, elevate the site of bleeding.
2. While wearing gloves, remove any obvious dirt or debris from the wound. Don’t remove any large or more deeply embedded objects. Don’t probe the wound or attempt to clean it at this point. Your principal concern is to stop the bleeding.
3. Apply pressure directly on the wound until the bleeding stops. Use a sterile bandage or clean cloth and hold continuous pressure for at least 20 minutes without looking to see if the bleeding has stopped. Maintain pressure by binding the wound tightly with a bandage (or a piece of clean cloth) and adhesive tape. Use your hands if nothing else is available. If possible, wear rubber or latex gloves or use a clean plastic bag for protection.
4. Don’t remove the gauze or bandage. If the bleeding continues and seeps through the gauze or other material you are holding on the wound, don’t remove it. Instead, add more absorbent material on top of it.
5. Squeeze a main artery if necessary. If the bleeding doesn’t stop with direct pressure, apply pressure to the artery delivering blood to the area of the wound. Pressure points of the arm are on the inside of the arm just above the elbow and just below the armpit. Pressure points of the leg are just behind the knee and in the groin. Squeeze the main artery in these areas against the bone. Keep your fingers flat. With your other hand, continue to exert pressure on the wound itself.
6. Immobilize the injured body part once the bleeding has stopped. Leave the bandages in place and get the injured person to the emergency room as soon as possible.

Treatment for Shock

Shock is a result from loss of blood. The following steps excerpted from http://firstaid.about.com/od/bleedingcontrol/ht/shock.htm and written by Rod Brouhard should be taken to treat shock in a victim.

Uncontrolled bleeding may lead to a condition known as shock. Shock is essentially a decrease in blood flow to the brain and other important organs.

Untreated, shock from bleeding will almost always cause death.

The most important step in treating shock is to control bleeding. However, if the victim is already showing signs of shock, it’s important to take the necessary steps to stabilize the victim until help arrives.

1. As with all emergency treatment, make sure you remain safe. Follow universal precautions and wear personal protective equipment if you have it. You cannot be helpful to a victim if you allow yourself to be injured in the process.
2. Call for an ambulance. Remember that 911 works differently on a wireless phone than it does from the home or office.
3. Make sure the victim is breathing. If not, begin rescue breathing.
4. Before any other treatments for shock are done, bleeding must be stopped.
5. If you do not suspect a neck injury, lay the victim on his or her back (supine) and elevate the legs.
6. If you suspect a neck injury, do not move the victim. Car and other vehicle accidents often lead to neck injuries. Neck injuries are also common in falls, especially falls from a height taller than the victim.
7. Keep the victim warm.
8. Continue to check on the victim. If the victim stops breathing, begin rescue breathing. If the victim vomits, roll the victim to one side and sweep the vomit from his or her mouth with your fingers.

Helping someone who is injured is part of our humanity. To save a life after a disaster is to be the best of that humanity.

The average warning time for tornado strikes from the National Weather Service is about 15 minutes. Not a lot of time. But consider how terrible it would be if the sound of the high winds that come from the tornado as it enters your immediate vicinity were your only warning. No time. No warning. With no advanced warning a tornado may find you and your family sleeping soundly at 2am. Not exactly the best place to be when a twister hits your house.

There are things that you should know to keep yourself from being in that position.

1. Get a NOAA weather radio. Even if you live somewhere close to tornado sirens you should get one. The sirens are meant to be an outdoor warning system. With a NOAA weather band radio you get advanced warning any time of the day or night if severe weather is about to strike. With the warning that you get from your weather radio you can have time to find a safer place for your loved ones, pets, and yourself.
2. When you move to a sheltered room in your home, make sure your family’s first aid kit is close at hand. Along with your kit, make sure you have a flashlight if you are seeking shelter at night.
3. The best place to be when a tornado warning is issued is in the basement of your home or the lowest level possible. If you live in a single story home, go to an interior room and get into a closet or bathroom. You should try to put as many walls between yourself and your home’s exterior walls as possible.
4. In order to protect yourself from glass and other flying debris you should try to cover yourself with blankets, pillows, or even a small mattress if you can. The most common injuries caused by violent storms is flying glass and other missiles. Covering yourself and your family can decrease this dramatically.
5. Get out of mobiles homes! Mobile homes are not able to withstand the high winds of a tornado. Find a sturdy place of shelter or at the very least, lie flat in a ditch and try to cover your head.
6. If you are in a vehicle, get out and find shelter in a ditch or other low lying area. Contrary to popular belief, seeking shelter in an overpass is not a good idea. The lower you can be, the better.

These are common sense courses of action. But common sense can fail you during an emergency. You should practice these steps with your family often so they become second nature to everyone.

I love Tomatoes. I also love gardening when I get to do it. Here are a few tried and true tips on how to grow tomatoes this season.

1. Bury tomato plants deeper than they come in the pot to give them a strong root start. Tomatoes have the ability to develop roots all along their stems.
2. Plant tomatoes where they can get at least 8 hours of sunlight a day and in a warm area. Make sure there is enough drainage for the plants. Do not plant them in a place where they will be soggy all the time. Raised beds work great for tomatoes.
3. Make sure the soil pH is between 5.5 and 6.8
4. Work in about 3 inches of compost into the top 6 inches of soil to make the soil rich for the tomato plants.



5. Use mulch later in the growing season when soil will not be cooled by the mulch and the plants will benefit from the moisture retention and the ground barrier to ground born plant pathogens.
6. Prune the bottom 1 foot of leaves from your tomato plants after they reach about 3 feet tall in order to keep those same pathogens away and also to allow more energy and nutrients to reach higher in the plant where they can do the most good.
7. Prune out all but 2 or 3 tomato suckers out of each plant if you have tomato varieties that continue to grow all season and produce fruit the entire season. Pruning out the suckers which are shoots that start to branch out from the crotches between the main stem and branches allows your plant to not get so big or heavy. Get them early and leave a few if you want, in order make sure you have as high as possible of a yield. Just remember, pruning suckers is only to keep your plant from getting too unwieldy or top heavy.
8. Water your plants well when they are starting out and less so when they are bearing fruit. Tomato plants need a steady but not overwhelming amount of water. If it is very hot out, water everyday. If it is cooler, less often is OK. You just want to make sure your plants are not either soggy or dry, the two extremes.
9. Use tomato cages to enjoy a better yield and to keep your tomatoes from contact with the ground. This will keep them from rotting and getting ground born beasties and fungi.
10. Harvest often and let your tomatoes ripen on a window sill rather than in the refrigerator. The cold saps the flavor of the fresh tomatoes.

My grandfather has been gone for several years now. He passed on in 1973. Even though I was only a child of ten when I last saw him, my memories of him are still strong even after all this time. One of my fondest memories of him is of his love of gardening and growing things. He and my grandmother worked a very large half acre vegetable and flower garden every year. It was always a vibrant and healthy garden. It was a beautiful example of the art of the green thumb. The harvest was always bountiful enough that my grandparents would can and pickle much of what they grew and would still have some left over to sell locally to supplement their income. My grandmother’s true claim to fame was the meals she cooked from the bounty of their hard work. Her meals were works of art to my taste buds.

I have always dreamed of having a similar, if on a smaller scale, garden. Up til this last year I lived in places that did not promote growing a garden, or if they did, I didn’t have enough time to devote to caring for plants as they should be cared for. Now that I live in a location that has decent soil and growing conditions I have started thinking about gardening again, especially now that Spring is starting to slowly warm up our State of Indiana.

As I think about gardening I have no choice but to compare what I know about it to how my grandfather made it look. He made gardening look easy. Is gardening easy? It should be. Mostly it is what you make of it. Gardening done well is a set of simple steps that, if followed, will make your plants flourish. You don’t just buy a flat of tomato plants, dig a few holes in the back yard and plant them and expect them to do well every time. You have to do the simple steps that make it happen.

What are those step? The following list is a great list created by the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension called 10 Steps to Success with Your Vegetable Garden.

1. Pick a good site. The best site is one that’s near the house, receives full sun all day, contains no large rocks, perennial weeds or grasses, has good air circulation and is sheltered from strong winds.
2. Start with good soil and continue to improve it. Plants do best in deep, loose, well-drained topsoil. Improve it with compost, aged manure, cover crops and organic mulches. Have soil tested every three years.
3. Plan carefully. Don’t plant crops from the same plant family in the same spot two years in succession. Consider the path of the sun, so tall crops do not shade shorter ones. Space plants so outer leaves on mature plants will just touch those of their neighbors.
4. Start small. There’s a lot to learn in a vegetable garden. Experience success with a small garden, then gradually increase its size.
5. Grow only what you like to eat. You’ll take better care of what you look forward to eating.
6. Select crop varieties with care. Look for crops bred to do well in short seasons with cold, wet springs and extremes of temperature and moisture. Also consider disease resistance, tolerance of adverse conditions, the variety’s growth habit and length of harvest season.
7. Water only when necessary, then water deeply and early in the day. Vegetables need about an inch of water a week. Conserve water by building soil organic matter and mulching crops to reduce soil moisture evaporation. When soil around plants is dry a couple of inches below the surface, soak the soil deeply, preferably with a drip or soaker hose. Water as early in the day as possible.
8. Visit your garden every day. Check for signs of pests and diseases so you can take care of problems before they get out of hand. Of course, visit also for the sheer joy of it!
9. Make sure you have correctly identified the cause of a problem before applying a “treatment”. Inappropriate use of pesticides is expensive, threatens the health of humans, pets and the environment, and may itself cause more damage than it remedies.
10. Maintain good garden sanitation. Remove diseased leaves, fruits and vines; control weeds.

I love what was said in step 8, “visit your garden each day for the sheer joy of it!” That is a truth. It should be a joy. That is probably what makes my memories of my grandfather and his garden so memorable. I could tell that it was a “joy” for him. That knowledge makes the memories even sweeter.

You are getting ready to plant your garden with all of the vegetable goodies that you like to eat and you are looking forward to reaping the harvest later this year. You have also spent a lot of money and time making sure your yard, trees, and shrubs are going to look good this year. Then along comes a hairy little critter in search of food who does a number on all of your hard work in the matter of just a few days.

What critter? A mole. Cryptomys Hottentotus for you scientifically endowed intellects. Reminds me of the song from the 1970′s TV show, Lavern and Shirley. “Schlemiel, schlimazel, hasenpfeffer incorporated!” Hasenpfeffer, Hottentotus? Oh well. Just how do you keep old Hottentotus from visiting your yard and garden? Take away his food supply.

Moles do not eat the plants in your yard. They eat the worms, grubs and other creepy crawlies that live under the surface of your yard and garden. If you remove the food supply of the mole then they will go elsewhere to find food. The way to limit the food supply is by using pesticides that kill the grubs under your yard and garden. One benefit of doing this is the prevention of those same grubs from turning into Japanese Beetles later in the Summer season.

Another way to keep the moles from getting into a garden or flower planting is to use raised beds for your gardening and landscaping. If you build your raised bed with chicken wire laid down as a base before you add the dirt to the raised part then you will create a barrier to the moles that will keep them away from the main roots of your plants.

These are two steps that are great for people who do not want to have to resort to traps and poisons to get rids of moles once they have appeared. Seems like it would be better to never have them show up in the first place.