4:45 minutes (1.09 MB)
For this week's "Task at Hand," Doug and Jessica give advice on protecting your plants from winter salt and explain how to choose the right materials. They explain the benefits of using burlap or landscape fabric shield and much more!

Watching your sodium intake? Chef Michel Nischan decodes the mystery behind the varieties of salt.

Patrick Horan, Farmer and Co-Owner of Waldingfield Farm, Inc. demonstrates how to make his version of the French classic: Ratatouille ala Waldingfield. Click here for the recipe.

What are the eco-friendliest ways to de-ice? Hint: Shovels do no harm.

Where does salt come from? In India, Michel Nischan happens upon a salt flat, where he explains the process that brings salt to the table.

The fresh-air feeling you get from standing next to a waterfall, at the edge of the ocean, or on top of a mountain is partially due to the presence of negative ions, electrically charged particles that help neutralize pollution-generated positive ions in the air.

To roughly simulate that same state, try a natural salt lamp. Hewn from chunks of salt mined from deep inside the earth in places like the Himalayas (without environment-damaging explosives), the lamps range in color from soft pinks, oranges, and yellows to more rare blues, whites, and purples. In addition to the usual jagged hunks, they also come shaped as crosses, spheres, and hearts.

 

It gives me no pleasure to bring you this week's Study That Flies in the Face of Conventional Wisdom. I get just as confused, not to mention aggravated, by these reports as everybody else does.

But when a large, government sponsored clinical trial concludes that a low-sodium diet may in fact do more cardiovascular harm than good, it shakes up a lot of our preconceptions about whether to reach for the salt shaker.