Compost - what I need to be doing!

Organic matter in your vegetable, fruit or flowering garden is an essential ingredient to keep your plants growing over the long term. Initial plantings directly into your garden quite often do well, but overtime your garden's minerals and nutrients become exhausted and the overall soil health diminishes. The addition of organic matter, particularly in the form of compost, is a welcome and worthwhile addition to any garden to allow the same successes over and over again.

With the addition of compost to your garden, you will increase the amount of nutrients available, increase the potential water availability, decrease the amount of nutrients made unavailable in traditional landfill, reduce greenhouse gases being generated unnecessarily in landfill, provides soil structure in your garden and increases soil microbial activity leading to healthier and more productive soils over time. 

(Source: Abi Homeschools)

In recent years, I have always had a compost bin and presently my bin is not being loved as much as it should.  I really haven't had a significant amount of time to dedicate to the established garden beds at my place and thus, I haven't been maintaining my compost with love and vigour. I do regularly add food scraps, occasionally brown "goods" (such as leaves and branches) and when I just happen to have some green waste (fresh leaves and grass clippings) in my hand as I walk passed these go in too. Another ingredient that I have added to my compost bin is a few bags of fresh horse manure. I just did this because my understanding is that it isn't great to add manure straight to the garden and horse manure also quite often contains a large of weed seeds and the composting process will kill some of these off.

Things I should be doing to my standard compost bin to allow it to be composting more effectively and in a shorter period of time, include:

• aeration - I should be forking it over at least once a week (at present), to re-establish a bit of air flow and allow the breakdown process to become re-activated and mix the "ingredients" through each other;
• checking the moisture levels - if it is too wet or dry, decomposition of materials will be significantly slowed;
• getting a better balance between the ingredients - adding a significant larger proportion of brown goods over the green ones.

Once I have established a better routine for my compost, then it is likely that my compost bin will be more productive and the end product will be an ingredient that my garden will love in the long term.

So, what is stopping me from doing all this you may ask? Well, firstly time is a little against me at the moment, but I think the more important thing is that my compost bin is actually in quite an awkward location to access. As such, putting things into it is certainly a chore and attempting to do anything more than drop an occasional bucket of food scraps into it can in fact be quite dangerous (it is located on quite a steep hill on top of a small retaining wall). I think the re-location of my compost bin to a more appropriate location would re-engage me with my beneficial garden waste and overall inspire me to a new level of commitment to this nutrient recycling process in my garden.

Given that it is currently compost awareness week, maybe you can make a difference to your garden by re-engaging with your composting activities or establishing a new bin. Happy composting!

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Food waste

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about how much thin plastic was dominating my domestic, internal rubbish bin. I thought this was so peculiar and a significant burden on the landfill to which this rubbish was destined.

 (Source: Tree Hugger)

The second fact is still true, but as I washed my dinner dishes this evening I had a bit of a light bulb moment. At the time all this plastic was going into the bin I was doing a bit of a cook up. I perhaps might not have noticed the complete dominance of plastic in my rubbish bin if I had been mixing all this plastic with food waste as well. However, there is very little food waste that enters my traditional (in urban environment) rubbish stream.

Food waste in my house generally gets separated between the worm farm, the compost bin and the dogs. Hopefully in the near future I will also be sharing my scraps with some chickens too! In fact, I might not have enough food waste to sustain the chickens and may have to actually grow some goodies for them! Amazing.

All green waste from kitchen, including fruit and vegetable peelings, fruit stones, ends of herbs and old and sloppy fruit and vegetables all go to my worm farm and compost bins. The meat wastes and any small amounts of old left-overs go to my dogs! The only food scraps that on occasion goes into my mainstream garbage stream is my onion and garlic skins. Worms don't like these and as such most of the time they go into the normal rubbish bin.

 (Source: Colin J via Earth 911)

Interesting what little light bulbs turn on when you're up to your elbows in grey-water appropriate soaps suds!   Pin It

Long weekend! Woo hoo

What are you planning for the next four days? (For those that are under a rock or live outside Australia, all States in Australia have two public holidays either side of this weekend for Easter). For those that aren't particularly religious or completely un-interested in religious activities here is a list of things that might tickle your fancy to keep you busy for these four days:

• relax;
• vegetable patch planning or maintenance;
• bit of weeding;
• riding your bike along your favourite waterway;
• hang out in a tree (for all those kids);
• setting up a worm farm or a compost bin;
• de-clutter to make space for positive vibes;
• order a rainwater tank;
• plant a deciduous vine on the western wall of your house;
• hang out with family and friends;
• eat fair-trade and/or organic chocolate;
• recycle or freecycle some 'junk' around your house;
• sit on the beach and take in the breath-taking view & when you're finished take some rubbish from the beach;
• go bird-watching;
• visit your local national park;
• see what activities your local Museum or library is holding;
• plan your garage sale to take part of the Garage Sale Trail in May;
• see what you can make out of bamboo;
• have a swim at your local pool, watering-hole, river, creek or beach; 
• go camping; or
• set up a herb garden. 

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Have you outsourced your environmental impact?

I was daydreaming the other day about my future vegetable patch. Carrying on from this lovely moment, I continued to ponder but this time specifically about the irrigation system that is going to have to support this dream. Then my thoughts strayed to considering how significant a burden a vegetable garden can be on your domestic water bill, your rain water or your dams, depending on your situation. No matter which one of these water sources you have you become keenly aware of how much water it takes to get your vegetables going and producing adequately.

In line with this, when you create a vegetable patch, no matter what style or type, there are a significant number of imposts on your household budget, particularly during the establishment phase, but these do carry on through to the maintenance phase. Anyway, long story, not so short, it made me think! At least I am keenly aware of this 'economic and environmental' impact to produce the lovely vegetables and fruit that I receive. All resulting from hardwork, effort, investment and natural resources.

But how many products and systems does the average householder have that removes them from the direct production process or means that they do not understand how much and many resources (water, soil, nutrient, electricity, timber, minerals, waste, etc, etc) it takes to produce the items in their household? The answer, I'm afraid, is soooooo many! Basically, our households, systems and businesses have allowed us to outsource our environmental impacts and become removed from this production process. This in turn, creates a false sense of one's personal environmental impact. No wonder we have a society which does not value the environment or think the planet is in dire straits.

 (Source: http://pervasiveshopping.wordpress.com/)

Many people in our society do not believe that the environment has an intrinsic value and should just be preserved/conserved. Moreover, many of these people are completely devoid of understanding and experiencing natural resources. How can we therefore expect them to care for the planet?

Obviously education is a key component of rectifying this situation! With my thoughts being an important focus on arousing a re-connection to nature and particularly natural resources. Maybe with such information people might start to care about the world and potentially change their lifestyles to recognise the finite nature of many of earth's provisions.


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Seasonal produce guide

Via the 1Million Women campaign blog I have discovered a "seasonal produce guide" that lets you know which fruit and vegetables are in season and therefore the ones you should buy. Food that is in season will have shorter food miles, be fresher, be better for you and will generally be more enjoyable to eat.

I have been wanting a pocket size seasonal produce guides for ages and have started dabbling in creating my own, going so far in some instances at looking at when you should plant various crops and calculate their availability based on time till harvest. But, yippppeee, there is no need to reinvent the wheel and I have now printed out the Sustainable Table's version.

The one downside to this guide is that it has been produced (by the look of things) by people based in southern Australia. There is therefore some seasonal variation between the northern parts of Australia and the fruits and vegetables available in the fields in southern Australia, but at least it does provide a guide. It will provide you with some reference to what you should be able to buy and perhaps over time you can amend it to better suit your region. 

Give it a go and let me know what you think. Pin It

Food Matters

There is currently a Internet movie available free called Food Matters. It is only available until the 8 October 2011.

It is available at: www.FoodMatters.tv/ScreeningEventCinema.

I have started to watch it and it certainly provides an alternate position about nutrients in your food and our food chain. The supposed experts tell you how the food that is commercially available is not all it is cut out to be, in that it doesn't contain the nutrients your body requires.

Also in the bit I have watched so far it mentions that our body isn't truly able to cope with cooked food and "raw" (uncooked) food is better for you. The figure mentioned in the movie is that 55% of every meal you eat should be raw. My understanding is the less cooked your food is the more nutrients available to you. This sounds reasonable to me, but I certainly don't practice this.

Watch for yourself and see what you think. Pin It

Veggie gardener threatened with jail

If you hadn't already heard there has recently been an American case where a lady was taken to court for growing vegetables in her front garden. The Organic Gardener magazine reports that her case has not proceeded. Thankfully!

It is with utter amazement to me that it is possible for a "city" to take someone to court for trying to provide themselves with fresh produce in their front garden. It started with an infringement notice leading to a charge requiring an appearance in a court. Apparently this gardener's choice of plants were not considered to be "suitable living plant material".

Thankfully common sense has prevailed!

The lady who's war this was has a blog which you can also visit: http://oakparkhatesveggies.wordpress.com/ Pin It

Basil

I have had a couple of recipes in my weekly dinner plan that have basil in them for the last couple of weeks. I chose these recipes a little while ago and added basil to my shopping list. My basil plant in my garden wasn't doing so well, wilted leaves, large seed heads and bitter-tasting leaves (picture was taken when the basil was in its prime). I just thought this was a result of the poor soil it is currently planted in, being in terribly non-neutral (pH) mushroom compost in a bath tub.

However, from my continual search for basil in the shops and farmers' market and its lack of presence on the shelves I have come to the conclusion that basil is out of season.  And due to its complete lack of presence in the supermarket I assume it is a herb that is too fragile to transport over large distances for any reasonable price.

Once again, lesson learnt, no basil in winter and will start to think about sorting my recipe book into suitable seasons in which to cook them rather than under categories such as 'pasta', 'meat', 'chicken' and so on.

The lesson: shop seasonally for fruit and vegetables and also herbs and you will shop for less and have less impact on the planet through reduced transportation impacts/costs. Pin It

What's in season?

In my never-ending quest to reduce my footprint on this planet I decided early on that it was important to only eat food that was in season in the region I live. This is important as it means whatever you're eating isn't being transported extravagant distances to get to your grocery store before it reaches your plate. Basically the premise is that your food has less 'food miles' (less pollution, greenhouse gases, etc).

Also if the food you eat comes from your region you're more likely to be able to track down the producer or at least understand the way in which your food is produced because you become more interested in learning about this and more connected with the people that produce your food. In turn, you might even care how it is produced and ensure people have appropriate working conditions and produce food in a manner that in itself might be a lighter footprint (for example, organic practices, etc).

What I really need is a guide to what is in season that I can carry around me when I am buying my produce and then a recipe book that can give me recipes for the relevant season. I have come across a few these cook books in my local library, mostly with organic cooking or something along those lines in their title. If you are borrowing such books, make sure they are published in Australia (or the country you are in), as it isn't relevant to be looking at an English book. Their growing climate is different, soils are different and therefore the produce that is available to the English in the various seasons are likely to be different to what is available in your region.

The what is in season, as a store guide, has eluded me though. Well a quick and easy reference type one for my region. The best I can come up with at present is something along the lines of the Vegie Guide on the ABC Gardening Show's website. This shows you what to plant in your region according to the season. The only issue is this guide is for planting of produce not for eating. Thus, there is some calculation required because obviously what is ready for planting isn't ready for eating....a lag time some might say.

I will one day get off my butt and find something appropriate or develop it myself. Pin It

How to build your own soils

An important step to becoming self-sufficient in producing your own food is having fabulous and healthy soils. Modern agriculture has all sorts of inputs that they pour into the soil to boost their productivity, but overtime the soils become depleted and require additional inputs and larger amounts. Such strategies are a long way from producing soils, are not self-sufficient and are generally very resource hungry, with many petro-chemical based inputs.

I went to a seminar today on Green Manures and Crop Rotation at my local library. This was presented by Sonya Wallace, a well known permaculture teacher here on the Sunshine Coast. This session was very informative and relieved some of my concerns about have green manure crops within my personal food production system. The concerns that I had previously about green manure crops was that I was loosing a good patch of soil which I could have been producing another viable vegetable crop.

For those that are unfamiliar with green manure crops, these are crops that assist in replenishing the soil with vital nutrients such as nitrogen as well as providing organic matter into the soil encouraging a good soil structure and a great diversity of life-forms within the soil (microbes, bacteria, fungi, invertebrates, etc). These crops are grown to rest your soils and also ensure that you have great soils to produce the food you want on your table.

Sonya presented information on types of green manure crops and the importance of rotating crops throughout your garden to ensure the soils can produce the best crops possible, with your rotation program to include green manure crops.

I now understand it is important to use such crops and strategies to ensure I will have long-term productive soils without having to utilise artificial sources of nutrients, in turn allowing for ongoing gardening success. Pin It

Gourmet Farmer...great TV series

A little while ago the SBS aired a series called the "Gourmet Farmer", where food critic Matt Evans decided to leave his Sydney life and re-connect with the land and the origins of food. Basically, he decided he would become a farmer, aiming to provide for himself and sell some of his wares locally to get by. 


I love this series and the idea of it. I think the notion of growing your own food and being able to provide for yourself is very romantic and idyllic lifestyle. Obviously there is a lot of hard work, pain, suffering and a completely different lifestyle (than I am currently leading) if you get down to the practical side of this, but nevertheless the idea to me is infinitely attractive. 


I have borrowed the DVD of this series from my library and currently trolling my way through it. My daughter and I sit and watch the farmer and his progress together. I love the fact that my daughter is being exposed to food production in its truest form, along with me and realising how you can transform bare resources, to your own food and then turn the produce into something called "dinner" or a "treat". Fantastic. Enjoying journey this so much at present.   Pin It

Permaculture

Recently I attended something along the lines of a gardening club meeting for permaculture enthusiasts or so I expected. Since I didn't even really have a concept of what the underlying principles of permaculture are I thought this could at least be a place where I could meet like-minded people in my new neighbourhood.

In my previous review of permaculture principles (just reading a basic library book many years ago) I really did think permaculture was some food-oriented gardening practice and at the time wasn't suited to me. However, just attending this meeting and then being linked with some useful websites I believe that I may have a greater understanding and appreciation for the principles of permaculture and certainly how it applies to your garden but further how many of the principles can be applied throughout your life if you're looking to create a lighter footprint.

Given this, I am going to review some more information to gain a better grasp of the concepts and determine its applicability to me and my life (and the garden which I am looking to create). Definitely looking forward to the journey! Nevertheless, I do believe, as with most things I look into, I will take and apply it to my life the way I see fit and not to the letter of some document or person's perspective and given this, anything that I post on this blog will be tainted with this view. Pin It

Cling Wrap

Until recently I had used what I consider to be copious amounts of cling wrap (clear plastic film) to keep my sandwiches intact when going to work, covering fruit & veggies that were half consumed for storage in the fridge, covering up packets of ham that I had opened and then don't seal again, etc.

Having thought about the amount of cling/plastic wrap that I was going through I was convinced there had got to be alternatives to using all of this thin plastic. I was concerned because of:

1. the amount of plastic I was using and throwing away after a single use
2. the potential for this plastic to be blown from the landfill locations (or on the way there) and entering the waterways and marine environments, in turn potentially being consumed by all sorts of aquatic life forms; and
3. just generally adding to landfill.

What did I do? I invested in some more plastic (this doesn't sound very good) but I purchased a few long-wearing plastic rectangular containers to store left over foods, a sandwich-specific storage box to contain my sandwiches and a spherical container that will store tomatoes and onions.

As a result of this I use hardly any plastic/cling wrap and generally feel a little better about the footprint. I'm sure the plastic containers that I am still utilising in the kitchen domain are not the perfect environmental solutions but I consider it a start and something that I could easily adopt into my lifestyle.

Hope this helps others.

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Removal of pesticides from fruit & veggies

In an ongoing examination of pesticides/chemicals that occur on our commercially produced fruit and vegetables, I have found an interesting article that discusses the effectiveness of rinsing these products in water on the web.

The article is located at: http://www.ct.gov/caes/cwp/view.asp?a=2815&q=376676.

This research indicates that the mechanical washing of fruit and vegetables, that is the physical action of washing in water, can cause a reduction in the amount and types of chemicals that are typically found on commercially available produce (at least in the States). This was fascinating to me. The article does go on to say that such washing has to occur for 30 seconds, which to me seems like a significant amount of time and something that most people wouldn't undertake on a regular basis.

The research also examined the use of some of the commercially available (again in the USA) products that market themselves at reducing the chemical load on your produce. The findings were that these products didn't reduce the chemical load any more than simply washing with water.

Well it is off to scrubbing my fruit and veggies (from the shops) under the water for what will seem like an eternity for me.

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Latest veggie garden produce

Here is the latest veggie patch haul! Woo hoo. Potatoes, pumpkin, broccoli and eggplant!

I was a little disappointed with the potato crop this season. I bought organic seed potatoes from the local produce store and I don't think all of the potatoes I planted ended up producing. Peculiar! Maybe go back to the store bought ones next season or order some online. Don't get me wrong, the produce from the seed potatoes was still fantastic, very crisp! Yummo! Great side to a meat dish on Sunday night and tonight it was Shepherd's Pie. Great end of winter dinners.

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Broccoli

I currently have some broccoli growing in my veggie patch. It is going really well. We have significantly trimmed the hedge that shelters the veggie patch during this time of year and before I put the latest round of seedlings in I pumped quite a lot of chicken manure into the ground as slow-release fertiliser.

The reason though for my post is because I have been fascinated at the water repellent qualities of broccoli leaves. When watering the veggies most of the veggies I have in my garden retain water droplets on their leaves after finishing watering, but not broccoli. Broccoli leaves immediately bead water and then it rolls off the leaves.

It is fascinating (well at least to me) and it certainly has made me wonder why broccoli has evolved this ability. The silver-grey leaves and water droplets are beautiful in the winter afternoon sun. Keeps me entertained.

Anyway, let's hope the broccoli manages to produce a good crop. Keep you informed. Pin It

Final product....pumpkins

Well despite the overload of vines that I had in my veggie patch and felt like a weight on my shoulders. The finished product, that is the pumpkins, were tasty and looked pretty damn fantastic too (if I do say so myself).

Here is one of said pumpkins....



My remaining vines have three fruit still ripening. The vines themselves are looking a little scrappy, so I suspect I will be having some form of pumpkin for dinner in the next few weeks. Yum yum! Pin It

Pumpkins continue

Well, the pumpkin patch continues. I have over the last few weeks felt a little taken over by my pumpkin vines. They have been occupying one and half of my three vegetable patches. Both areas were being productive since I have undertaken the flower fertilisation myself but I was wanting to plant different veggies and the actual pumpkins seem to be taking forever to mature.

After a little bit of research, I have discovered that pumpkins take about 3-4 months to mature on the vine. They are ready once the connecting vine starts to die away. Unfortunately I don't have the patience and decided to cull the majority of the vines. I decided to pull out the vines with the most 'mature' pumpkins and see whether they are ok and then utilise the space to plant some of the veggie seeds I had pre-grown.


Aaaaahhhhhh, a weight has been lifted and with the new veggies I am looking forward to feeling a little more vigour for the veggie patch and the work it can take. Pin It

Removal of pesticides from food

Following on from one of my previous posts, my basic research indicated that just rinsing your fruit and vegetables is not enough to remove some of the more harmful 'toxins' (pesticides/herbicides). One page that I have just come across suggests a combination of water, white vinegar, baking soda and grapefruit seed extract combined and then sprayed onto the fruit and vegetable and left for an hour or two prior to rinsing.

Sounds like a major effort, which I guess is expected, but I wouldn't have a clue where to get grapefruit seed extract. Let's see if I can find a more practical solution.

Aaaahhh....here is a more basic approach that I have since found combine 1 lemon, 2 tbsp of distilled white vinegar and 1 cup of water. Spray this onto your fruit & veggies and then rinse off, apparently this is a more basic recipe but is likely to remove pesticides from fruit/vegetables for household consumption. I wonder if it will change the taste of the products. Have to give it a go. Pin It

Rocket

No I'm not going to start discussing astro-physics or whether man has truly reached the moon, rather another episode in the life of my veggie patch.

I have managed to grow a fair amount of rocket in my garden over the last few months. I grew these rocket plants from seed, with them planted in well sunlight location. The rocket grew quite well without much intervention, apart from the daily water.

The thing I did notice about my rocket was the flavour. What a zing! Much more spicy than shop bought rocket. I don't know if this is a result of the type of rocket I bought and grew or the length of time that I left it in the ground, but if you're in for some truly tasty salad try some home-grown rocket! Pin It