Greening Our Life

Wombling free

2012-01-22T21:21:00.001+11:00

"Underground, overground, wombling free
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we
Making good use of the things that we find
Things that the everyday folks leave behind"

(The Wombles TV Theme Song - Listen to it here)

I loved watching The Wombles as a kid. For those who missed it, this was a 70s British stop-motion animation featuring little creatures that went around picking up litter and turning it into something useful. Recycling before it was cool.

Growing up, my family were often reclaiming bits and pieces. Both my parents were very adept at creatively re-using things. As a kid this meant and endless supply of materials for craft projects as well as joining in on the fun game of spotting useful things that people had thrown out. Of course once I became a teenager it was embarrassing to have your Dad stop the car to retrieve stuff out of the hard rubbish collection piles, but I soon got over it once I became a uni student and engaged in the time honoured tradition of finding free furniture.

The wombling habit is fairly ingrained in both myself and the Cunning Plans Dept. We're both committed to reducing waste and recycling/re-using where possible. We often boggle at the amount of things that people throw out onto the verge that could have been donated to a charity or second hand shop to be reused or put in the recycling bin. Over the years, we've wombled some nifty things.

Recent acquisitions include:

Two bicycles, one with a broken back wheel and one missing the front wheel = one complete free bicycle
Fully functional bag less vacuum cleaner for the shed
Small, carry-on sized suitcase
Pedestal fan
Clothes drying rack
Wooden table that's getting used in the backyard as my gardening bench
Banana lounge
Plastic baskets for storage
A bike horn

In the last year, I've found myself often pondering on the waste of things that are in good enough condition to be re-used or resold through an op shop. Now when I have the time and energy, I will pick up stuff, take it home, give it a clean, then drop it of at the local Brotherhood of St Laurence. In the weeks before Christmas last year, we noticed that one of the apartment blocks we walk the dogs past had 6 large bags of clothes piled out the front next to the bins. A quick look showed the clothes were probably in good nick. So the bags came home. I won't lie, they reeked from having been left out in the weather and all the sorting was done outside with gloves. However, after throwing them through the wash (with some Dettol), the end result was a large pile of good clothes (and a few random things like the complete set of car seat covers in fluffy cow print...) that went to the Brotherhood of St Laurence instead of going to landfill.

Bags of clothes reclaimed from outside an apartment block

The huge pile of clean clothes ready to be donated

Bag 1

Bag 2

Bag 3

Random fluffy cow print seat covers

Bag 4

Bag 5

Bag 6

Things like old blankets and towels are put aside for The Lost Dogs Home and some items that weren't good enough to donate were stripped for reusable parts like zippers, buttons, elastic, trim etc..

I feel good when I see stuff that would have gone to landfill being reused and recycled and I'm glad to be a part of that process.

Reducing our waste - The Bathroom

2011-09-29T21:51:00.000+10:00

Part of our 2011 sustainable living goals to reduce how much our household puts into general waste each week.

In order to reduce your waste, you need to know what is going into your bin each week. We decided to go bin by bin in our house to see what we were regularly throwing into general waste and what changes we could make to replace these things with recyclable or reusable options where possible or otherwise reduce the amount wasted.

The Bathroom

The bathroom can be a challenging area to reduce waste without compromising health and hygiene.

What we've already done
Some easy steps we'd already taken to reduce waste in the bathroom include:

selecting products in recyclable containers
choosing recycled toilet paper that comes in paper wrapping rather than plastic wrap
looking for products that use containers made from recycled materials

A couple of years ago I swapped disposable razors and wax strips for a rechargeable epilator. A bit of an upfront cost, but it has paid itself off in both money and waste compared to shaving or waxing (though depending on your pain threshold, you may need to factor in a few bottles of gin to the costs...)

What we've done this year
If you live in a household with females, you've probably noticed that once a month the bathroom waste increases. Our bin audit revealed that feminine hygiene products accounted for a significant amount of our bathroom waste. This year I decided to look for more sustainable options to reduce the amount of waste. The options I found were:

compostable tampons and pads
fabric reusable pads
silicone or rubber menstrual cups

The first option didn't really appeal as I was dubious as to how effective our compost bin would be in breaking down the used products quickly and as we use our compost on our vegie garden, I didn't want to risk any nasty bugs. The fabric reusable pads didn't appeal to me either as I don't like conventional pads. However, I did buy a soft bamboo reusable pad to give it a go. I didn't like it. Too bulky, soft but still uncomfortable to wear and I was constantly worried about it moving around or leaking. That left the menstrual cups. I had heard about them before, via blogs of friends, and always thought them a little on the "crusty" side of hippidom. However I did think they were worth a shot so at the beginning of this year I ordered a Lunette cup online.

I have to say I'm a complete convert! Seriously, I wish I'd known more about these years ago. I found the cup very easy to use, comfortable, completely secure, easy to clean and best of all, no waste going into the bin! It's a triple win in that it a) reduced regular costs, b) is more comfortable and convenient than previous methods, and c) is almost waste free. You can add an extra bonus in there if you consider that by having a reusable option always ready you eliminate the need to send confused male partners into the supermarket for emergencies. There is an upfront cost in that they are ~$57.00 (AUD), but considering they will last 5-10 years with correct care, that's pretty cheap compared to how much you'd spend on conventional products over that same time period.

Further information for those who are interested (and ladies, I strongly recommend giving these a try, they are honestly no more "icky" than using conventional products):

Lunette website - http://www.lunette.com.au/. There are other brands of cups out there, but this was the one I decided to try based on reviews and availability and I've been really happy with it. I think it is one of the few that has been approved for sale in Australia (The TGA happily lets shonky homeopathic crap into pharmacies, but getting a menstrual cup approved is apparently quite difficult)
This website has lots of useful information about menstrual cups, including brand comparisons and FAQs - http://labyrinth.net.au/~obsidian/clothpads/Cups.html
The livejournal community forum on menstrual cups - http://menstrual-cups.livejournal.com/

What's left that we haven't been able to reduce
We still have a number of things that end up in the bathroom bin regularly that we haven't been able to replace or reduce.

The CPD's disposable razor cartridges. The most sustainable option would be not to shave, but the bearded look isn't great so it will be razors for a while yet.
Dental floss. The CPD bought a Waterpik water flosser when he got braces, which uses a fine jet of water to floss around teeth and braces. I still use regular floss though as I find the machine a bit awkward.
Products that come in non-recyclable containers like toothpaste and some cosmetics.
Cotton buds and cotton wool. We try to use ethically sourced options, but they are still disposable.

However, the overall volume of bathroom waste has probably been reduced by at least 50% simply from changing my feminine hygiene practices. We have a tiny bin in the bathroom and it rarely has more than a handful of rubbish each week so on the whole I'm pretty happy with how we're going in this area.

2011 Sustainable Living Goals

2011-01-27T22:15:00.004+11:00

The beginning of another year and the traditional time for reflection on the past and plans for the future. In past years, we've been working on living more sustainably and have adopted changes in our lifestyle and behaviours as we thought of things.This year I've decided to actually make some sustainability goals upfront and then actively work to achieve them throughout the year. I hope it will help us focus our energies a bit more as it can often be overwhelming to decide what to do when there are so many options and so many pros and cons.

I've focused the list into the Four R's - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and the most important, Rethink. I haven't included things that we're already doing, though I might make a list of these in another post for reference.

2011 Reduce

Reduce overall waste in terms of what we throw out, either at home or out and about.
Reduce our consumption of meat.
Reduce car use.
Reduce electricity and gas use
Reduce water use by working on limiting showers to 4 minutes (Okay, I'm the biggest culprit here)
Reduce laundry by laundering items less frequently. Many clothes can be worn several times before they require washing and some things can be aired rather than washed. The will also help fabrics last longer.

2011 Reuse

Take our used printer cartridges to be refilled rather than buying new.

2011 Recycle

Learn more about what can and can't be recycled and where.
Take our pile of used batteries to the battery recycling centre (they exist here!)
Preference products made from recycled materials over new materials, especially for things like paper and plastic.

2011 Rethink
Last year we made a pretty big change in our lives by moving to Brunswick. This has brought with it some changes in our lifestyle that we're still getting used to. The challenge for 2011 will be balancing our commitment to live sustainably with some of the new aspects of our lives, such as:

Living in a much smaller house than in Figtree
Both of us working from home most days
Reduced income (I'm not working as much as I was in Wollongong)
Living with a chronic illness (Fibromyalgia), which unfortunately had a major setback with the stress of the move.
Living reasonably close to functional and regular public transport
Having a much broader range of sustainable and ethical choices available to us locally, such as local and organic produce, local designers and producers for things like clothing and homewares.
Living in a community that has a council with a number of sustainability initiatives

There are both incentives and constraints there so we need to rethink our approach to how we live.

Next post, I'll go into some more detail on how we plan to achieve our 2011 sustainability goals.

Shade solutions for Melbourne Summer

2010-11-22T13:04:00.005+11:00

As plants have started to spring up in our vegie boxes, I've noticed that a number of them that started off quite strong appear to have been scorched by some of the hot days we've had. I'm still getting the hang of Melbourne spring. The weather really is all over the place and when the sun is out it certainly has some bite. I'd put down some mulch, but even with the mulch I noticed that the soil was drying out and getting a hard crust on top, which was causing the young seedlings a bit of trouble.

I'd seen a couple of shade options in the Gardening Australia magazine and TV show that used shade cloth stretched over poly pipe. So with some vague descriptions of this given to the Cunning Plans Dept, we toddled off to Bunnings in search of shade cloth, poly pipe, cable ties and other random bits and pieces.

We ended up getting 50% shade cloth. I'd read somewhere that 30% was the stuff to go for, but the lowest Bunnings had was 50%. Still, I think it will work fine.

The Cunning Plans Dept rigged up some frames using the poly pipe and cable ties.

es.

He drilled through the pipes to tie them together so that they wouldn't shift around each other. The frames just sit inside the vegie boxes and aren't anchored down (we'll see how they go if we get any strong winds).

The shade cloth is simply draped over the frame and pulled down tight by hooking it onto rows of nails on the sides of the boxes. Not high tech, but it works.

It also makes it easy to unhook the shade cloth from any side and pull it back to get to the plants for weeding and watering.

Ta da! Shaded vegie boxes!

To give the plants an extra boos t, I sprinkled some a ll purpose fertiliser and gave them a good soak before putting the cloth back on. Two days later, I checked the plants this morning and they are looking noticeably better. More fresh growth and less burnt leaves. The soil also seems to be retaining the moisture better.

And of course it wouldn't be a proper project if the pups didn't "help" out. Gracie (who loves the shady spot in between the boxes) very helpfully minded the power tools, while Hudson "helped" by eating the plastic lid of the nail container. We'll have to wait and see how "lab-proof" the shade covers prove to be.

A new vegie patch, in boxes

2010-10-10T21:56:00.006+11:00

We've been looking at options for creating vegie patches at our new place that are not permanent, as we're renting and there are no established garden beds and we get the impression that our landlord isn't keen on permanent structures.

We decided on some kind of raising vegie bed, which also has the bonus of being more ergonomic for me to manage. We'd seen these pre-done vegie boxes that were wooden crates filled with soil and pre-planted for around $350. The CPD then spotted someone selling ex-fruit crates for $20 each. We picked up 3 of them (that's what would fit on the ute we hired). We lined them with some builders plastic, with a few drain holes in the bottom.

Next step was to order some soil and mulch. We decided that rather than fill them just with soil, we'd fill the bottom half with mulch, which would drain well and also be a little cheaper than soil.

Yesterday the soil and mulch arrived and we set to work filling up our vegie boxes, with supervision by the dynamic duo - Hudson and Gracie.

Today I planted seeds into the boxes and hopefully we'll be looking at our first Brunswick harvest this summer :)

Starting a new patch: Seed raising

2010-09-26T17:55:00.005+10:00

Today I took advantage of the fine weather to get started on some seed raising for what will be the new vegie patch here in Brunswick. I'd nabbed some free shallow punnets at CERES the other weekend and had also saved a couple of other containers. I also decided to try the coir pellets that came in the bundle of gardening stuff I got via Gumtree.

While I was getting to work on the seed raising the Cunning Plans Dept asked the rather pertinent question of "where are you going to put them?". I had initially thought down the side of the house, but that may not get enough sun to keep them warm. The backyard would be better, but required puppy-proofing. The CPD came up with the solution of attaching a shelf to the back wall of the house so I could put my punnets and trays up out of reach of the dogs, but still getting the warmth of the sun.

Voila! Planted in the coir pellets are spaghetti squash, butternut pumpkin and gem squash. In the punnets I've planted another spaghetti squash (I really want to grow these!), some mini capsicums, heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, red Russian kale, apple cucumbers, Lebanese cucumbers and garlic chives. To my dismay I found about half the spaghetti squash seeds I'd saved had gone moldy. I'm airing them to see if I can dry them out a bit more. I think I may need to get some of those moisture absorbing sachets to put in my seed box.

I also potted out the continental parsley and mint I picked up a month ago. The parsley punnet actually had 3 plants in it, so I've planted them out separately and hopefully they'll grow nice and bushy.

There is also movement on the small strip of garden by the side of the house that I'd dug over and planted a month or so ago. The row of marigolds have sprouted, as have 4 of the lettuce, one of the dwarf snow peas, and some of the spring onions (and a bunch of weeds, but I'll get to those soon).

It may be getting close to the end of September, but it is finally starting to feel like Spring is arriving. Buds are bursting on trees and we're starting to see the sun for more than a fleeting moment. After having just experienced my first Melbourne winter, I really appreciate the coming of Spring :)

Thrifty Gardening: Urban pots and herbs

2010-09-13T20:42:00.005+10:00

While we were walking up to the local primary school to vote a few weeks ago, we saw a good size plastic pot abandoned amongst other rubbish near the pedestrian bridge over the freeway. I made a note to pick it up on our way back home as I need pots. At the school, post-voting, we noticed that CERES had set up a little stall selling seedlings and potted herbs. I picked up a mint and a continental parsley for $5, which I thought was a bargain (granted the parsley was cheap because it looked a bit straggly).

I also discovered that CERES have a free pot recycling bin at their nursery, where you can nab used pots and then bring back any you aren't using anymore. And their shop sells a number of bulk goods (food and cleaning products) by weight. You can BYO container or use some of the recycled containers or paper bags they have at the store.

We popped in on the weekend to stock up on some eco-friendly dishwasher powder (is anyone else disappointed that it is hard to get eco-friendly dishwasher powder in the major supermarkets? My local Coles stocks eco-friendly dishwasher tablets, but our little dishwasher drawer doesn't need much). And since I'm now on the exclusion diet from hell, I also grabbed a paper bag and stocked up on some quinoa, before heading to the cafe to get a soy dandy. I also love that the market has "Puppy Parking" (i.e. a place just outside the market where you can tether your pooch while you shop), though I'm not sure I'd trust our dynamic duo not to wreak havoc. We exited via the nursery and pot bin to get a few medium pots to pot on my herbs and some small trays to get some seed raising going.

I love Brunswick :)

Thrifty Gardening: Free seeds and fertiliser

2010-08-15T13:48:00.004+10:00

Continuing with the sustainable and thrifty living concept, I've set myself a challenge to establish a garden at our new place without spending any money if possible.

We brought with us our collection of seeds and tools, so that's our starting point. The things we had to leave behind included our fertilisers and pots.

So I've been looking out for possible freecycling options to replenish our stocks. I saw an ad on Gumtree from someone giving away a box of fertiliser and assorted seeds. I replied and on Monday popped into town on my way back from a meeting to pick it up. Talk about a good haul of freebies! I'm so glad I brought my fold-up trolley otherwise I would have really been stuffed trying to get it home on the tram.

Check this out:

The fertiliser etc.. includes:

Richgro Premium complete fertiliser plus 5kg bag
Naked Farmer Organic Soil Activator sample pack
Hortico All purpose compound fertiliser 500g tub (open)
Brunnings Tomato & Vegetable Starter fertiliser 1kg tub
Jiffy small peat pellets 12
Water storage crystals 250g far (1/2 full)
Miracle Gro Seafeed 3 in 1 250ml
Charlie Carp 500ml
Yates Thrive Shake 'n' Feed 700g (1/2 full)
Garden ties 15
Brunnings Rose Planting Mix coir block (open)
Seasol 20ml sachet
Eco-cweed 5g sachet
Rainsaver crystals 10g sachet
Searles Penetraide re-wetting granules 2 x 40g sachets
Searles Flourish soluble plant food 3 x 20g sachets

The assorted seeds includes:

Cucumber Lebanese (open)
Snapdragon
Tomato Roma (open)
Dwarf snapbean (open)
Sunflower
Pak Choi (open)
Broccoli Royal Dame (open)
Beetroot Perfect (open)
Spinach Emerald Star (open)
Squash Gem
Lucerne (open)
Eggplant Listada di Gandia
Peanut Virginia
Okra x 2 (open)
Miscellaneous bag that appears to have a mix of coriander, pumpkin and possibly spring onion)

Not bad for free, eh?

Bonjour Brunswick!

2010-08-06T10:00:00.008+10:00

The move to Melbourne went very well. We arrived last Thursday evening, moved everything in on Friday, and by the end of the weekend were mostly unpacked and ready to start the work week. As of last night, we have finished unpacking all the boxes and have a giant pile of flat packed cardboard boxes to show for it.

Our new place is really a blank slate from the garden perspective. The back yard is a decent size and the only things in it are a shed, a clothesline strung between two concrete posts, and some very bare skinny trees, which I haven't identified yet. The backyard faces north, so gets plenty of sunshine. Right now, in the middle of winter, we're appreciating it, but I'm guessing summer will be another story.

Left: Backyard facing north - Right: Backyard facing south

The front yard is also fairly nondescript. Being on the south side, it's mostly in shade and just has patchy grass.

I can't wait to get started on building new gardens. As we're renting, we just need to check that the landlord is okay with this. We're also thinking about building more of a container garden so that if we move when our lease finishes in 12 months then we'll be able to take most of the garden with us.

We're also going to have to start new compost and worm farms as we left the others behind in Figtree. While we're still waiting to sell the house in Figtree, we're being very conservative with our finances. However, I jumped onto Gumtree and managed to get a second hand compost bin for $20. It's missing one of the side pieces that hold it together (it shouldn't be gaping like that), but that's a fairly easy fix.

I also managed to get a pair of plastic clam shells (kids sand pit/wading pool) for free! This will definitely help keep the pups cool in summer.

I've also found an unused (still in packaging) 2-tier worm farm for $40, but it's about an hours drive from us, so I'm still tossing up whether it's worth a trip that far and when we'd be able to do it.

Farewell Figtree

2010-07-28T21:19:00.002+10:00

Well it seems like it was only a few months ago that we made the decision to move to Melbourne, but today seems to have come around fast.

Today we said farewell to Figtree. I was hoping to take some final photos of the garden, but it decided to absolutely bucket with rain (not helpful for the removalists trying to pick the truck). At least it meant I didn't have to water the garden before we went. So sadly, no parting photos.

Yesterday I did some maintenance on the vegie patch to get it ready for being unattended for a while. All the beds are mulched. The new irrigation timer has been installed and set. All the plants are looking healthy. The snow peas are just starting to reach the twine that they'll eventually climb. The broccoli heads are forming nicely. It is finally looking like a well established, mature garden. I would like to hope that it will bring joy to the future occupants.

I don't find myself missing the garden, as I've enjoyed the process of gardening as much as the end product. I would have liked to have seen the fruit trees mature and start to bear fruit. I'm looking forward to the challenge of starting a new garden in Melbourne. I'm bringing our seeds with us, many of which we've saved from what we've grown in Figtree, so it will be like bringing a bit of our Figtree garden with us.

Summer success stories

2010-03-28T14:27:00.018+11:00

Despite the last post, it wasn't all gloom and doom in the patch this summer. There were a few success stories.

Beans

We had two different bean varieties this summer. Rattlesnake beans, (below left) which are a climbing variety, where planted in the front garden to climb (and help cover) the bit of lattice underneath the front porch. The other variety is a butter bean called Sex Without Strings (below right), which is a bush variety and was planted into the main vegie patch in a couple of beds where we had space.

Both beans have gone well, with the Rattlesnake beans being the most productive. We only have two plants going, but have probably yielded just over a kilogram of beans so far. I've started to write down the weight of each harvest so we can have a better record.

The Sex Without Strings beans have been pretty productive per bush (we've got 4 going), but probably overall half the yield of the climbing beans. And true to the name, they are a lovely stringless butter bean. Both beans are very tasty and have been a regular addition to our dinners.

Basil

The tomatoes may have failed, but the basil has been going off! I transplanted around 6-7 basil seedlings in around the tomatoes and all have thrived, to the point that I had to seriously cut back some of them as they were smothering the tomatoes and capsicums.

The basil harvest has already been turned into a few jars of basil pesto, some basil butter, and some diced basil frozen into an ice cube tray for use later in the year. And there is still loads in the patch, which the bees love and we'll let go to seed.

Lettuce
We've tried to get in to the habit of have a couple of lettuce plants on the go so that we've got lettuce for salads and meals. The best variety so far has been one of the freebies we received from Digger's Club, Australian Yellow Leaf (left).

It has bright yellow-green leaves and is a 'cut and come again' type of lettuce (non-hearting). Crisp and delicious. We've also been trying some heirloom varieties (middle and right) from a mixed pack. These have been nice, but in the crazy summer weather have tended to bolt to seed.

Strawberries

The strawberry patch was quite productive, and when we managed to beat the birds, slugs and labradors to them, we were treated to the tastiest luscious red fruit. I don't think that many made it to the kitchen, it was too tempting to eat them straight from the garden.

Rhubarb

The two rhubarb plants I put in during winter, which I was so worried I'd killed, sprang into life in spring producing thick stalks and enormous leaves that were so heavy some of the stalks were coming off from the weight of the leaves pulling them down.

We'd read that in the first year you shouldn't harvest any stalks, to let the plant establish and feed the crown, so we left it to grow. It has recently died down to nothing, which I'm hoping is just what rhubarb does and that with all the rain and humidity the crowns haven't rotted. The crowns do look very much like they did when I bought the dormant crowns, so hopefully they'll burst back in to life next spring.

Onions

Last winter, on the winter solstice, we planted a number of onions. We had two varieties of brown onion - Creamgold and Australian Brown - and one red onion. To experiment a bit with yield, we sowed a row of Australian Brown directly into the bed, and sowed the Creamgold and red onion in a seed-raiser tray, then transplanted them as soon as they were big enough to handle. The direct sown seeds certainly produced larger onions, but the others were a good medium-small onion.

We harvested them on the summer solstice (following the traditional planting guide of planting on the shortest day of the year and harvesting on the longest), which was just as well as we got them out before the deluge of summer rain hit. We strung them up in net under cover to dry out, and are now storing them inside in mesh bags. The yield was around 3.8kg of brown onions and 2.4kg of red onions.

Garlic
Like the onion, our garlic harvest went reasonably well. We got around 12 good sized cloves of red italian garlic, plus a few bonus garlics from the compost heap. Interestingly, none of the italian red garlics flowered. We had read that you wait for them to flower before harvesting, but they never did and the stalks just seemed to die off, so we pulled them out. One of the compost heap garlics did flower and the flower ends up producing seeds that look like tiny garlic cloves.

We've probably got enough garlic to last us until next crop, when I think we'll plant some more of the italian red garlic and also try some of the seeds that we saved from the compost garlic.

Other successes in the garden have been the carrots, which continue to grow well though we need to remember to keep sowing more seed to get a progressive crop. The herbs in the front garden are also doing well and it is nice to be able to just duck out the front to snip a few when cooking.

Summer of rain and shine: A tribute to the fallen

2010-03-07T14:24:00.013+11:00

Well, to be more accurate, it has been the summer where our poor vegie patch has been scorched and drowned, often in the same week. Back in late spring I was happily raising seedlings and anticipating a summer where our kitchen would be overflowing with produce. Sadly, like many fellow gardeners I've spoken to lately, much of our patch simply didn't survive the scorching hot days, followed by torrential rain, with mould, mildew, and disease inducing humidity in between.

So a tribute to the fallen of the Summer of 2009/2010...

Potatoes

Remember the great potato patch we made back in September? From strong beginnings the plants then seemed to suddenly wilt and die. I suspect either potato blight or black leg. After a while we decided to excavate and see what had happened. Many of the spuds had started well, but the heavy rain had compacted the sugar cane mulch and compost into a thick, wet, rotting layer and anything above that layer died. Our yield was a handful of small deformed potatoes.

However, on the upside, the potatoes that were voluntarily growing in the compost heap seemed to be unaffected and yielded a good number of decent sized spuds. And while some of the ones from the main patch weren't edible, they were possibly the rudest looking potatoes ever grown, so we got some giggles.

Tomatoes
Back in October I had started planting tomato seeds and by early November I had so many seedlings I was giving the excess away to family, friends and anyone who happened to drive past. Later in November saw us going on holidays for a week, during which we had several absolute scorchers and I came home to some rather scalded and sorry looking tomato seedlings. Still, we planted them out and thought they might just come good, only to have them drowned in rains, scorched again and getting every tomato affliction under the sun. A number have rust, much of the fruit has blossom end rot from the erratic rain, a lot of fruit has simply split or rotted while still green, and to top it off we've got fruit fly. I've tried spraying a Bordeaux mix to see if that helps with the rust. We've had a few good, if small, tomatoes from what I think is a Red Tommy Toe. Sadly, I think what I need to do is pull them all out to try and stop disease spreading further.

Capsicums
We had 4-5 mini capsicum plants and 2 regular size plants. They've been strong and early on had lots of flowers and fruit developing, but the insane weather has meant that most of the fruit are rotting before they're ripe. We have managed to get a couple of very cute mini capsicums, but don't hold much hope for the rest in this humid weather.

Corn
I really thought the corn was going to be alright. Sadly, the humid weather isn't great for corn either. A lot of the cobs had aphids and some kind of borer. The ones that looked okay were very disappointing to eat. They tasted like glue - bland and starchy. I don't know whether we didn't have enough of them to get good pollination or there was some nutrient deficiency, or both.

Cucumber
There is one lone apple cucumber that has survived against the odds. Two plants were lost when the dogs got into the patch and had a bit of a rampage. The other one succumbed to the rampant powder mildew that threatened to cover every curcubit in sight. Diligent spraying with diluted milk seems to have saved my lone survivor and we even got a decent sized and quite edible cucumber from it.

Rhubarb
The rhubarb grew to epic proportions with massive leaves and thick stalks. However, in the last few weeks, I think the rain and humidity has taken its toll as many of the stalks became rotten and I think the crowns may actually have rot from being too wet for too long. This is the first time I've grown rhubarb so I don't know if they're meant to die back at the end of summer or whether this is actually crown rot. There are still some new green stalks emerging from one so I'm hoping it will hang in there.

However, it hasn't all been bad and in many ways we've learnt a lot from those plants that didn't make it.

Van Gogh Vision: Sunflower Summer

2010-03-03T20:12:00.001+11:00

A few months ago I had this idea - a Van Gogh inspired vision - of sunflowers along the back fence. I had seeds for both Giant Russian and Yellow Pollenless sunflowers and planned a double row, with the 3-4m tall Giant Russians at the back with the shorter 1.5m tall Yellow Pollenless in front. I could picture the magnificent image in my head so clearly.

The first issue I encountered was a logistical issue. Our back fence has been steadily falling down, not helped by the fact that our two dogs and the dog that lives behind us like to try and play together and scratch and push at the palings. So we had a chat to the people behind us and agreed to replace the aging wood paling fence with a colorbond fence. Which meant that I needed to hold off planting anything in front of the back fence until it had been replaced (unless I wanted my sunflower seedlings trampled).

The fence got replaced around the end of November. Here we have old fence and new fence:

We asked the fence guys to leave the old palings in our yard. We plan to reuse them to make a nicer vegie patch and compost area fence.

The planting was done in an afternoon in December. First we mowed the strip along the back fence. As the soil is heavy clay, we decided to dig holes and fill them with compost to get the new seeds a good start on life.

After the seedlings started to emerge, we realised that they were at risk of getting squashed or trampled by the dogs, so I made some wire mesh collars to give the ones in prime "trampling" zones a little bit of protection. Then as they were also getting some stiff competition from the grass, we started to mulch around them using wet newspaper to smother the grass first before laying the mulch on top. Unfortunately we only had enough mulch to half the row, so it looked a bit odd for a few weeks.

By the end of January the sunflowers were starting to bloom and were looking gorgeous. Once we got another trailer load of mulch, courtesy of Mum & Dad having some trees lopped and a gigantic pile of mulch, we finished mulching the row around the end of February.

Once open, the sunflowers were truly beautiful to behold. The bees certainly loved the big giant russian flowers. The yellow pollenless put out little mini sunflower side shoots, often with "double-heads".

Sadly our sunflower joy was rather short-lived. The first issue was that the sunflowers seemed to struggle to hold up the weight of their heads. We're not sure if this is a nutrient deficiency or perhaps we were growing them at the wrong time of year. The giant russians in particular needed some propping up (or perhaps a hug), while the rest just looked a bit droopy and depressed. And on overcast days, they seemed a bit confused about which way to face.

Then we discovered we weren't the only ones who enjoyed sunflowers. The local population of sulphur-crested cockatoos had discovered the tasty buffet in our backyard, We thought of the Woolworths ad when the the woman yells to her husband "Stavros!" when the cockatoos are on their vegie patch. Sadly the back fence was a bit too far away from our kitchen window to rig up a scare mechanism (though the CPD was tempted to try), so we tried training Hudson to chase the cockatoos off the flowers by yelling "Stavros!" out the window. Can't say it worked particularly well, though once pointed out, he gave a good show of chasing them.

And while the cockatoos started the demise of our sunflowers, their fate was doomed once the dogs discovered that sunflowers are tasty and jumping up, grabbing the heads, and pulling them out of the group or snapping them off was a great new game.

One by one, our sunflowers succumbed to our playful pups. What can I say? It was fun while it lasted and I'd probably do it again :)

The end.

Welcome to 2010 - The Year of the Move

2010-01-01T20:39:00.000+11:00

Happy New Year and Welcome to 2010!

The big news in our lives is that we've decided to move to Melbourne. When exactly is "sometime this year".

Why Melbourne? Oddly enough this is part of us embracing a downsized and less complicated lifestyle. I know many people move OUT of major cities to downsize, so why are we moving from the lovely, coastal Illawarra to a major metropolitan city? A number of reasons.

Friends
Something I've learnt over the last couple of years is that a key part of a sustainable lifestyle is sustainable relationships, with your partner, your family, and your friends. Over the years, most of our close friends have moved out of the Illawarra and a lot of them are now in Melbourne. Being closer to them will greatly enrich our lives.

Functional Public Transport
I'll admit it, I'm enamoured with trams. Ever since my first visit to Melbourne, I have loved how easy it is to get around the city on public transport. Coming from NSW, the land of completely non-functional public transport, it's been a novel concept. We currently have an embarrassing 3 vehicles (the 3rd is a work car that is part of the Cunning Plans Dept's job package). I drive pretty much everywhere since my health prevents long distances of walking and there is no public transport near us. By moving to Melbourne, we hope to become a one vehicle household. A number of our friends in Melbourne don't own vehicles and are loving it. We probably need to maintain one vehicle, mainly due to the nature of the CPD's work involving site visits. We also need something that can transport to the two dogs when necessary. I'm hoping we can get rid of the current vehicles and get something more efficient an environmentally friendly. The CPD has been thinking of a DIY electric conversion for a while so that might be a goer.

Job Opportunities
This is a big one. While we've not had any problem finding work in the Illawarra, we've both hit points in our careers where we want to do something different and that something isn't on offer here. I'd like to get into government policy, especially environmental policy, and the CPD would like to do engineering that isn't coal-enabling and is more along sustainable design lines. Melbourne presents much better opportunities for both of us to end up doing something we really want to do.

And of course the is the attraction that is Melbourne itself. The number of environmental and sustainability focused groups and events is staggering.

So the plan is to think about what we want to do with our house (sell or rent), start applying for jobs, and then find somewhere to rent in Melbourne (definitely not buying while the market is this insane). It feels a bit sad to be leaving the house and the garden that we've put a lot of work into. The garden I don't feel too sad for as the joy in gardening for me has always been about the process of doing it, not the end result so much. Until we actually up sticks and move, I plan to still be gardening as often as I can. I'm excited about the prospect of starting a new garden and even the challenge of gardening at a rental property where we may need to be creative.

Bring on 2010 - Year of the Move.

Oh bugger!

2009-11-06T14:33:00.004+11:00

I just wandered down to the vegie patch to plant another row of carrots and put the corn in and discovered that when the Cunning Plans Dept was doing his slug patrol last night, he forgot to close the vegie patch gate properly. Which means the dogs got in...

This is all that remains of the broccoli:
Every plant has been pulled out and chomped. There are only the remnants of leaves and roots. They also ate the top off the lettuce that I was allowing to go to seed, flattened half of the onions, ate the parsley that was in a pot down to the stubble and because the beds were wet from the rain, left inch deep paw prints through most of the beds.

On the plus side, the carrots look okay, as do the onions that were along the lower edge of bed 3. I think the bean seedlings will pull through as they only look a little knocked, not ripped out. The strawberry plants are okay, though there is not a red strawberry in sight. They also appear to have left the rhubarb alone.

So on a positive note, it could have been worse. But still...BUGGER!

Free Tomatoes

2009-11-04T16:48:00.000+11:00

This year's tomato raising resulted in around 90-100 seedlings. Around two weeks ago, natural attrition had reduced this to 86 seedlings. I planned to only keep around 10 for our plot, so 70+ seedlings needed to find new homes.

14 plants went to Dad
10 or so were set aside for friends
16 where swapped at the Community Garden Vegie Swap (I took along 44 and brought home the excess)

A stock take revealed I still had 28 plants I didn't want to keep. The solution? Put them out the front with a sign saying "Free Tomatoes" and see if anyone will take them.
Sign writing credit goes to the Cunning Plans Dept who thought it might be wise to put some kind of limit to remind people that taking all of the seedlings at once may be greedy (trying to encourage community sharing etc..). We also made sure that the boxes we put them in were old cardboard boxes we wouldn't miss if they were taken or damaged.

We put the seedlings out on Saturday 31st, thinking that perhaps if there was anyone out trick or treating for Halloween they may wish to add some tomatoes to their booty. By Sunday evening, 4 seedlings had gone. When we got up on Monday morning and went out, the whole lot had gone. Boxes and all. At least they left the sign!

While the point of putting of the tomatoes out the front was to give them away, I'm a little disappointed that someone took 24 seedlings, and the boxes, in one go. I'd like to think it was an enthusiastic gardener, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it is more likely someone who will probably try and sell them at the markets to make a quick buck. I guess even then they'd still eventually end up in someones garden.

Community, fresh produce, and education

2009-10-24T21:00:00.001+11:00

Today is the 350.org International Day of Climate Action and we've marked it in our own small, local way.

This morning I headed over to the community garden for the monthly Waste Not! Fruit and Vegie swap, loaded with my excess tomato and capsicum seedlings.

Which I exchanged for 2 grapefruits, 4 oranges, some carrots, rhubarb, parsley, and ginger. I also bought a loaf of bread that the Port Kembla Men's Association had baked in their wood-fired oven.

It was a great day to be out in the garden and I enjoyed catching up with people and enjoying a cup of coffee courtesy of the Men's Association.

After heading home briefly for lunch, I went over to Futureworld Eco-Technology Centre to join the Cunning Plans Dept who had headed over in the morning to help with their open day. The open day ran from 10am to 2pm and I understand that they had a really good turn out with over 100 visitors through the doors. They also had an Ideas Tree at the centre for people to write down their ideas about what we can do to move towards a future of 350ppm.

In the evening, we looked at the 350.org website and were amazed at the number of actions and photos flowing in from around the world. Over 5200 events across 181 countries. It feels awesome to have been a part of that and to see so many people being passionate about this.

Update: The Futureworld action photos can be found on the 350.org flickr site here. Wish we'd remembered to take some photos at the vegie swap with the 350 motif.

Tomato seedlings

2009-10-23T13:19:00.005+11:00

I just counted 86 tomato seedlings on my front doorstep. This is actually less than was planted due to a bit of natural attrition.

I am resolved to only plant 6-8 tomato plants in the vegie patch this year (10 at the most), partly due to space limitation and partly so we're not drowning in tomatoes in a few months. So why do I have so many seedlings? A few reasons:

I'm giving some to family and friends who didn't have time for raising from seed.
I have a number of different varieties (mostly heirloom varieties) and loads of seed
I knew some would either die or be a bit pathetic and this allows me to pick the healthiest looking ones.

The excess seedlings are not going to waste though. Once I've sorted through the seedlings and picked the ones I'm going to plant and set aside some for family and friends, the rest are going to the Waste Not! Vegie Swap tomorrow.

This year I'm following Peter Cundle's advice and being very cruel to my tomato seedlings. He recommends planting them into small tumbler sized containers (or put several in a punnet) and only giving them enough water to stay barely alive. Apparently this will make for tough plants. Molly-coddling is expressively forbidden.

I've planted mine into yogurt pots and a few 3-4 to a punnet/round chinese container. I sprinkled a little sulphate of potash around them, as recommended, and I've been trying to only water them when they are dry or starting to wilt a bit. I must admit that being cruel to my tomatoes does feel slightly counter intuitive, but hopefully the reward will be nice sturdy plants that produce loads of fruit. I'm holding off on planting them out until they start to show signs of flowering, though at the rate they're going this could be a while yet.

Looking back through my photos from this time last year, it was about this time that we bought a couple of tomato seedlings, which then put on a huge amount of growth through November. The photo above was taken mid November last year showing the first fruit forming.

Sustainable living: Tank water

2009-10-20T13:23:00.001+11:00

The plumbers came yesterday to do the final stage in our project to get tank water connected to the house. Our two 7000 litre rain water tanks are now connected to a pump, some filters, and plumbed into the house water system. The tanks have a float switch which will switch us back to town water if the water in the tanks run too low. We can also manually switch back to town water if we want to, for example in Summer, if we are getting low on tank water, we might decide to use the tank water for the garden and the town water in the house (as rain water is better for the garden than town water). We don't have a flow meter on the tank system yet, but will be looking to get one soon so that we can still keep track of our water usage.

The Cunning Plans Dept did some calculations and reckons that based on our average rain fall and the collection area of the roof, tank water would be able to cover about half of our annual water usage.

Does it feel any different? Well the taste is definitely different. Rain water tastes much milder and doesn't have that slight chlorine after taste. The water pressure in the house is also less than we had with town water. This doesn't seem to be a problem, but I have noticed that obviously things like the washing machine take longer to fill. It does enforce less water usage in the shower! Also psychologically, I think being aware that you're using water from your own tank does make you think more about your water usage.

The next step will be to get the maximum usage out of our water and get a grey water system running under the backyard to water the trees and shrubs. And we'll also be looking at other ways we can reduce our overall water consumption so that tank water becomes a larger percentage of our total usage.This is the photo of us in our backyard, next to the vegie patch (with the two 7000 litre tanks on the right) that we submitted to the Alternative Technology Association's online event for the 350.org Global Day of Climate Action (this Saturday, 24th October). The ATA is aiming to get 350 photos of real people living sustainable lives. You can check out their gallery here. I like how the photos capture a wide range of things from big projects to small steps.

This saturday, if you're in the Wollongong area, why not check out the Waste Not! Vegie Swap at the Wollongong Community Garden and pop into Futureworld Eco-Technology Centre in Warrawong.

Garden Challenges: Strong Winds

2009-09-29T15:56:00.003+10:00

Wollongong can be a bit of a windy place, especially at certain times of the year. We're fortunate that we don't tend to be as exposed to the wind as other places due to being on a hill and the backyards on either side of us are higher, giving us a little bit of protection.

However the two days of strong winds last week were certainly exceptional. First was the red dust storm on 23/9 and then the buffetting winds on 26-27/9.

We only suffered one main garden casualty with the winds, which was the snow peas. They simply couldn't hang on to the vegie patch fence with those strong winds. Most of the upper stalks snapped and fell over. I went down to the patch yesterday and trimmed off all the broken stalks. One plant had broken right down to the ground. The other four plants appear to still have some new shoots forming lower down below all the breakage, so I'm hopeful we may still get a bit more life out of them.

Surprisingly, the broccoli seedlings survived, despite no real protection. The young fruit trees also seem to have survived, though the leaves on one of the apples have all wilted and shrivelled, but I think it was doing that before the dust and wind. Hopefully it will come good. And the apple that I had suspected was dead as it showed no sign of life while the other four were growing leaves and flowers, it has a tiny bit of green showing in the top bud.

Operation Potato Patch

2009-09-20T17:00:00.003+10:00

We love spuds, so there was no question that our vegie patch plan would include spuds and lots of them. In anticipation of great mounds of spuds, I eagerly bought a "gourmet combo" of seed potatoes. The pack included six varieties, each with around 8 tubers. The Kipflers and the Nicolas went to Dad as we was keen to give those a go. That left us with the remaining 4 varieties (Desiree, Kind Edward, Royal Blue, and Cranberry Red), or 32 tubers.

Now here is where doing the maths before getting too carried away would have helped. According to a variety of sources, our seed tubers needed to be planted in rows 40-80cm apart with 25-40cm between the spuds along the rows. The packets the seed tubers came in recommended 40cm x 40cm. Now 32 tubers at those spacings meant we were pretty much looking at not only an entire bed, but a bed larger than any of our existing ones. Since we've been thinking about extending the vegie patch down the hill and adding an extra bed anyway, we figured that a no-dig potato patch would be a great way to start.

Preparation and materials

Because gardening in our backyard involves lab-proofing, we needed to figure out what we would use as a barrier around the new patch. The long term plan is that we would use the 2 pool fence panels from the old vegie patch to extend the new vegie patch. However, we're not ready to move those yet so we needed an interim measure. We decided to go with chicken wire.

The no-dig method involves layers of straw, manure, and compost, plus a bit of blood & bone. We already had a good amount of compost and some blood & bone, but needed to buy straw and manure. A trip to Bunnings later and we had 8 bags of pulverised cow manure, 3 bales of sugar cane mulch, and a 10m roll of chicken wire.

Constructing the potato patch

A no-dig patch, as the name suggests, involves no digging. Given our horrible heavy clay soil that is full of rocks, we're a fans of no digging. However, we did need to mow the grass and weeds down, which also served to mark out the area.

While the patch will mostly be a "mound", due to the slope of our yard, we needed something along the lower edge to stop the whole mound slowly sliding down the hill. We re-used some edging from one of the old vegie beds.

To try and keep the kikuyu and weeds at bay around the edges of the bed, we laid down wet newspaper. Unfortunately we didn't have enough to cover all the bits we wanted to, so we will have to add to it later.

The fence was the next thing to go up. The Cunning Plans Dept made some stakes out of branches from the old tea tree and we stretched the chicken wire around the patch, leaving a "gate" at one end.

Next was the layering. Normally with a no-dig patch, you could put the seed potatoes straight on the ground and pile the layers on top. As our ground is hard clay, we figured we'd give our spuds could use a layer between them and the soil.

First we sprinkled a generous amount of gypsum over the ground, which will help break up the clay. Next was a layer of one bale of sugar cane mulch and 4 bags of cow manure mixed up.

The seed potatoes were laid out on this layer, which was ~6-7cm deep. Due to a slight glitch in my mathematical abilities, we had to adjust our layout a bit, but ended up with 3 rows with 9 spuds in each row, with spacing ~40cm x 25cm. I did at least remember to make a note of what we planted where in my garden diary. This, you will note, is only 27 spuds. As it turned out, we only had 30 tubers and I'd previously bought 3 "grow bags", so the leftover 3 spuds went in those.

We then continued with the layers. Sugar cane mulch, then the rest of the cow manure, blood & bone, then more sugar cane mulch, then a layer of compost, and finally a bit more sugar mulch on top. We'd been progressively watering in the heap as we went. Fortunately, the weather decided to be helpful and just as we finished the final layer, the skies opened and we got a brief downpour. I still gave it a bit of Seasol after the rain for good measure.

The final step was to stake the bottom edge of the chicken wire and rig up a bit of plywood (re-cycled from the old dog kennel) as a gate. Voila! One potato patch.

Recap and lessons learnt
We didn't really have an idea of how much manure and straw we would need, but as it turned out we needed more than we got. Ideally, we would have liked to have had the heap at least 30cm deep, but it's probably more around 20-25cm deep. As we will need to keep adding to the heap as the potatoes poke up through the top, we're going to need to get much more straw and manure. Total depth will need to be 50-60cm.

While we like growing our own food for the joy of it and also to grow varieties you can't get commercially, we also like to look at the cost breakdown of growing our own vs buying from the local fruit & veg store. For reference, the rough costs:

8 bags of cow manure - $44, will need more so add another 10 bags @ $55
3 bales of sugar cane mulch - $36, will need more so add another 3 bales @ $36
10m roll of chicken wire - $25
Seed potatoes - $22
Grow bags - $13

That's a total of ~$230. If we have good yields, that will be ~1kg per plant, so 30kg of spuds. Current spud prices are ~$2-3/kg for bog standard spuds, and ~$4-5 for "gourmet" varieties, so we could grow maybe $90-110 worth of spuds.

However, much of the costs are because we're starting a bed from scratch, which we won't need to do in future seasons as this bed will become part of the rotation. Next season, we will only need maybe 1/4-1/3 of the straw and manure and can use potatoes from this crop as seed tubers for the next (providing no diseases strike the patch). Next year, we could only be looking at ~$50 on materials for $90-110 worth of spuds. We're also not going to get varieties like the Royal Blue or Cranberry Red at the local fruit & veg.

In terms of time, the whole exercise took the two of us from around 10am to 3pm (with an hour break in the middle for lunch). The absence of digging meant that than heaviest labour was really moving the bags of manure and strewing them over the bed.

Powdery mildew

2009-09-17T17:00:00.000+10:00

I recently discovered that one of the snow peas was not looking very well. It's leaves had become yellow and mottled. Not knowing what it was, but guessing it was some kind of disease, I pulled the plant out hoping that it would save the other 5 snow peas from the same fate. A week later I could see that the neighbouring plants have developed odd white-ish spots on their leaves, with some of the lower leaves starting to yellow.

From reading some of our gardening books, I took a guess that this could be a fungal problem. A bit of googling later and I believe we have powdery mildew, which can affect plants like snow peas and is probably the result of my late afternoon watering, a few humid evenings and the way the lower parts of the snow peas are dense in foliage which restricts air movement.

I had a look for some organic options to deal with powdery mildew and found a few home remedies. The main one is a milk spray, which is 1 part full-cream milk to 10 parts water. Unfortunately, I didn't have any milk, so I decided to try another recipe, which used 7 teaspoons of bicarb soda, in a bucket of water with enough soap to make a lather. I mixed this up and put it in a little spray bottle.

The other advice on powdery mildew was to remove the worst affected parts of the plants. I removed most of the lower sections of the snow peas. This will also help air circulation around the plants. The lower halves looked a little naked, but I hope it will help. The rest of the foliage was sprayed with the bicarb & soap spray. I did this in the afternoon once the patch was in shade. I've also made a note to be careful watering in the afternoon. While I water at ground level, the spray tends to wet the bottom 10cm of the plant.

The other thing I did notice on the snow peas, which clued me in to the fact that it might be a fungal problem, was the presence of a number of yellow and black ladybirds. I remember from doing my first year biology bug project that these ladybirds feed on fungus. A quick look on the CSIRO entomology website and I found these little ladybirds are Illeis galbula and feed almost exclusively on powdery mildew. Definitely good bugs to have in your garden.

A few days later and the spray seems to have stopped the powdery mildew from worsening or spreading further. I think I'll leave the plants for a bit to see how they go and let the ladybirds feast on the remains.

Operation Apple Orchard

2009-08-08T17:00:00.000+10:00

Having received our five little apple trees a month or so ago, it was time we actually got them into the ground now that they're definitely dormant. We ordered a selection of dwarf varieties from Digger's Club which includes Rome Beauty, Snow, Jonathan, Gravenstein, and Vista Bella, which should mean that we have enough for cross pollination and a range of early through the late harvest.

Like all of our backyard garden projects, phase one involved lab-proofing the area where the new trees were going. We managed to pick up two lengths of wooden lattice from Whyte's Gully for $40. These were cut in half lengthwise to give us double the length and enough to fence off the bottom corner of the yard as a mini-orchard.

Next we planned out the spacing of the apple trees and dug the holes and put in a stack of clay breaker. After these had a few weeks to settle, we started work the last phase. The plan was to sheet mulch the ground of the orchard with newspaper and mulch to conserve water and also to give our new trees less competition from weeds and the ever invasive kikuyu. We had recently helped our neighbour seriously prune and remove some bottlebrushes that had gotten too big and were taking over his clothes line. All the prunings had been thrown through a chipper we hired so we had a nice big pile of mulch.

The clay breaker was struggling with our heavy clay soil, so we decided to backfill the holes with some "vegie soil" (leftovers from the load we bought to top up the vegie patch) and plant the apples into small mounds and built up the area in between them with mulch.

For each apple tree we made a small mound, hammered in a stake (made from branches pruned from other trees that had dried out), up-ended the trees from their pots, teased the roots a little, then spread them over the mound and covered with more soil until all the roots were firmly covered and there was a small "well" at the top of the mound. We trimmed the trees to 30cm about the graft, as per the instructions that came with them, and loosely tied them to the stakes with bits of old pantyhose. The trees were then watered in with some seaweed solution to help ease the transition.

The area in between we covered with wet newspapers. We had about three wheelbarrow loads (courtesy of my parents saving their newspapers, thanks!). It didn't quite cover the whole area, but was enough to start with. We then covered the newspapers with a thick layer of mulch. Later, once the newspaper and mulch have had a chance to rot down a bit, we're going to put in some ground cover plants between the trees.

The end result, as the Cunning Plans Dept put it, looked like some sticks, tied to some other sticks, surrounded by lots of little sticks, but come spring there will hopefully be some new green growth.

Bottled water vs tap water

2009-07-08T20:37:00.003+10:00

I was listening to Triple J on the way home and Hack was doing a piece on the town of Bundanoon, which is just up on the highlands from us, and their plan to ban bottled water. And now it looks like the NSW Premier is following suite and phasing out the use of bottled water in NSW government departments and is planning a public campaign to discourage people from using bottled water.

I really support discouraging the use of bottled water if there is an easy to access supply of tap water. Our office tea room has always had a chilled filtered water spout for filling bottles and I would certainly prefer to fill up my glass for free as often as a like during the day than have to buy bottled water. I'm not sure if a ban is the way to go, but in the case of workplaces where it is fairly easy to install chilled filtered water fountains for staff use, then I think that's actually a nice policy that sets a good example.

I support encouraging people to drink water for both hydration and as a healthier alternative to soft drinks. I certainly don't like the unsustainable aspects of bottled water production. To me, it's excessive processing, packaging, and transport to provide something that for most people they can get for a fraction of the cost from the tap, and it hasn't had to travel anywhere near as far. I don't have as much of a problem with the concept of bottled water as essentially a boutique drink (i.e. you're purchasing the unique characteristics of water from a particular place) than I have with it being used as an alternative to perfectly acceptable tap water purely because of convenience. That is more typical of the "want it now" convenience attitude that disregards unsustainable processes and production in favour of something that requires little or no effort on the part of the consumer.

I think there are three main reasons that people drink bottled water:

the tap water is not potable
the tap water is drinkable, but you prefer the taste of bottled water
you don't mind tap water, but when you're out, there aren't always convenient places to fill a bottle up or you don't have a bottle with you, so the only option is to buy water if you want to drink water instead of soft drink (probably because you're health conscious).

My guess is that in Australia, the biggest group would be the third lot, where the issue is more that of availability and convenience than a distinct aversion to tap water. I'm in the third group. I don't like soft drink. If we're traveling and I get thirsty, I'll buy bottled water. However, at home and work, I drink tap water. I also tend to have a bottle of tap water in the car with me. When that runs out, I buy bottled water and am often annoyed that I have to pay more for it than some sugar, colouring, and preservative loaded soft drink.

I think the key is providing an alternative. In cities that have perfectly drinkable tap water, providing places for people to fill up with filtered, chilled tap water, for minimal cost, is going to be the key to getting people to switch from bottled water. I think if the choice started to become available, most people would take the cheaper option over bottled water. Once that is set up, a ban is probably not necessary as the main consumers will be those people who are purchasing the water for its taste (same as someone would buy a bottle of coke because they like the taste) and those who are purchasing it because they don't have drinkable tap water.

I can see this becoming a bit like alternatives to plastic bags. It took a bit for the idea to take off, but once the major supermarkets started supplying "green bags" for purchase at the checkout it was easier to buy reusable bags, and then it is just getting into the habit of bringing the bags to the supermarket. The plastic bags are still there, but there are places that now charge for plastic bags (e.g. ALDI) and I don't think it will be long before paying for plastic bags is required. There will always be some people who will use plastic bags, and pay for them, because of the convenience factor (and we can glare disdainfully at them as we fill up our reusable green bags).

If you could convince major outlets like supermarkets, fast food chains, and service stations to have a filtered water refill station (for a small refill fee), then I think it won't take that long for people to get into the habit of having a reusable bottle with them. And if you can purchase a reusable bottle along with the refill, then that makes it all the more easier. Once a pattern is established it is a strong incentive for cafes and other stores that would normally stock bottled water to consider a filtered water fountain. Most office-type workplaces should also be able to provide filtered water without much difficulty. I would also love to see how the Bundanoon proposal of having filtered water fountains in the main street goes as that would be great if Councils could consider free filtered water fountains. Outdoors ones are probably targets for vandals, but perhaps having them in Council facilities such as swimming pools, libraries, halls etc.. would work.

I can also see the reusable bottles being a great marketing tool and potential fashion item, as it would be easy for companies to come up with funky designs. Just look at all the "green" bags out there that are used to promote all kinds of things and also as trendy fashion statements.

So I think this idea has merit and it certainly has my support. I look forward to seeing how Bundanoon go with their proposal and the proposed public campaign that the Premier has suggested.

One man's trash is another's treasure

2009-06-08T19:30:00.000+10:00

While we were out and about today we decided to pop into Whyte's Gully, the local resource recovery centre (aka the tip). We weren't looking for anything in particular, more just seeing if something would inspire us.

We did score two relatively long lengths of wooden lattice fencing (capped on all edges), which will go towards vegie patch fencing for $40. Also spotted a pile of 34cm square floor tiles, in a white/offwhite colour. We've been meaning to replace the floor of the ensuite bathroom and at $1 a tile, these were a bargain. We took all 40 of them. We'll probably only need around 15 for the ensuite, but we could then do the floor of the toilet to match.

Normally I skip past the various homewares as they're usually broken or otherwise no longer useful for their original purpose. However I stopped a large punchbowl was sitting on a table. It had the cups all piled in the middle and was half full of rainwater and various muck. I started taking the cups out and they all looked in good nick. The little plastic hooks that allow the cups to hang from the bowl were also there. The bowl itself looked fine and had a matching smaller bowl inside it. As I emptied it there was broken glass in the bottom, but not from anything from the set. I'm pretty sure it is identical to a set my Mum has. So for nostalgia sake I thought I'd take it home. We asked the guy how much and he said it had been sitting their for so long that we could take it for free! Score!

We got it home and gave it a clean up. All the glass is in good condition. No cracks or chips. Only one of the little plastic hooks is missing. One cup has an interesting manufacturing defect were it is a bit wonky on one side. But all in all, a gorgeous set. And to think that someone took this to the tip! I mean, I can understand taking stuff to the Salvos when it goes out of fashion or selling it on eBay, but the tip? The stuff people throw out continues to make me boggle. Still, I've gotten a gorgeous punchbowl set for free so I'm calling that a win for today.

Waste Not! What to do with excess produce

2009-06-01T21:00:00.000+10:00

On Saturday, we went to the Waste Not! Vegie Swap held at the Wollongong PCYC Community Garden. It was our first time and the second time it's been run locally. We first read about it at Happy Earth and thought "what a fantastic idea". One of the things we've realised through our gardening adventures is that you tend to get a glut of produce and there is only so much you can eat, preserve, freeze, and offload to unsuspecting friends and relatives. Sadly our vegie patch didn't have a whole lot in it right now that's ready to harvest, except for the abundance of basil. However, we were interested in seeing what it was all about so armed with many bundles of basil, and some rosemary and thyme thrown in for variety, we headed over.

There seemed to be a reasonable turn out, despite the chill in the air and the intermittant drizzle. There was an interesting selection of produce that people brought along to share. The swap arrangement was pretty relaxed. We picked up some bush limes, brazilian tree cherries, tumeric, a lettuce seedling, and some cucumber seeds. But most of all, we had a lovely time meeting the people there and having a look at the community garden. There was also coffee and freshly baked bread courtesy of the Port Kembla Mens club.

We'll definitely be back, even if we don't have much in the garden. We're also hoping to get along to some of the community garden working bees to learn some more about gardening from the old hands.

Green comfort

2009-06-01T19:30:00.000+10:00

We decided a while ago that a spa was not only a cool thing to have but would help with some health maintenance issues. Fortunately a spell of intense work provided the funds for it and after some back-verandah-meets-chainsaw action, we have a spa sunk into the back deck. How decadent. Now for the green accounting side of it:

New timber for deck mods - locally treated waxwood from plantation timber.
Spa itself - australian manufactured with exception of pump and electronics
Support pedestal - spare bricks and a paver lying around the house plus 1 bag of mortar
Water - 1500L from our rainwater tank
Heating - Currently electric system using 100% Greenpower from JackGreen.

The first heat-up took a whopping 77kWhrs of electricity, which is more than a week's worth of our normal power consumption, or in other terms, enough to run the fridge for 2-1/2 months. Holding it at 34degC overnight took 13kWhr and for the daytime 6kWhr (outside temp a rainy 8~16 degC).

As the fibreglass body only has a ~3mm coating of expanded foam coating as insulation, I stapled some sheets of plastic to the underside of the edge supporting timbers and pulled them all together. While I was doing this it was noticeable how warm the air was under the enclosed but not sealed deck. After the plastic was installed it was noticeable the temperature difference inside and outside the plastic, so it appears to be working. I also took the time to seal the corners where the curved spa sits in the square framed deck, as it was possible to feel the hot air rising from these small gaps. In time I'll put some thermometers around to measure exactly what's going on and how much effect it's having.

Ultimately I hope to majorly reduce the power consumption by connecting to a solar tube water heater which I picked up at 50% off while buying some tanks. This will get plumbed in as a recirculating closed loop system to provide heat to the spa, via a heat exchanger (as soon as I find or make one!)

So who says going green rules out some of the nicer things in life?

Oh, and I may tap some of the water off to spoil the dogs with hydronic floor heating for winter...

The war on slugs

2009-05-13T20:15:00.004+10:00

Just when I thought our vegie patch was rather blessedly free of garden pests, we have had an invasion of slugs and the rotten buggers have targetted our strawberry patch.

Around a month ago, one of our strawberry plants started to fruit prolifically, producing what looked like they would be big luscious fruit. Then to our great disappointment, just as the fruit was ready to pick, we'd discover that some rotten little pest had gotten to it first! At first we couldn't see any traces of the culprit and suspected birds, but then we found the tell tale silvery trails.

First we tried pouring coffee grounds around the patch, having read that the caffeine is enough to make slugs and snails keel over. That didn't seem to deter them though, so onto plan B - Beer!

We decided to try two different traps. One is the standard chinese container buried to ground level. The other the CPD came up with, which uses a cranberry juice bottle that is partially buried with an openning cut into the side. This one has the advantage of being relatively rain proof. That night, the CPD decided a spotlighting mission was in order to check the effectiveness of the traps.
The mission uncovered slugs that were indeed going for the beer...having a drink and then crawling back out! The beer was about a day old by this point so the CPD tried some fresh VB, which seemed to have the desired effect (i.e. slugs turning themselves inside out). So, mission accomplished, the CPD packed up the spotlight and headed back the house...and forgot to close the gate to the vegie patch, leaving it open for our two beer-loving puppies.

The next morning, there was no beer, no traps, no slugs, and worst of all, no strawberries! After all of that we've decided that a few spotlight missions and two bricks will do just fine for slug control.

Hey Pesto!

2009-03-22T16:07:00.004+11:00

Since the last update, the vegie patch mk II has been going well. The strawberries, tomatoes, capsicums and basil have all taken off. Even the parsley I thought had surely fried to a crisp on those hot summer days is making a comeback. Unfortunately the rainwater tank has run dry again so the patch is now dependant on my ability to lug the watering can up and down the yard.

The most productive plants have been the basil. They are all around 50-60cm high and full of lush big green leaves. I keep pinching off the flowers to spot them going to seed too early. And what does one do with an abundance of basil? One makes pesto, of course!

Phase 1 - Collect basil

There is something immensely satisfying about wandering into the garden with a basket and a pair of secateurs for a spot of harvesting. This collection made hardly a dint in the crop.

Phase 2 - Mix with other fine ingredients

Throw freshly picked basil in the food processor with some pine nuts, garlic, extra virgin olive oil and salt. Whizz to a coarse mush. Stir in some freshly grated parmesan cheese. Scoop into jars. Cover with a layer of olive oil.

Phase 3 - Pesto!

I now have three jars of home made pesto. I didn't use up all the basil I collected (there is only so much pesto one can use and my folks are blessed with equally productive basil plants so they don't need any). The leftovers will be destined for bruschetta or pizza. I'm looking forward to having some simple dinners of hot pasta with pesto stirred through.

I'm really enjoying the harvest end of the gardening cycle. It's lovely to be able to eat fresh produce, straight from the garden. I've been enjoying our carrot crop, one carrot at a time. The rest get left in the ground until we're ready to eat them. The broccoli heads are getting to a reasonable size, albeit most of them are a tad mutated from pests getting to them.

My fig tree (Black Genoa) arrived a week ago. Silly me didn't transplant it straight away so it started to look a bit poorly. I've now transplanted it into a bigger pot, but it still looks poor (mostly because all the leaves dropped off!). I picked up some Seasol from the nursery today and will give it a good feed tonight and hopefully it will rally. Should it survive my appalling mishandling of it, it should grow to be a lovely bush with lovely plump juicy figs. It's staying in a pot as I don't want to end up with a 10+ metre high monster.

I've also ordered five apple trees and a cherry tree from Digger's club (I should really not be allowed near their catalogues). They're all on dwarf root stock so they won't get huge. They should arrive in a few months (Digger's only ships them when they're dormant to minimise damage). The local nursery has a good range of citrus and other fruit trees so there will be lemons, limes, mandarins, mangoes and whatever else looks good coming as well.

Reducing our carbon footprint

2009-02-25T16:46:00.004+11:00

A few months ago, the Cunning Plans Dept worked out our carbon footprint using some thingummy on the web, and to be blunt, we suck. The web thingy did break it down into areas and while the house and general living wasn't too bad, our air travel and two cars were seriously in the "not good" category. Between this and generally become aware of a lot of great sustainable living options out there, we've been more motivated to make change to our lifestyle to live more sustainably.

Here's what we've got so far:
- good roof insulation and the house is double brick so it's go reasonable insulation, especially downstairs.
- electricity is 100% greenpower (i.e. all from renewable sources).
- energy saving light bulbs in all light fittings.
- dual flush installed on the downstairs toilet (upstairs already had it)
- grey water from shower now watering the backyard lawn (hose runs into a buried piece of ag pipe so it waters underground). Unfortunately we can't easily access the laundry grey water and we'd have the problem of what to do with it since you can't store it and we can't just have it run out into the back yard where the dogs can get to it and make themselves sick.
- 2500L rainwater tank installed down the side of the house and piping connected to water the back vegie gardens. We also have the "wine barrel" rainwater tank at the front of the house and it waters the front garden.
- garden is watered predominantly with rain water. So far this year I have only had 5 days where I needed to use mains water. When we use mains water, we use a watering can and limit usage. We also use water crystals in the soil and mulch to help minimise water requirements.
- All food waste composted (either compost heap or worm farms). We also use newspaper with mulch.
- growing some of our own vegies (not enough to avoid the shops completely, but a start)
- using organic gardening practices (no pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilisers etc..)
- recycling anything that can be recycled. Also making use of recycled materials around the house (e.g. turning bottoms of plastic bottles into seedling pots).
- using predominantly organic or at least "minimally processed" food, preferably locally sourced. I do still get torn between supporting organic farmers or local business (food production method vs food miles debate).
- using grey water safe cleaning and laundry products and not overusing these products (slight problem is that we have a cleaner and I don't know what he uses)
- clothes and linen from sustainable fibres like hemp, bamboo, or organic cotton.
- No plastic bags. In addition to the ubiquitous "green bags", I am a real fan of Onya weigh bags. They're small nylon net bags for loose fruit & veg like beans, peas, cherries etc.. They come in a little pouch that you can clip to your green bags. Actually, if you're crafty, you could probably make some. I also love those lightweight nylon bags that fold in on themselves into tiny bundles that can be easily carried in the handbag for emergencies.

Here's what we're working on:
- solar panels for the roof. Maybe solar hot water as well, depending on the outcome of our solar assessment.
- Magnetite window insulation (alternative to double glazing, which seems impossible to get) on the upstairs windows and master bedroom downstairs. Got a quote, just need to arrange a time to get everything measured and installed.
- another rainwater tank, preferable a big one on the lower terrace of the back yard to collect off the entertainment area roof.
- replacing the incredibly un-environmentally friendly Rodeo ute with something else. Since we're not doing SCA and therefore are not lugging copious amounts of stuff all over the country, we probably don't really need a ute. We do need a vehicle that the CPD can easily take onto work sites and preferably something that can transport the dogs when required. A station/sports wagon sort of thing would probably do. The CPD wants to go electric and possibly build his own fully electric car, since there are no fully electric cars on the market in Australia. If that turns out to be a longer term project, we may just go for something more fuel efficient like a Volkswagen Jetta Sportswagen TDI.
- in the next few years, replace the Elantra with something more fuel efficient. It actually isn't too bad, but we're hoping that in a few years, the electric technology will have improved and we can replace it with an electric car. I am tempted by the Honda Civic Hybrid if a fully electric option isn't available.
- fly less. Again, with us not doing SCA and therefore not flying interstate or to NZ every month, this should reduce. I know some airlines provide an option to purchase carbon credits with your flight, so maybe that's something to look into, because I would still like to get the odd holiday in every now and then.

Things that are a bit of a challenge:
- the two vehicle thing. The CPD needs a vehicle for work as he travels to a lot of sites that are inaccessible by public transport. Theoretically, I could use public transport to get to work, but I run into the problems of a) Wollongong public transport is abysmal, b) it would constrain my work hours in terms of when I arrive and leave and I need some flexibility here, c) lugging stuff to and from work on public transport would be an issue given my current feebleness. I know, lots of excuses. I honestly do think that if I lived somewhere with great public transport (like Melbourne), I'd happily be a public transport convert. Sadly Wollongong has a long way to go (well, NSW in general if you broaden it to include Cityrail). Cycling is not an option as I'm afraid of cars and lack the physical strength.

So that's where we're at. I'd be interested to hear what other folks are doing on the sustainable living front and any tips and tricks.

Garden update

2009-02-23T19:53:00.004+11:00

With the hot weather finally breaking and some decent rain, things have started to take off again. About 5 days before the rain started, our 2500L rain water tank ran dry. Within 3 days of rain, it was full again.

The centre vegie patch is now looking like it has some life in it. The tomatoes are growing fast and the largest is producing fruit. The capsicums are starting to flower. The strawberries have been putting out runners like crazy and I've been nailing a few down so they'll put down roots.

This weekend I decided (somewhat belatedly) to stake the tangled mess of tomatoes in the front garden. I'd been letting them ramble, but with the wet weather they were starting to get manky.

The sunflowers have been producing a glorious display. Each plant has one big central flower, about 30cm in diameter, but also a bunch of smaller side flowers. They've been brightening up my house on the cloudy days.

Time to plant more seeds and this weekend I put in a row of leek seeds and a row of celery seeds into the seed raising trays. In a couple of weeks I'll put in another row, and then another lot a few weeks later. This should hopefully been I don't get inundated with celery and leeks later. I also planted a entire tray of marigolds and an entire tray of pyrethrum. The first planting of marigolds are still going well, but the first batch of pyrethrum didn't survive the heat. Speaking of marigolds, I've been collecting the seed from the dead flower heads. Anyone want any marigold seeds?

And just for Ms D, our first borage flower (bit blurry because it was from my phone camera)

In the side vegie patch, it looks like we've lost the corn crop to lots of tiny green bugs that have gotten in between the sheaves surrounding the cob. I have no idea what they are. Looks like they got into all the cobs and the kernels looked shrivelled and dry. Ah well, you loose some crops. On the plus side, the broccoli is finally starting to produce heads. Most of the plants are riddled with holes from cabbage white butterfly grubs (rotten little buggers) and I haven't managed to get down there with some Dipel to deal with them. I'm hoping that the damage is mostly to the leaves and they'll still produce decent heads. Reading my new gardening book, apparently I should have sown brassica seeds early this month and be planting out seedlings next month. I'm still getting the hang of this "what to plant when" part.

Can't wait to plant these!

2009-02-13T15:16:00.004+11:00

Look what arrived in my seed order from Digger's club this week:

Okay, I had planned to get some beans anyway, but how could I resist a name like this? Downside is their planting time is Spring, so it could be a long wait before I get to find out what "Sex without strings" tastes like. Unless I just go ahead and plant them now, given that we tend to have mild enough weather on the coast they may just make it. Tempting.

Vegie patch - now with plants!

2009-01-25T14:22:00.004+11:00

Last weekend I finally got around to transplanting plants from the multitude of pots cluttering the back veranda into the vegie patch. And voila!

The top bed (which is the one on the left) has all the strawberry plants. I tried planting out a couple of the runners. One survived, one didn't, but the surviving plants are doing well. One is currently flowering and fruiting.

The next bed has most of the more established tomato and capsicums that I had in pots. I've also planted the basil seedlings between them. They seem to be going okay, but the leaves are going a bit yellow. Ms D has mentioned this is probably because I've mulched with lawn clippings and a bit of blood and bone should do the trick.

The next bed has some of the tomato and capsicum seedlings that were still in the seedling trays, plus the parsley and coriander seedlings.

At the end of each bed I've transplanted the pyrethrum and borage seedlings. I'm hoping these will be good companion plants and help deter bugs. Unfortunately, they're still tiny so they aren't doing much yet.

Of course, there has been one minor hitch in that the days after I planted everything into the vegie patch have turned out to be among the hottest and driest all month. I did mulch everything with lawn clippings to help reduce water loss. The smaller seedlings seem to have suffered the most. C'est la vie. I have more seeds.

However, the Cunning Plans Dept has rigged up a pretty nifty system to get rain water from our rain water tank to our garden without exposing parts of the system to unintentional "lab testing" by Hudson and Gracie (they eat hoses, hose fittings, anything really...).

The 2500L rain water tank sits down the side of the back veranda (Fig.1). The CPD then dug a trench on the top terrace to sink a pipe that runs from the tank and pops out the side of the terrace retaining wall. A length of hose then runs from the tank, through the pipe (Fig.2) and pops out the retaining wall, which is contained within vegie patch MkI (Fig.3). The hose is then threaded through the top of the weld mesh fence of vegie patch MkI (Fig.4) and at the end of the fence there is a hose attachment (Fig.5)to we can attach a hose to water vegie patch MkII. Because the tank is uphill, there is no problem with water pressure.

This weekend we bought some weeper hose to put under the mulch in the vegie patch as the main irrigation system. This will probably involve burying a pipe between vegie patches 1 and 2 so that we can leave the irrigation hose connected and just turn it on and off from the tank.

The other plants are doing well. The first sunflowers have finally opened. The marigolds are in bloom. They are incredibly cheerful looking flowers. The bonus compost tomatoes out the front appear to have both romas and regular tomatoes.

Vegie patch - now with soil!

2009-01-04T17:11:00.004+11:00

While I know it seems a rather obvious statement that a vegie patch has soil, but up until a week or so ago, mine didn't. There was not enough dirt from the terracing to fill the beds and what was there was mostly clay and rock. The gypsum had worked a treat on the clay, but I simply needed more soil and the compost heap isn't THAT big.

So the Cunning Plans Dept went and got a truckload of soil, which was dumped on our front lawn. This needed to be moved down to the back yard. Given my feebleness it was fortuitous that my brother needed some extra cash in hand and was willing and able to do some manual labour. So he and the CPD spent a day using a small tipper to load soil into the trailer, attach trailer to tipper, drive down the neighbours driveway to the side fence of our backyard (after removing a panel of fence), dump soil into our yard, repeat. Once all the soil was moved to our back yard, the tipper was then used to transport soil to the vegie patch beds.

They also got the mulched the dead tree branches that had become overgrown with grass and weeds from sitting in a heap for so long. Plus some mowing and edging and the back yard is actually looking not to bad.

Now all that needs to be done is the edging of the ends of the beds, putting down plastic and gravel for the walkways and we'll be ready to start transplanting some of the potted vegies. I've drawn up the plans for the four beds. One will be for perennials (strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus, and garlic) and the other three will be annuals with rotating crops.

Meanwhile, vegie patch mkI is going berserk!

The corn have flowered and the first ears are starting to grow. Broccoli is getting huge, but no heads yet. There are bloody cabbage white butterflies everywhere and the leaves are riddled with holes, but they still seem to be growing okay. Carrots are still going well. The bonus compost potatoes and tomatoes are also growing fine.

We've also picked our first tomatoes! Some had a bit of blossom end rot, but that didn't really affect them. Nice and tasty and so red in the middle that the shop bought tomatoes literally pale in comparison. The tomato plants themselves have started to get yellowing in the leaves. I looked up some gardening books and google, but there are a apparently a lot of things that could cause yellowing of leaves ranging from the harmless, don't worry about it, to all is lost, please destroy your plant and the soil it grew in. They still seem to be growing okay and the fruit is ripening, so I'm just going to see what happens.

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes

2008-12-20T20:33:00.004+11:00

Okay, I think I can officially say now that I have an abundance of tomato plants. The rouge de marmande and roma tomato plants in the big pot are rapidly becoming too big for that pot and fruiting like crazy.

The two remaining tiny tim tomatoes (one was gifted to a friend) are starting to fruit, even the one that suffered an accident and the main stem snapped. Two of the three tomatoes grown from seed saved from a shop bought tomato are going strong and starting to flower. The other one was a bit of a runt and has been planted into the front garden to give it one last chance. The riesenstraube seedlings are in desperate need of transplanting and I planted three of them out today.

Plus, when I planted out the marjoram and thyme into the front garden I brought up a couple of buckets of compost to dig in before I planted them. I now have eleven (!) tomato plants growing amongst the marjoram and thyme. I think they may have to go as that's not really the best spot for them and I have no idea what sort of tomato they are.

Tomato plant tally: 16 regular size, 9 tiny size. Anyone want some tomato plants?

Today involved planting out a number of seedlings and discover that I am running out of places to plant them as we still haven't finished the vegie patch in the back yard. We need to get a trailer load of dirt to build up the beds, plus I thinking of doing the layers of wet newspaper thing to kill of the remaining kikuyu. Seedlings transplanted included: marigolds, borage, basil, coriander, parsley, and riesenstraube tomatoes. There are a lot in the seedling trays as I ran out of potting mix.

I've also got a good number of sunflowers growing in the front garden. The first lot of seeds didn't have a good success rate with only two strong seedlings. The second lot has been more successful. There are now 8 of them plants in two rows in the front garden.
They should grow to about 120cm tall (short variety) which is just above the lattice. In the photo you can see the little wind breaks the CPD very kindly erected when we had strong winds the other weekend.

And in breaking news, the Cunning Plans Dept has just come in with the first carrot of the season. It's just a bit bigger than "baby carrot" sized and seems to have grown straight. I was a bit worried that where we planted them might not be soft enough for them to grow straight (oh okay I confess I was secretly hoping for a bifurcated carrot). Tasted a little bit bitter though. Wonder if I need to add some fertiliser or something. They've just had compost and worm wee so far. The broccoli and corn are still going well, but no sign of broccoli heads or corn ears yet.

Vegie patch terracing and fencing

2008-12-02T20:55:00.004+11:00

The Cunning Plans Dept did a bit more work on the terrace edges of the vegie patch and also put the fence up. The weather wasn't so great so not a lot of work got done.

On to the pictures.This shows the terrace edges of the four beds.

The wood is all recycled, most of the long planks you see are the joists from the spare room floor that was ripped out recently. We will need to get some extra bits from somewhere to fill in the gaps.
The fence isn't overly attractive, but will serve the purpose of keeping the two destructodogs out. Next stage is to mark out the paths clearly and then cover the bed area with some plastic to solarise the ground and hopefully kill the Kikuyu. We'll also need a trailer load or two of soil as there isn't enough there and we don't have enough compost to bulk it up.

The vegie patch mk I is still doing okay. The carrots, broccoli and corn are doing well. A few corn stalks broke in the high winds the other weekend and something is eating the broccoli leaves. Here have an action shot of me picking off caterpillars:
This one shows the irrigation system the CPD rigged up before. We pour in water at the top, which flows into the plastic container and trickles out the irrigation hose. Pretty nifty.

My seeds arrived from Diggers Club so on the weekend I set up a couple of propagator trays with parsley, coriander, basil, pyrethrum, marigolds, and borage. The sunflowers and riesenstraube tomatoes have started to sprout, but no sign of the yellow capsicum yet. Perhaps they're a dud. They were collected out of a capsicum I bought from the grocers so I wouldn't be surprised. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Also transplanted a couple of mint cuttings I had propagating in water. The big tomatoes are growing great and there are lots of fruit appearing. The tiny tim tomatoes are also starting the fruit. One of them had a minor accident and the stem got snapped, but there are some lower shoots that will be fine.

Seeds

2008-11-19T19:35:00.004+11:00

Part of my Diggers Club membership involves getting some free seeds (from a limited selection, but hey, they're free). My first selection of free seeds from the Christmas catalogue arrived today. I got garlic chives, pak choy, red onion, and Martino's roma tomato (a dwarf roma).

Not really the season for onion, so those will wait until next winter, however the others I'm going to plant into the propagator trays on the weekend. The pak choy should grow quickly (40 days from plant to harvest), so what I'll probably do is plant a few every couple of weeks so I'll have a steady supply.

The other propagator tray now has a few sunflowers starting to poke out. The seeds have literally rocketed out of the soil and are still unfurling. No sign of the riesenstraube tomatoes or yellow capsicum yet.

I've ordered some other seeds and things (not free) that should arrive next week. All very exciting!

Dad has also given me a lovely little book called "Nature on your Side", which was published circa the 1970s and is about companion planting and organic pest control. He already had a copy and then found another copy amongst my nanna's books. Some of the stuff is fairly common knowledge, but some of it is quite quirky. Apparently flies hate the colour blue and will never settle on it. No one knows why, but kitchens painted blue stay free of flies. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but it's quirky.

I've decided I'm going to get some pyrethrum and african marigolds as my pest control companion plants (plus they're pretty, so bonus there).

We have tomatoes

2008-11-16T18:50:00.004+11:00

Well the beginnings of tomatoes at any rate. The first rouge de marmande tomatoes have just started to form.

My tomato leaves are being eaten by little green caterpillars. This weekend I practiced one of the organic methods of pest control, i.e. sat down next to the plant, turned every leaf over and squished the little buggers. I'm thinking about getting some pyrethrum plants, both as companion plants and so I can make a spray from the flowers to keep the bugs down. Also got some whitefly, but they don't look like they're doing much damage.

This weekend saw a lot of transplanting. The capsicum seedlings have been transplanted into seperate pots. The thyme and marjoram have been transplanted into the front garden. And a couple of rosemary cuttings that had started to put out roots after sitting in water on my window sill have been transplanted into pots. The strawberry plants continue to do well, though I wish they'd produce more!

Something the Cunning Plans Dept did a few weeks ago was transform an old wine barrel that we picked up a few years ago into a water tank for the front garden. I finally remembered to take a photo as it is kinda neat.

There is a diverter on the downpipe, which goes into the hole that was there when we got it. The CPD has added a tap at the bottom. Unfortunately, the wood has been so dry for so long that it isn't swelling enough when wet to seal, so we're probably going to have a put a liner in it to make it more useful. We've also ordered a commercial rain water tank to put down the side of the house for more serious water storage.

Vegie patch planning

2008-11-08T21:25:00.004+11:00

Today we mapped out the new vegie patch in the backyard. It will be around 5x5m, maybe 5x7.5 depending on how many fence panels I can score from Mum and Dad. Aiming for 4 long beds about 4x1m. G mowed the patch so I can see how big it looks (I'm crap with spatial visualisation). We dug a small hole to check the soil. Like the rest of the yard its mostly clay and rocks.

We popped down to Kennards Hire and got a rotary hoe (and said "Hi" to Dan). This turned out to be a bit of an adventure. The thing was a bitch to get down to the backyard. I then went off to Bunnings and when I came back G had the rotary hoe back up the top and Dan was getting it into the Kennards truck. Apparently grass, clay and rocks can defeat a rotary hoe. Apparently G chased it across the yard as it took off without doing much to the ground and when it did hit the ground, something broke. Fortunately he could just call Dan to come and pick it up and Kennards didn't charge us for it.

Plan B is to get one of the larger small tractor things (can you tell I vagued out when the boys started to talk large mechanical things?) It won't fit down the side of our house, but G is going to talk to our neighbour about taking it down the side of his house and through a panel of our shared fence. Hopefully that will work as the other option of manual labour will suck.

In other happy gardening news, my Diggers Club membership arrived during the week along with a book on raising heirloom plants and two packets of free seeds. They gave me some Reisenstraube tomatoes (little red grape tomatoes) and some yellow pollenless sunflowers. I'm very happy about the sunflowers as I'd been eyeing them off in the catalogue. I'm a little confused by the membership, but I think I also get to select some free seeds from a variety of their catalogues. Today I got some seed propagating trays and a few more window box pots for out the front. We're going to hang them from the fence. I think I'll put herbs in those, or maybe some lettuce or asian greens.

The carrots, corn and broccoli planted down the back garden are going well. We weeded the patch today and thinned the broccoli. We should thin the carrots, but it is really hard to tell the difference between carrots and weeds at this point.

Plan for tomorrow - start digging over the front garden. I'm going to plant the thyme and oregano (which I'm starting to think may actually be marjoram, I've never been great at telling the difference) so it can spread as a ground cover. They're rapidly overrunning the pots they're in.

Tomorrow afternoon I'll be visiting Mum and Dad for Dad's birthday. I'm going to do some gardening with Dad, swap seeds and plants, collect fence panels, G is going to help him rig up some irrigation stuff, then we all have dinner. I love weekends.

The garden grows

2008-10-19T21:56:00.004+11:00

It's Sunday evening and after another weekend the garden has grown. Admittedly most of the work was done by the Cunning Plans Dept because I was being feeble, but its a team effort. The old herb garden got dug over with some compost to make it more habitable for plants. Then a trip to get seeds. We've put in carrots, broccoli and sweet corn. The CPD also engineered a cunning drip line arrangement so I only need to pour water in a funnel on our top terrace and it will run down to a small tank and slowly ooze out the drip line (which is good since I'm not very good with stairs at the moment).

We also have two tomato seedlings (one Rouge de Marmande and one Roma) that are in a pot out the front (north wall, better sun).

Thank you to Anne for pointing me to diggers.com.au. I think I will order one of their mixed heirloom tomato seeds.

The couple of geranium cuttings I took and randomly shoved in the ground seem to be doing well. Plus the Flametree seems to have perked up. It was looking very pathetic for a while. Something had eaten at the leaves then in a high wind they all blew off! I thought it might be a gonner, but lo and behold it has shiny new growth at the top and on the side.

Other highlights of the weekend included Hudson going a round with the neighbours cat and losing, and some general lazy late afternoon weeding. While pulling clover out of the front lawn I got bored and started making daisy chains out of the flowers, like I remember doing as a kid. The daisy chain ended up on Rasputin, the house gargoyle (who is looking a bit worse for wear these days).

Looks like some bizarre pagan offering (which is funny since I'm about as irreligious as you can get). Maybe it will keep the mormons away.

Strawberry

2008-10-10T19:46:00.004+11:00

I'm back home. The conference was great, though tiring. Many thanks to B&k who took me touristing through Christchurch on my last day before I had to fly home. Coming home to 30+ degree heat in Sydney and a mountain of work, not great. Having a long weekend to recover though was pretty good.

I've been getting into gardening lately. It started with pottering around trying to salvage some herbs from what was the herb garden three years ago which is now an overgrown mess. Then I got some cuttings from my parents and slowly the collection of pots on the front porch has been growing. There are now plans afoot for a vegie patch of epic proportions in the backyard. Ms D has kindly loaned me some books on gardening. Apparently it's a lot more complex than just shoving plants in the ground and hoping for the best.

Why gardening? It gives me something to do while getting my daily vitamin D dose from the sunshine and with the weather fining up and the days getting longer, I'm enjoying being outside more. It does not generally involve people, so is a good hobby for an introvert. I'm also starting to be a bit more conscious about food miles and would like to grow my own produce. And it really is quite rewarding when your plants don't die, but actually start producing.

I got the Cunning Plan Dept a little strawberry plant a few weeks ago and we've both been somewhat fascinated by the progress of the inaugural strawberry. Every morning I walk out the front door and check the strawberry. Every afternoon I come home from work and check the strawberry. It makes me smile. As the fabulous Ms Belle suggested, I should actually take some photos. Here is today's progress:It's a decent size and certainly larger than the piddly little things I remember trying to grow as a child. Unfortunately this is the only strawberry on the plant so far, though there have been flowers so I assume we'll get more strawberries. We have a second plant now as well, which looks to be getting lots of new growth. Might have to get more plants if the vegie patch comes to fruition.

We have floor!

2008-09-11T20:29:00.004+10:00

In the latest instalment of the adventure of the spare room, it now has a floor again! Thanks to the efforts of the Cunning Plans Dept, we not only have floor, but it didn't end up costing anywhere near as much as we originally thought it would, coming in at around $850. Bless the engineering profession and large projects that just happen to have some excess building materials lying around.

On to the pictures. After the floor was gutted, the next stage was putting in some drainage trenches and ag pipe:

Most of this work was done while it was bucketing rain outside. As it also connects to the rest of the underhouse space, we let our two crazy labradors in to get out of the rain and be part of the action. I think Hudson possibly consumed a kilo or so of clay that had been excavated. Not the brightest puppy.

After the drainage was done, new beams needed to go in as well as the Bondec, which will provide some waterproofing. Supervisors Hudson and Gracie also pictured:

On top of the Bondec went the reinforcing for the concrete and the hose that will become the underfloor heating:

And today the concrete arrive and the CPD and a mate spent a good couple of hours spreading concrete around the room and shovelling the excess back out the window. The end result is floor!

So now we wait for it to dry and then have then fun job of washing the walls and generally cleaning the room up.

All this is of course in aid of reducing the mould in the house so that it doesn't continue to slowly poison me. Let's see the mould try and make it up through Bondec and concrete!

Bye bye floor

2008-08-24T18:48:00.004+10:00

Well the Cunning Plans Department (CPD) has sprung into action on the mould remediation mission and the spare room has been gutted. Built in wardrobe, floor boards, joists, the lot. To save dragging mould ridden timber through the house, it went out the window.

Several of the floor boards were so bad that they just fell apart when being ripped up. At the end, we now have a door to a hole in the ground.

As you can see, there wasn't a lot of space between the floor and the ground and the house foundations prevented any decent air flow. The CPD has also taken the opportunity to knock a few bricks out (into the rest of the under house space, not outside) to get some more airflow.

The current plan for the floor is concrete, with some kind of layer that inhibits moisture. The CPD has been asking around his connections to see if he can source some cheap. We're currently looking at around $2-3K to do the floor, then we have to decide what to put on the concrete. Probably carpet since it is only a spare room.

The mouldy floor boards have gone to the tip, along with the carpet and some of the other items in the room that had too much mould to save. The joists are piled in the backyard to dry out.

Unfortunately, moving everything out of the room has stirred up a lot of mould in the air. It got to the point last week where I thought I was coming down with the 'flu. I'd feel lousy in the morning, but once I got to work I'd feel fine. Then within an hour of coming home I'd start feeling 'fluey again. However it should get better as we clean things up.

And of course all the other items from that room are now crammed into other rooms and under the the stairs. This has provided a good opportunity to do some culling of stuff. So far I've dropped off two boot loads of stuff to the Salvos. Mostly bed linen (after it had a good wash to get rid of the musty smell), books and a few small furniture items.

I also unearthed two crates containing my old goth clothes and paraphernalia (candle holders, incense burners etc..). The clothes have been washed and the other stuff I'm cleaning up and it will go on ebay in the near future. It will probably make some young emo very happy.

Well that explains a few things...

2008-08-10T17:37:00.004+10:00

I'm allergic to mould. I'm not sure exactly which moulds are the worst, but my specialist recommends avoiding as many as possible. I've been on immunotherapy for moulds (along with cats and dogs) for around 4-5 years now. There was a big improvement in the first 3 years and then the symptoms started to come back.

One of the theories is that there may be a correlation between the increase in symptoms and when we moved into our current house. It is set into a hill and gets a bit damp downstairs. We've had forced ventilation installed under the house and G has been doing other bits and pieces to try and get some better drainage happening. The other day he went under the house and noticed that the corner that our spare room sits over is a bit of a "deadzone" in terms of airflow and that the underside of the floor boards was looking mouldy. That room always smells musty and we don't use it much, so it was a good candidate for phase one of ripping up the carpet and checking the state of the floorboards.

So today, with the help of a non-allergic friend, the spare room was emptied. When the filing cabinet was moved, here is what was underneath:

Well that explains why I always felt crap after being in that room for longer than 5 minutes and why the files always smelled like mould. Within about 15 seconds of me coming into the room to see the mould patch, my sinuses exploded and I had to flush them with saline solution, take an antihistamine and stay upstairs for a while.

Other patches were found under other bits of furniture. The carpet was quite damp. G cut the mouldy patch out of the carpet and the underfelt was also manky. So that went and the floor boards underneath were soft.

All the carpet in the room has now been ripped up and the floorboards washed with a bleach solution. The floorboards will probably have to come up as well. This picture shows the spidery black tendrils of the mould spreading across the floorboards:

This isn't boding well for the rest of the downstairs floor, but it does mean that we can do some mould proofing when putting in new floor. Looks like we're in for a bit of work on the house. If it was a better market it would be tempting to just sell the house and buy one that doesn't have a mould problem. Depending on how we go with abating the mould and whether that makes a difference with the allergies, we may still have to look at moving.