Gardening to the giggles of my littlies

With the temperature down for a few days and the clouds threatening rain, but very little to show for it, I am out in the garden.

Mostly I'm tidying, weeding and tossing on a dose of Seasol, which I have been neglectful about recently. I have noticed a few plants have self seeded from last year, so calendula and borage plants are being moved around to fill out empty patches, and I'm also putting in some seedlings of lettuce and mustard spinach from the greenhouse.

The littlies are making mud puddles and getting dirty, playing games finding homes for worms and laughing as they play. What a wonderful sound, it makes gardening even more enjoyable!

An egg that is head and shoulders above the rest

A new record. 130g.

Purple is my favourite colour

I think that most people who know me could guess that purple is my favourite colour. I have brought my love of purple into the garden with the many types of vegetables that come in purple varieties.

Here is my purple sprouting broccoli.

Rocket envy

Here is to a year without rocket envy. Last year I grew rocket, as I have done for several years. With its peppery flavour a few leaves was all that was needed to spice up a salad.

A year or so ago we were dining at a friend's house and were served a delicious rocket salad. My husband was quite impressed. He loved it. In fact, he commented a number of times how good that rocket salad was.

Well, I started to feel a little jealous of his comments about how my friend's rocket was better than mine! So, swallowing my pride, I asked her for a couple of sprouting plants or a handful of seeds.

And this year, I can have a Summer of salads without rocket envy, for now I am also growing the lovely subtly flavoured variety of wild rocket.

There are several different varieties of rocket, the very peppery standard rocket and the more subtle wild rocket, named for its wild growth habit. If you are looking at growing rocket for salads, I'd definitely recommend finding the wild rocket, and avoiding your own rocket envy.

Sowing for successive crops

Wow, Saturday already. My weekend gardening is going to be focussed on enjoying the green, the warmth and the produce.

There is a little trick when it comes to planting successive crops and that is, if you are harvesting, it is already too late to be planting out the next crop. This is, if you are wanting to avoid having a gap in harvesting.

So with this in mind, it is seed sowing time again. I currently have some great little plants in the green house ready for planting out. It is easy to see the potential growth of those plants and not think about the need to sow more seeds. I find that for each lot of plants such as lettuce, carrots and onions that I sow, they can be relied on for a month or so of harvesting in the warmer months. That means, of course, that a new lot of seeds needs to be planted every month!

What's on my hot list to sow this week:
Coriander
Parsley
Spring onions
Carrots
Lettuce
Beetroot
Radish

Think electricity

Perhaps you are wondering how we almost halved our electricity usage? When first asked months ago, I vaguely said "ummm, I don't know". But that's not a very helpful answer. I think that by then, the things we had changed had become habits. So, thinking back more clearly...

What we did do was get an energy usage meter when we had our PV array installed 18 months ago. That's when the real changes started happening.

We became aware of how much power things use and started modifying our habits at home. It was quite exciting at first, like I was empowered with the knowledge of how much power my appliances and habits were actually using. Considering we already used compact fluro globes and had changed to some more energy efficient appliances, here are 5 of our big changes.

We started doing things like turning appliances off at the switch when they are not being used. It's a little thing, but every little bit adds up and it soon becomes a habit.

We considered whether we really need to use full wash cycles with the dish washer and washing machine. In both cases, we have opted to use mainly the short wash cycles and use cold wash where possible.

We realised how much energy heat lamps in the bathroom use, as well as small space heaters in the bathroom. We now avoid using these.

I put a few loads of washing through the dryer and realised how it blew out the daily kWh for our house. The clothes airers get a fair work out in Winter now, and the dryer has been taken away to avoid temptation!

We considered how we are actually using things, like the oven. If I am baking something for more than 30 minutes I will either not pre-heat the oven or turn the heat off 10 minutes before cooking time has finished. If I'm baking for more than an hour, I might even do both. I also plan my baking to bake several things while the oven is on and hot.

Perhaps these are things that you already do. But if they are not, try making these little changes and see how your bill goes down.

ABC News piece on Sustainable House Day 11/9/2011

And here is the link to the ABC News piece on Sustainable House Day, featuring my wonderful husband and our house. You can even get a glimpse of me in the background a few times.

Greening our home

So this past weekend was focused on preparing and showing our home. Sweeping, mopping, cleaning, tidying, raking, weeding, sorting... everything that would be expected when inviting the general public into your home and nothing very interesting to blog about. What makes our home a sustainable house is probably more interesting.

The way I see it, there are two parts to being sustainable. There are the things that can be bought and installed into a home to make it more sustainable and then there are the things that can be done within the home to improve the sustainability lifestyle.

 Things that can be bought and added into a resident include a PV array, water tank, insulation, weather stripping or building vegetable gardens. These things are add ons. You outlay money and improve the energy efficiency of your home or reduce the 'carbon mile' of food. Other things can be bought in order to swap or change, such as putting in more energy efficient appliances, double glazing windows or installing water saving taps and toilets. This is an interesting one as although the new products make the house more efficient, the removal and disposal as well as production of the new fittings add to the carbon footprint of the home. Recycling or reusing fittings should also be considered in terms of reducing the carbon footprint.

 The things that can be done within the home are what I consider to be lifestyle things. This is the actions that are part of the every day. For us this includes turning appliances off at the wall, avoiding using the appliances that consume a lot of power (like hairdryers, clothes dryers, fan heaters or heat lamps), reducing the temperature that the house is heated to in Winter, or not cooling it so much in Summer. We have changed habits to collect the water before it runs warm when washing the dishes or showering, we wash our clothes using cold fast wash, and our dishes using fast wash. We have played around with the amount of detergent used to wash properly, and now only use as much as we need to. We turn off lights when not in a room and we cover ceiling cooling vents during Winter so as not to lose heat into the ducting.

 Lastly there are the choices for at home that we make in the supermarket and when shopping. The products that we chose to buy are chosen for many different reasons, such as nutrition, diet, brand loyalty, convenience or cost. The choices we make in terms of products can have environmental impact too. Where ingredients are sourced, how a product is made, the amount of packaging, the work conditions of employees and the 'after use' effects such chemical waste or solid waste, reflects the environmental and ethical nature of the products that we buy. So that is a brief view of some of my ideas. I'll collect up my green info stars and add more tips soon.

Sustainable house day 2011

Today was sustainable house open day. We opened our home for six hours to show the many and varied things that we have done to make our home and lifestyle more sustainable.

Thank you to everyone who came by to see us. It was a lovely day!

What's your garden focus this weekend?

With the sustainable homes open day coming up next weekend, my focus this weekend is tidying up the garden. Paths need sweeping, beds need weeding and a general tidy up is in order.

I'll also be combatting the weeds in the paving with boiling water. With chickens and children to think of, using a a non toxic form of weed control is especially important.

I have a bag of seed potatoes for my children to plant in their garden bed today. These are a bit special in that they are purple potatoes - all the way through, not just the skin. Won't they be fun to eat!

Even though there is work to do, Spring has turned on the beautiful weather for us! What a lovely day to be in the garden.