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.