Fresh food, or the freshest food?

Lettuce in a terracotta planter.

The first year or so for my garden wasn’t very productive. The few edible plants that did grow were eaten by pests or not big enough to bother harvesting (this is what I get for using the cheapest available potting mix).

I buried most of the plants as they ended their productive lives. This made the soil richer, which meant that over summer there was some food actually worth harvesting – mostly zucchini and tomatoes. Heading into this garden’s second year, we’ve also harvested one onion (with more still growing) and a fair amount of lettuce and parsley (again, with more still growing).

The biggest challenge is keeping bugs off the lettuces. I’ve been squashing them as I find them, and we’re getting help from a gekko which recently moved in. It tried to get inside the apartment but I caught it and put it among the pots, it seems much happier there.

So, why grow your own food?

• The fresher food is, the better it tastes. And you can’t beat “picked less than 2 mintues ago” for freshness.
• Commercially produced food varieties (like you find in supermarkets) are generally chosen for how long they last and how well they travel, and flavour usually suffers. With home gardening, travel and storage are generally non-issues, so you can choose better tasting varieties.
• Setting up the garden cost a few hundred dollars, but in the long run eating our own stuff will be much cheaper than buying food. Aside from the initial setting up, I have to do around an hour a week of work there. To buy what it produces would cost more than an hour of my wages in my day job, so it makes sense financially.
• It gives me something to talk about with the neighbours.

We’ve just put in seeds for leeks and have some winter fruiting tomatoes & a something else coming soon (i.e. when I get around to collecting them) from my brother. I’ve also got some kind of flower (I forget what) starting to come up in some of the unused planters, and I plan to get a dwarf variety of some kind of fruit tree.

2010 Projects: Rescheduled

In light of my uni commitments, I have had to reorganise a few of my 2010 Projects. So here is the new list, with changes.

• Start a garden This is still going ahead, but will be on a smaller scale at least to begin with. And probably now won’t involve many food plants or growing things from seeds.
• Go open source I will need to stay dual-boot because I will need Windows for uni. I still plan to use Linux more though.
• Get my weight down to 85kg This is still going on, I am still losing 0.5-1kg a week on protein shakes and exercise.
• Start my own personal archive This is on hold until I have enough money to buy rather than build a NAS.
• Work out what’s going on with uni Done (and the reason I’m rethinking the rest of the list) In March I will start my last remaining elective, and later in the year I will start my final project for completion in mid 2011.
• Build a file server from the old computer bits I have lying around on hold, and may now not happen at all.
• Knit a decent pair of socks Sock making is on hold. Instead I have decided to make a throw rug out of the huge amount of feather yarn I have lying around. The rug will be made of 10cm x 10cm squares, but I’m saving myself some sewing by knitting in strips. Pictured is the result of 2 hours work last night.
• Start writing a book on hold
• Move this blog to its own domain on hold (for now), may become part of a new addition to the list.
• Blog at least 3 times a week going strong!
• Be more adventurous with food (was “Learn to cook more”) still going, last week we tried different types of sausages. This week we’re going to dinner at a place we’ve never been to before.
• 52 Books in 52 Weeks not happening. I still read for 15-20 minutes before bed but I’m taking of the pressure to read a book a week.
• Develop an awesome multimedia portfolio A new addition to the list, and one that’s needed because of my poor academic results. I’m starting by doing tutorials every day.

So there we have it – this is what I’ll be doing this year. Notice some parts are much more specific than the original list, this version looks more achievable (bleep-bloop).

2010 Projects: Start a garden: Before

One of my 2010 Projects is to start a garden. During the last half of 2009 I was inspired by my brother John’s gardening efforts (some of the more recent ones are chronicled on All the rest have thirty-one). The problem my wife and I have is with where we live. It looks like the buildings in our apartment complex were once townhouses, and each one was converted into upstairs and downstairs flats, and we got an upstairs one. Downstairs got the original townhouse’s garden, all we have is a paved courtyard at the bottom of our stairs.

Anyway, this post on Green Renters shows that people in rented apartments can have beautiful gardens. So we’re going for it. The first step is to look at what we’ve got to work with:

View from the door, looking towards the street.

Our rubbish bins are usually in the gap behind the wall, I moved them for this photo.

The view "on the ground"

As you can see, there are some weeds growing through cracks in the pavers. The door on the left leads to a sort of storage shed under the stairs. The door has definitely seen better days – that’s what happens when you use interior paint outside! Also on the right you can see the electricity meter box for the complex, we need to make sure the meter readers have access.

Further back, around the corner from the stairs

This is further back away from the street, sort of around the corner behind the stairs. The water tap works. Again you can see weeds in the cracks between pavers. Just out of shot to the left is the motor of our split system air conditioner.

So there you have it. I took these photos at around 11:30 am, you can see where the shadow of our building falls. My plan is to put some pots along both sides of the area, and maybe a raised garden bed or some larger pots in the “around the corner” area. It all has to be easily removeable for when we eventually move out.

52Books: The Organic Suburbanite

For first book number 1 of 52, I read The Organic Suburbanite by Warren Schultz. I received the book for Christmas from my brother John and his partner Cass (who run All the rest have thirty-one which is turning out to be a useful and entertaining green living blog).

The book is a guide to living the “American dream” lifestyle of a big house in the suburbs without being so damaging to the environment. That kind of book can be intimidating, but this one isn’t. It’s obviously written for the novice. The book is divided into three sections: The Organic Suburbanite at Home (includes kitchen, laundry and cleaning tips), Around the Suburban Yard (maintenance of paths, decks, cars and swimming pools), and Suburban Lawns and Gardens (gardening). I live in a rented apartment so two-thirds of the advice simply does not apply to me. It is still good, but I would recommend apartment dwellers pick up one of the many eco-cleaning books out there instead. The book is written in plain language, which makes a change from a lot of these kinds of books. Also, use of colours, spacious layout and photos of 1950s American suburbia make it a joy to read.

All in all, it’s worth having on the environmentally friendly bookshelf.

2010 Projects

I don’t really do new years resolutions, as nobody ever really keeps them. When you’re ready to make a change, you will, no matter what the calendar says.

Having said that, I have been planning a few projects which just happen to be ready to start in January:

• Start a garden. This will pose a few challenges on its own. We are renting an upstairs flat, but there is a paved courtyard downstairs. The only people who go in there are electricity meter readers and people visiting us. My plan is to (1) get rid of the weeds growing through cracks in the pavers then (2) get some pots and start growing things.
• Go open source. I have this machine dual-booting Windows XP and Linux Mint, but I end up using Windows most of the time. I’m going to back up all my data, then convert this machine to run only Linux.
• Get my weight down to 85kg. I’m currently 102kg. BMI calculations say I should weight 75kg, but when I was at my fittest and healthiest I weight 85. I may have failed the pool body fitness challenge but I have been losing half a kilogram a week for the last month (due to having protein shakes for breakfast). I will achieve this goal by eating healthier and getting exercise. As soon as this post is up I’m getting on the stationary bicycle.
• Start my own personal archive – categorise and label all photos, documents, etc. that I have lying around. This will involve sorting all the digital photos on this computer and printing the best to put into albums. It also means organising my filing cabinet so I can find things. And getting a scanner so everything can be digitised. And coming up with an off site back up of the digital bit. And documenting family events. Eventually I hope to digitise the family history archive and add that too.
• Work out what’s going on with uni, and finish off my degree. I’ve been doing what was meant to be a 3 year degree since 2002. This is the year (or maybe early 2011) I’ll finally finish it off.
• Use the random computer parts lying around here to build a file server. Then all my files should be easily available on the LAN.
• Knit a decent pair of socks. At the moment I’m in the learning stage, making socks that at least resemble socks but they’re not great.
• Start writing a book of some sort. I have a few ideas but I don’t want to share until it’s ready.
• Move this blog to some other hosting with its own domain. That way it will still exist if anything happens to wordpress.com.
• Blog at least three times a week. I know when I started I wanted to do every day, then twice a week, and it’s actually been more like once a fortnight.
• Learn to cook more. I know the basics, but I need more techniques and recipes. I’m getting bored of eating the same stuff every week.

So there it is… my non-resolution list of things I want to achieve in 2010.

Beat the heat, not your meat.

So much for my plan to blog at least twice a week! This week I’ve been house, cat and garden sitting while my brother is in Sydney. Also we’ve had unprecedented high November temperatures this week. We have weather like this most years but usually in late January to early March.

My brother and his girlfriend are vegans and their garden is their main source of food, so it’s very important that the plants survive at least until they get back (then if they die it’s not my fault). They said to water once a day, but after a few things wilted I stepped that up to twice a day. And it seems to be working (although a few things under a gap in the shadecloth did die off). I have been using a watering can so as to avoid breaking South Australia’s water restrictions and also because it makes it easy to get the water to the roots.

Watching things grow in the garden here has inspired me to see what I can grow at home. The wife and I live in a tiny upstairs apartment with a small paved courtyard at the bottom of the stairs, so there’s nowhere we can really dig. We’re going to try some potted plants in the courtyard and maybe some indoor plants. The plan:

• Step 1: do some research about what plants are likely to work.
• Step 2: source the plants, pots, etc. (as cheaply as possible, we’re on a budget)
• Step 3: grow stuff
• Step 4: profit in the form of lower grocery bills. Hopefully the savings here will outweigh what we spend on plants.

hmm, what was going to be a post on the hot weather turned into a post about gardening. The heat related post will come tomorrow.