Sunday, 27 December 2015

Our garden today

It is a gorgeous day in Melbourne, today. A perfect day for pottering in the garden. I've been watching the bees collecting pollen and picking herbs/rocket/tomatoes for lunch. 

Below is a photo of our dragonfly amongst the rosemary and lemon thyme. 


Above is our self seeded cherry tomato plant. It's been very tasty and very prolific! 
Above - our passionfruit grows skyward. I'm hoping the possums wil keep away and this can cover our pergola to shade the Western aspect of our house. 

What have you been up to in your garden today?

30 Tips for Reducing your Footprint

There are many more ways to reduce your footprint and be more sustainable, but here's a few starters...

  1. Reduce your waste - save leftover food scraps like carrot tops, onion ends, potato skins - to make a more flavourful stock or broth. If you're not making one straight away or you don't have enough for a broth, store in the freezer until you have enough.
  2. Compost scraps - get or make a worm farm, compost heap or worm tubes in the garden or bokashi bin in the house. 
  3. Support Local Business.  We love to shop at our fabulous local grocer Green Onions 
  4. Minimise packaging - select 'loose' fruit and vegetables. Avoid those single use polystyrene trays and plastic wrap. Do those 2 apples you're buying really need a plastic bag? 
  5. Take your own grocery bags to the shops
  6. Make and take your own vegetable/fruit bags out of scrap materials - I've used leftover mesh curtains and tutu material before, sewn up with some light ribbon to make a simple draw string bag. Much better than those single use plastic bags!
  7. Consider your purchases - do you really 'need' that new item? Can you repurpose an old item or make do without? 
  8. Visit second hand/op-shops for gadgets/kitchen items/books/toys/clothes/furniture etc etc etc
  9. Plant a vegie garden. Buy some seeds to plant, share a seed packet or seedling punnet with a friend. Growing your own food reduces your weekly bill as well as 
  10. Plant a tree and increase greenery around your house. Ask a neighbour for some cuttings from their established plants. More greenery will help to cool your immediate environment and help keep moisture and life in the soil and wildlife in your area.
  11. Turn the lights off if not in the room! 
  12. When you're in the room - do you really need the light on or is it just habit? Consider whether or not opening your curtains will provide adequate lighting for the task.
  13. Get the kids outside in the fresh air and using their imaginations! TV and electronics use electricity and may limit their imaginations 
  14. Buy in bulk to reduce trips to the shops.
  15. Make your own preserves and condiments from scratch - from bulk food such as tomatos (sugo/tomato passata), mayonnaise, chutneys, jams and fermented vegies.  
  16. Use of fans in Summer. Try a simple fan in the room instead of having the A/C on in the whole house 
  17. Use of external blinds/awnings, internal curtains/blinds to keep out the Summer heat or keep in the Winter warmth
  18. Consider use of window films or window coverings such as Renshade to reduce radiant heat in Summer
  19. Plant some deciduous shade trees or climbers to shade out North/West facing windows in Summer to keep your house cooler
  20. Buy some cutlery from a second hand shop to keep in the car or in your handbag/backpack to use when out and about instead of using plastic cutlery/containers.
  21. Take a metal water bottle with you on the go instead of purchasing a bottle out and about
  22. Keep a coffee 'keep cup' in the car or in your handbag/backpack in the case you'd like to purchase or make your own coffee/tea at work or out and about. Saves a takeaway container each time.
  23. Reuse envelopes as scrap paper.
  24. Install a water tank to capture rain water off your roof.  If you're building a new house, you can plumb these into your toilets and washing machine. 
  25. Use your greywater from your washing machine to water plants. 
  26. Keep a bucket in the shower or bath as the water is heating up - this can be used to flush the toilets or water your newly planted vegie garden! 
  27. Take a look at the chemicals in your shampoo/conditioner/washing detergent - consider switching to something a little kinder on your skin and environment. You may even consider making your own. (Recipes to follow!)
  28. Reconsider using conditioner in your clothes washer. This is full of VOC's - consider replacing with a few drops of essential oils for scent and some vinegar for softness in the final rinse instead. 
  29. Toilet rolls have many uses (your imagination is the limit!) including making your own Christmas bon bons, making cars or telescopes or binoculars for the kids, folding over one end and fill with soil to make a little planter for seeds which can be planted directly and compost into the soil. 
  30. Replace that single use plastic food wrap! Purchase or make your own beeswax cotton covers which are reusable and cover food just as well. 

What other methods do you use to reduce your footprint?

Saturday, 26 December 2015

Home-made skin care with essential oils

DIY Skin Care with Essential Oils


I have two lovely home-made skin care recipes that I use.  Easy and quick to make, and last a long time . They make my skin feel lovely, cost a lot less than what I see in the shops and contain ingredients that are readable, edible and I'm happy to put on my skin.

The essential oils I use are doTERRA oils which are certified pure therapeutic grade oils - I am confident in their purity and amazing properties and contain no fillers or pesticides.  Click here to shop for doTERRA oils. This link will also take you to joining as a wholesale member and purchase oils at 25% off with great deals and the ability to receive free oils!

Dual Tasking Skin Care: Facial Scrub and Moisturiser 

Ingredients

  • Raw honey 1/2 cup
  • Coconut Oil 1/2 cup
  • Exfoliant - coconut sugar (fine) or sea salt (fine)  1/4 cup
  • Essential oils of choice - 3-4 drops (2 drops each of lavender and 2 drops of Frankincense oil)

Method

  1. Melt the coconut oil by placing in a glass jar/cup and place this cup into warm (not hot) water
  2. Add the remaining ingredients and whisk together until combined. This may be easier as the coconut oil cools (solidifies) slightly
  3. Put into a container. 
I use this in the shower on a damp face and leave on for at least 30 seconds while circling on face gently. Wash off with warm water and pat face dry with towel. Some coconut oil on the face is moisturising.

General Purpose Moisturiser 

Ingredients*

  • Shea butter 1/8 cup
  • Beeswax 1/8 cup
  • Coconut Oil 1/8 cup
  • Olive Oil 1/4 cup
  • Essential oils of choice - 3-4 drops (I use 2 drops each of lavender and 2 drops of tea tree oil)
*You may need to play around with proportions to end up with a consistency that you like. Increasing the olive oil will make it more runny, increasing the shea butter and beeswax will make it harder/thicker.

Method

  1. Melt the top 4 ingredients in a double boiler - a glass or metal bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. 
  2. Once cooled (but not yet solidified), whisk in the essential oils.
  3. Pour into sterilised glass jars.
I love using this one on my arms and legs. Great for Summer!


Do you make your own skin care? What recipes and ingredients do you use?

Would you like to purchase some amazing oils at wholesale prices while reducing the toxic load on your family?  Click here to find out more!

Essential Oils

Health: Another Option....Essential Oils

Along the road with my son's health, I have stumbled across essential oils. I hadn't heard of them before other than the occasional use of eucalyptus oil for getting stickers off the fridge and lavender oil in the washing machine rinse cycle instead of toxic-chemical-laden conditioners.

My favourite essential oils:

On Guard

Contains: Wild Orange, Clove, Cinnamon, Eucalyptus and Rosemary offers a fragrant, natural and warm scent safe to use on counter tops, or to diffuse in your home. We use as an immunity blend in the house during Winter and when there are colds hovering at work or kinder. I also use a couple of drops in a glass roller with fractionated coconut oil and put on the kids at night and before kinder/work. 

Balance

A grounding blend, containing Spruce, Ho Wood, Frankincense, Blue Tansy and Blue Chamomile with fractionated coconut oil. A lovely fragrance.

Lavender Peace

Contains: Lavender, Sweet Marjoram, Roman Chamomile, Ylang Ylang, Sandalwood and vanilla bean. Our family uses to diffuse at bedtime. Can be added to epsom salts prior to adding to a warm bath to create the perfect escape with its peaceful, renewing fragrance.

Tea Tree

Known for its cleansing properties - has many uses. We use for disinfecting and on woulds to cleanse. 


Lavender

Also has many uses. We use as an antibacterial and a few drops in my beeswax/shea butter/coconut oil/olive oil moisturiser that I make at home. 

Frankincense

I had heard of frankincence but until recently, I never knew this was an essential oil. I put a couple of drops of this in with On Guard in the diffuser / roller bottle, as well as a few drops in the facial scrub/moisturiser that I make (coconut oil/raw honey/coconut sugar). 

Diffusers 

Cold diffusers are another method to use oils around work or at home. I have one downstairs and one in each bedroom for the kids. These are fantastic to diffuse the oils in the air. I have one on going nearly 12 hours a day when we are home. I use during Winter and when illnesses are in our local community, when studying, when cleaning, and during the evening prior to bedtime.

Please click here if you're interested in trying essential oils or even purchasing them at wholesale price. Contact me if you have any further questions!


Do you use essential oils? How do you use them?



Click here for a few home made recipes for skin care....

Friday, 25 December 2015

What can I compost?

What can I compost?

Depending on the type of composting system you use - practically anything and everything!  Check out this page here for some different types of composting systems

Imagine if every single person composted all of these things! How much waste could we save from landfill?!! And how much happier would our gardens be - and our wallets too (from saving us from buying compost!)! The Compost Revolution estimates that they have saved over 2,500,000 kg of waste going to landfill by providing compost bins and worm farms for residents of Australia. Join the revolution!!




We have a little food scraps bowl by the kitchen sink and chopping board - all food scraps go in here! This includes avocado pips, mango pips, cherry and stonefruit pips.



Worm farms, compost bins, direct digging:

  • Food scraps
  • Grass clippings
  • Tree prunings - the smaller the better
  • Eggshells - crush before you add
  • Human urine
  • Leaves
  • Cardboard
  • Paper and newspaper (Avoid glossy or colourful)
  • Coffee grounds
  • Vacuum bag contents
  • Dryer machine fluff (we use only very occasionally)
  • Tea Bags
  • Saw dust
  • Seaweed
  • Weeds ** I will stew these in a bucket of water with a lid for about a month - to ensure all is dead - and use the water for a fertiliser and the slimy muck for the compost bin
  • Hay
  • Manure - animal
  • Dirt from your garden  -adding microbes from the garden may also help speed up the process. You can do this with your worm farm, too!

What to avoid:

  • Small amounts or avoiding garlic, onions, citrus. 
  • Meat - attract vermin
  • Dairy - attract vermin
  • Large bones - will take a long time to break down - unless you don't mind!
  • Diseased plants or plant clippings
  • Inorganic material
  • Human and dog/cat manure
With the Bokashi bin you can compost dairy, meat scraps, onions, garlic and citrus. 

How to:

The idea is to have a balance between nitrogen and carbon so that the organic contents breaks down well and quickly. High nitrogen materials are generally your 'wet/green' things -like food scraps, green grass and clippings. Carbon items are newspaper/cardboard or dry clippings.

Make sure you have layers of items - e.g. everytime I add food scraps I'll put a few handfuls of damp shredded newspaper or clippings. I don't have half a bin full of food scraps with half a bin full of newspaper on top. 

Increasing the speed of composting:


Moisture
Moisture is important! Make sure you have a moist compost pile. This may mean you need to water it as you add each layer, particularly if you have a lot of materials to add at once. It should not be sopping wet, but a dry pile will compost very slowly. 

Turning 
Turn your compost pile - this will help speed up the process. The pile should heat up if the moisture, mix and size is right, however may cool down after a few days - therefore turn every few days as the pile starts to cool down. 

Location
Have your compost bin in the sun - heat will help to break down the pile.

Wee wee wee!
Instead of needing to flush the toilet and wasting water every time you wee - why not wee on your compost pile? Ladies may choose to use a jar and the gentlemen of the household can go direct! It is a great source of nitrogen and a great water saver.  I've definitely noticed speedier composting since encouraging this method....

Size
Having a larger pile with larger mass will also help to break down the pile quicker as it can heat up quicker. Don't forget to turn every few days to keep the temperature up. 

Is there anything else that you add to your pile? What types of composting system(s) do you use?

Sunday, 27 September 2015

A Beautiful Spring Weekend

I had a lovely Spring weekend this weekend, both days were glorious and spent some lovely family time up in Sherbrooke at the Piggery Cafe - definitely recommended for those with kids as there are many fun things to play with before and after eating and a lovely space to roam.

I also had the chance to get out into the garden and do some much needed tending. I continue to espalier our three olive trees lining the driveway - pinched out the tips and a little bit of pulling and tying them onto the espalier wires. Looking better - hopefully they will bush up. One of them even has some developing fruit!

I also dug out a failed pear espalier and transplanted elsewhere - and replaced with another tree that I harshly pruned at ~30cm from the ground. It looks pretty sad but hopefully it will start sprouting below the cut and give me a nice espalier shape. One of the espaliered apples looks good so far but it is hard being patient and cutting where I need to cut!

Also got into the shredding of newspapers today and soaked them in water before putting them into each of the compost and worm farms. Should do the trick for now - I often neglect the carbon additions to the compost so tried to make up for it today!

Photos to come - and an update of the front garden as it is awakening out of winter!

blackberries hiding between the strawberries and kale


What did you get up to this weekend?

Compost, compost, compost!!

Composting is an amazing process. It is a fantastic way to reduce your food waste and direct that straight into the garden to benefit all of your plants by creating beautiful additions to your soil. So....let's get down and dirty and talk about compost!

Why do I compost? 


I have been shocked at the amount of food scraps we generate each day. I have a large bowl on the bench top and I toss all food scraps into it and never in the bin. We accumulate one full bowl every few days from a family of four. Mind you, not much food wastage (i.e. food we don't eat) but the scraps from the inedible bits of vegetables (I used to save in the freezer for stocks but I don't make so much in the Summer). So....I wanted to divert this from going directly to landfill and 'close the loop' a little more in our household.

I have looked into various ways of composting and found that a combination of methods few methods suit us best. We utilise several different methods of composting our food waste:
         1) Bokashi (fermenting) bin
         2) Worm farms
         3) Compost bins (rubbish bins converted into compost bins)
         4) Digging food scraps directly into the garden

1)   Bokashi Method

Wanting to reduce the amount of waste we produced, I bought a Bokashi bin about 5 years ago, when we lived in a smaller townhouse with a much smaller backyard. It is recommended to leave the food scraps fermenting for at least a month and then direct dig into the backyard. It also has a tap at the bottom to allow you to drain off the fermented juice to dilute and put on the garden (like worm juice).

If you live in an apartment, this may be a good option for you. You could swap the juice and fermented scraps with a friend in exchange for other goods/services or swap at a local harvest share swap.

The bin is great, however, we do generate a lot of food scraps and with a growing family now, it fills within a week or so. So, I had to look into alternative methods of composting larger amounts. In addition, you'll need to buy the bokashi grains to encourage fermentation - an ongoing cost. I've seen recipes online to make your own, however I choose to spend my time on other things.


Bokashi bin hiding in the shrubs


2)    Worm Farms

Our council was offering discounted worm farms and compost bins through a program called the Compost Revolution. You do a quick quiz on the topic of composting and worm farms - and bingo - you can qualify for a discounted worm farm or compost bin if you live in one of many local government areas throughout Australia. I chose a worm farm and was soon delivered our first worm farm (below).


Worm Farm from Compost Revolution

This takes much more food waste than the Bokashi as it has 3 levels that you can add in as you go. The worms have been our first 'pet'. At the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show this year I saw a much bigger bin - The Hungry Bin (180L) and purchased that. It has been fantastic. But prior to seeing this, we just had a small worm farm and small Bokashi bin (and a family of 4). So....we needed something more!

The hungry bin:

The Hungry Bin - in the shade

Inside the Hungry Bin - insulating layer of damp newspaper

Inside the Hungry Bin - happy worms!
You can also create your own worm farm from two polystyrene boxes.

These worm farms need care as they are susceptible to changes in weather - too hot and they cook and too cold and they may freeze. Normally, worms in the ground can bury deeper but these worms can't escape as they are closed systems.

I put a large block of ice on top in hot weather and ensure the worm farm/bin is in the shade. Draping a wet towel or cloth on top can also help keep it cool. Weather in Melbourne doesn't get too cold and the worm farm is often warm as the contents break down - the worms have been okay through Winter.

Feed your worms as much as they can eat over a week period. This may be a small handful of food and increase as they multiply. I cover with damp newspaper to prevent food from getting mouldy and also to insulate and protect the worms a little.

I have also made some worm tubes out of some leftover ag pipe - I have drilled holes in the side and buried about 20cm down in the soil. Some worms, scraps and covered with moist shredded newspaper. These worms can bury further into the soil if the weather is hot.

   
Worm tube made from leftover agricultural pipe

Worm tube - behind the seat of the raised garden bed - poking out to remind me to feed the worms!

3)    Compost bins

I had a few black/metal garbage bins lying around and ended up just cutting a hole in the bottom, tipping them upside down and placing directly on the soil.  A mix of vegie scraps, dry garden leaves/waste/dry lawn clippings and shredded paper seem to do the trick.  Altogether I have 3 bins on the go. One of them has worms all through! None of them are really hot composting as I don't turn them often enough, but they do the trick.
You can buy specific compost bins, but for me, rubbish bins are cheaper and I had some lying around, as you do....


Compost bin made from old rubbish bin - hole cut out in the bottom and buried a little way in the soil
Damp shredded newspaper on top
Compost in the making underneath the newly added shredded newspaper

I alternate layers with shredded paper/dry grass,/prunings and food scraps.  It also may get a little occasional nitrogen boost thanks to our own natural liquid waste!

4) Direct Digging

The last method - digging a big hole or trench in our clay soil, throwing the scraps in, and covering over - has been a great way to directly improve our clay soil. Sure, digging a hole can be hard, but I have noticed it has really improved the soil in the back garden.  I usually do this when all other options are full!


Directly composting on the soil - compost pile

This was quite a big pile a month or two ago. Not exactly 'direct digging' - more of the 'just throw it in a pile and cover it up with cardboard/newspaper' approach.  It is covered in layers of thick, damp newspaper and a few extra clippings on top. It has shrunk down to half its size. I'm thinking I might plant an avocado tree directly in there....?

Pros and Cons of Composting

Pros
  • Reducing waste
  • Producing your own amazing compost - free! 
  • Leading to a happy garden and soil bacteria
  • Happier and more nutritious fruit and vegies that you grow!
  • Closing the loop
  • Creates a wonderful worm juice (if using worm farm)
  • Doesn't have to cost anything
  • Extremely satistfying!
  • You can move the compost bin around the garden once a full batch is made
  • Improves all soil with the addition of compost - clay/sandy

Cons
  • Possible costs associated with set up - if you choose to
  • Having to wait patiently for it to compost!
  • Warm farm needs looking after in very hot or cold weather
  • Digging holes in clay soil for direct digging method
  • You can never make enough! 

So now....click here for what you can compost!

What's your preferred method of composting? Have you had much success with it?  Let us know!