Gardeners Sustainable Living Project

I mentioned that next Saturday is earth day and that we should turn off the electricity for an hour.....   mmmm -  maybe just the lights?  Not the TV surely :)  that doesn't use much power.....

So how sustainable is my lifestyle really?

I wouldn't consider myself a "greenie" as they are called here in Australia, but the more I garden the more green I become.   As I watched five caterpillars eat half of the leaves on my lime tree I thought about the butterflies that this would produce.  If I was greener I would probably have left every Caterpillar I ever saw, but I do recognise the orchard swallowtail caterpillar and so they got to stay (just five of them mind you, I would like some limes in my future).   When you have seen a butterfly emerging out of its chrysalis something changes deep within you:

We compost everything we can and I so enjoy digging that black gold into the earth and finding my soil wriggling with earthworms.  Since we live in the tropics and everything breaks down so quickly here I add the compost to the soil when it is not completely broken down.  The final stage of composting seems to be the earthworms doing their bit, so they might as well do it in the garden as far as I am concerned.  This means I have a quick turnaround in the compost bins. (about 2 months)  Here I was emptying a full bin of compost into my new tomato bed just before the wet season started- I planted the tomatoes about 4 months later.

Note:
I do turn my compost a couple of times a week so it gets quite hot and composts quickly.  As the bin gets full I will drag some out from the very bottom where I cant quite reach down to mix it.  At this stage it mostly looks like compost with a few "undigested leaves or eggshells remaining, so this gets placed into the garden somewhere.  I don't dig it in - the earthworms do that.  I don't put it directly where something is growing - preferably where I am getting ready to plant something in the next couple of weeks, and by that time it has normally been incorporated into the surrounding soil, and I just brush away any large pieces before planting.
 I also bury all the prawns shells (we eat a lot of prawns !)   and after just a few weeks if I dig down in that same area there is nothing left, so it decomposes rather quickly.  If nothing else I am keeping them out of the landfill!  I also grow comfrey and collect seaweed and you know what that means? -  I don't have to buy any fertilizers as I am providing them all myself.  Yippee!  Here I am making some comfrey fertilizer by compressing the leaves and catching the juice in a bucket.

We do have a very small bit of a garden, but the amount of lawn compared to the rest is very very minimal - and this makes me happy.  I know this makes my garden more productive and it is giving back rather than taking from the atmosphere.  Every year I grow more and more vegetables, hoping to be able to have produce from my garden year round.   Some of the tropical vegetables I have tried and wont try again, but I have developed a few favourites.   One of the permaculture principles I really use is growing upwards - behind us there is a Telstra yard and the happy plant on their side of the fence is fifty foot high - so my passion fruit and loofah have forty feet of height to climb!  

If anything can grow up I let it, rather than scramble around taking up precious ground space.

The back corner where I grow my sweet potato scrambles over the fence, and now as the season changes I am planting butternut there - might as well get into guerrilla gardening as well!
A lot of these phrases I would have not known before I started blogging, I have learned so much about how I can improve my little corner of the world.  I have become more sensitive to what gets thrown into the bin - my hubby often says that our rubbish bin is hardly worth wheeling to the kerb these days.  That makes me happy.  I want to know that if I can possible make a difference by doing these little things day by day that I am doing my bit.  Recycle, re-use, reduce.  Earth day is good advertising to make us aware of the things we need to do for the environment, but in reality it is what we do in our day to day lives that really makes a difference.
I want my grandchildren to be able to go and explore the rain forest and breathe in that fresh pure air just as we do.

I am entering this post at " thanks for today"'s  competition,
http://thanksfor2day.blogspot.com/2011/03/gardeners-sustainable-living-2011-win.html
thank you Jan for the opportunity.  Hopefully we can all pick up some extra tips from the entries submitted.


Since I live in Australia I wont win the big prize, (boo hoo - I would love that rain barrel), but who knows, I might just win a book or something they will be willing to ship all this way.  Why don't you check out all the other wonderful ideas, or enter yourself, and remember to turn off the lights at 8.30 on Saturday March 26th.
 Happy Earth Day!