Growing Your Own Fruit And Veg

Buying fruit and vegetables from a shop or even a local market all costs fuel - driving to somewhere, driving back again and of course the distance that the produce has come as well. Not to mention the fact that much of the fruit and veg on offer has travelled from America, China or other far-flung reaches of the world.

With higher oil prices and all this travelling, food prices have also started to rise. I have managed to buy myself literally hundreds of seeds for just under NZ$60 [convert], probably somewhere around 2000 seeds at a guess! If even 10% of them grow to maturity I will have saved hundreds of dollars at the supermarket - enough to buy even more seeds next year!

Then there are the added unknowns like pesticides, fertilisers and so on. Apples, for example, contain a natural wax on them to help retain moisture. After collection, apples are washed and their natural wax is lost. To keep them fresh, a man-made wax is applied to them to keep them fresh.

As for pesticides: "Most pesticides become inactive or are removed long before an apple reaches your table. U.S. Department of Agriculture surveys of pesticide residues on foods have shown year after year that most apples are practically residue-free, and when a residue can be found it is generally at levels well below government-established safety standards." i.e. there are some pesticides in your apple but not enough to worry about at those levels [source].

There are other market considerations to understand as well. Take for example a carrot that has two stumps and looks more like a Y than an I shape. Would you want it, even though it tastes like a "normal" shaped carrot? According to the supermarkets, you wouldn't, so these perfectly acceptable foods are simply binned in a world where people starve. [source] "Farmer Bruce Carlisle is used to seeing hundreds of tons of his potatoes rejected at every harvest. Thirty percent of the crop he delivers is rejected"

30%? That kind of waste should be illegal!

I'm not sure how well known this fact is, so I'm hoping that providing you with a little bit of background as to why I'm venturing into the world of Grow Your Own will help you make changes in your life. Even little changes, like buying a wobbly cucumber or strange-shaped potato. They taste the same so why wouldn't you? If you have kids, a carrot with two legs instead of one might be the novelty they need to eat it with a smile on their face!

I'm hoping to start to grow my own and I look forward to showing you all the various shapes and sizes of the fruit and veg that I grow. Who knows, maybe I'll be happily munching on 30% fresh food that most people never get to see in their local supermarkets...

Screen Colour

I have been aware for some time that different screen colours use more or less power than others. This is the reason behind Blackle.com, an internet search engine that is black instead of the more conventional white.

They explain the theory behind this as: "Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black: 'Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.'" Roberson et al, 2002

Initially I had decided that this was a good reason to have the blog in a cool black and green look. After designing this I was rather pleased with the outcome, until I did a bit more researching and dug a bit deeper. Should have completed my research before delving into the code, but I do like my programming...

As it emerges, CRT monitors (the old, big ones with Cathode Ray Tubes in them) use more energy to display black than they do to display white. Using a site like Blackle is great when you want to save energy.

However, LCD monitors (the new flat screen ones) use more energy to display white than they do black. As such, I feel that more people reading this site will be using LCD monitors than CRT , due to the nature of people in the west having more LCD’s and my knowing more westerners.

Scientific American's site concluded: "In the meantime, the world is evenly split between CRT and LCD monitors, totaling roughly 405 million and 401 million respectively in 2007, according to iSuppli data. So if you're still toiling away in front of a hefty CRT monitor that takes up three-quarters of your desk, then black screens will save you some energy. For those who've graduated to thinner LCD models, black screens are actually sucking up more energy then their white counterparts."

They have more info on this subject than I have included here, but I thought it was worth noting in case you are wondering about which search engine to use (Blackle is still powered by Google.com by the way), what colour to make your site, etc.

The Start Of My Sustainable Living

With oil prices rising, food prices rising and global pollution rising, I have long felt that people could do more to reduce their waste and impact on the planet. No one is going to live a life that does not in some way negatively impact on the world around them, but everyone could do more to minimise their negative impact on the planet and help affect positive change as they go.

For many years now I have wanted to grow my own fruit and veg, but doing this has never been that practical. I have lived in a house with no garden for much of my adult life and the one garden that I did have in Northern Ireland was one prone to constant flooding!

Of course window boxes were an option, but I wanted more than just a few herbs and flowers. Without a background in gardening or a lot of money, there were few options open to me that were feasible, sustainable and easy.

Such a shame considering the size of my parent’s garden and the length of time I lived with them (almost two whole decades). If only I had the will to grow my own food then...

Now my wife Jenny and I have bought ourselves a house and we move into it soon. We intend to grow our own fruit and veg here, although we have many other plans too. Jenny really wants a chicken run and coop to keep hens and would like to plant flowers for aesthetics.

We also live in New Zealand, the land that insulation forgot! For some reason all houses built 10-20 years ago and before were not constructed with insulation. Even some modern houses have left out simple things like loft insulation, so there is a lot of heat loss in cold weather. This loss means burning more fuel to keep warm in the form of wood, gas or electric, all of which is bad for the planet (and the wallet).

We intend to take the 1970's house we have bought and fully redevelop it into a new and eco-friendly house: one that promotes and encourages sustainability and green living.

The Sustainable Living blog is the documentation of this process - the guide to how anyone can take a house and make it a more efficient, green and cost-effective home that will save time, money and the environment.

We are not rich by any means, so the ideas we try will be on a budget: the kind of ideas that anyone could try if they put their minds to it. The whole point of sustainable living is not just to be environmentally friendly but to live in a way that can be sustained. This means not only green living but also profitable living. After all, if you spent more on sustainable living than you make, you'd eventually go broke. Not very sustainable!

Hopefully the ideas Jenny and I have and put into action will be successful, and this blog will serve as a guide to anyone else wanting to grow their own, keep hens, insulate their house and much more. My main hope is that it encourages others to do the same and to let me know how they are getting on. The more people who join in, the more knowledge is available and the easier the whole process becomes.

So it is with hope that I venture into the world of sustainable living...