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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

My New Goals-Towards Self-Sustainability

I'm taking part in Yates Spring Veggie Competition. Growing these vegetables for the competition has really got me thinking about sustainable living again. I frequent a self-sustainability forum, where I have been learning a great deal about gardening and other things including soap making and aquaponics.

I have decided to get my act together and get cracking on a decent sized veggie garden to hopefully get us on our feet to being self-sustainable in the fruit and veg department. It’s going to be an interesting learning experience.

Over the last year I’ve been putting it off, wanting to wait until we have our own place, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. I asked myself what was stopping me, and apart from being lazy, there really isn’t anything else.

I have unofficially taken over a section of the yard [the house belongs to my partner’s parents] to build my new beds, as my other veggie bed doesn’t get much sun, and there is only TWO outdoor taps on the whole 1/4 acre, and neither are near the existing bed. So naturally I forget to water it. I’m going to turn it into a place to dump clippings, weeds, scraps, manure, etc to break down to a usable state on the new beds, once my new beds are in. Plus I’ll continue growing my potatoes there, as they seem to be happy there.


This is the space I’ve taken over, it’s between the main house [on the left] and the room where me and my partner live [right].

Currently my plan is to have a bed that runs along the path next to the main house and do a right turn and run along the fence [I’ve already started that part of the bed and planted peas and beans] and then have an ‘H’ shaped bed taking up the rest of the room [the storm water pipe sticking up in the centre will end up in the cross bar of the ‘H’ shape]

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The apricot tree finally carked it this year, hence the tree stump in the photo, which my OH had great delight in knocking over with our 4wd [boys and their toys!]. Stupid people who put it there didn’t take it out the pot, so it ended up mainly root bound with a few roots that managed to escape the pot. Not that the fruit were any good last year anyway. Gives me an excuse to get more fruit trees now!

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