Eco Friendly House And Garden

We all love eating outside – but plan ahead otherwise you could be creating waste.

There is nothing better than eating outside with your family and friends in the summer as it isn't something we Brits normally get the chance to do.  But watch out for potential problems that could fill your bin bags and make you break your eco promises!

Shops across the country are currently selling out of everything disposable – and this is where you shouldn't be involved!  However, it is really tempting to do so.  so here are a few tips to keep you on your toes.

The Barbeque Itself:

Now although the food needs to be cooked – it doesn't need to be done outside.  You can bring all the cooked meat outside along with all the salad and drinks you prepare – but using your own oven will actually be more eco friendly than buying a disposable barbeque that stops cooking effectively after about 5 minutes.

Your fitted outdoor cooker may well do a bit better for you, but all that smoke and open spacing means that a majority of the heat you generate with coals or gas is wasted as it passes right by your food and heats up your face!  Not to mention all that smoke.

photo credit: zoetnet

Food For Thought:

Why opt for the standard outdoor fare of sausages and burger slapped in a white bun with some lettuce and ketchup?  When you are cooking indoors you could rustle up some cous cous, pasta and better quality meat products – as well as using alternatives to bleached bread – like wholegrain pittas, corn wraps and homemade breads as they don't have to be burger-shaped!

And these days you don't need to go an buy lettuces and tomatoes – you should be growing them in your garden.  It is so satisfying to go and collect a handful of salad leaves, asparagus and radishes from your own garden to eat – or step in your greenhouse for fresh tomatoes!

The Washing Up:

No need to wash up after a barbeque – just throw everything in the bin!  Only if you forgot to plan ahead….  Buy buying a set of plastic 'crockery', cups and large bowls you can stop worrying about broken plates and dishes and start enjoying yourself!

The dreaded paper plates – aren't so eco friendly if you think about it.  They never last well with sauces and hot food on them anyway – and you can't compost them with cooked food all over them – or really throw them in the recycling – so they go in the bin.

Plastic cutlery rarely serve their purpose and can't be recycled either, and we all know where plastic cups go.

So spend out on a great set of long-lasting outdoor products that you can use year after year for such events without having to worry about breaks or filled to the brim bin bags!

Or that last minute rush to the shops over the bank holiday to get supplies. 

We bulk buy products to be eco friendly – so does a bigger house give the same benefits?

We’ll not if you are just a single person or a couple – but what if you involved the whole family or some friends?  And I don’t mean join some commune or hippy campsite – although they are both options for some people.

What I am talking about is a great idea for saving energy, combining skills and resources as well as improving everything else ‘in bulk’.  So how about it?

The Theory:
I would love to live in a large home surrounded by land – but I know this would be a bit selfish in the overall scheme of things – so how about a compromise?

How about planning to live in a house with other people, whether they be my mum or sibling – or even friends – And it doesn’t need to be as bad as it sounds: you would plan to buy a property that still allowed you your privacy, for example a 3 story town house, divided into 2 sections or a detached property with a ‘granny annexe’ as part of it.

This way, you can pool resources too, like a joint investment in a garden allotment, solar panels, wildlife garden etc, as not only will you have more combined finances with this arrangement – you will also have a larger amount of space to work with.

2 couples living in townhouses may only have a small courtyard garden and a thin sliver of the terraced roof – but combine those 2 mortgages or using a larger deposit could mean you are able to buy detached, with more garden, off road parking, fruit trees, a larger roof and less overheads: only 1 TV license, one Council Tax, lower energy costs (the first so-many units are higher priced), lower food costs (buying in bulk), the list goes on……

It has all the same advantages as buying a 2 litre bottle of shampoo rather than 4x500ml bottles – but on a much larger scale!

Other Benefits:
For starters, all the maintenance costs will be shared between you all, insurance bills and repairs will all be halved – so more money to spend on green investments.

The security of your home will be increased as when you are away, the other people will probably still be around – and the animals and plants can carry on growing while you are busy.

Magazine subscriptions can be shared, and days out can be treated as ‘family’ tickets as there will always be enough people to make up the numbers! Less cars even, depending on your situation – and more shared journeys – or less journeys even; well if you are going to the store – then your flatmates don’t need to!

Food should never go out of date if there are twice as many people around to eat it – and if you ook together then imagine the energy savings!  And there will always be enough dirty dishes to fill the machine – and clothes for a full wash!

And can you imagine how great it would be for the kids to grow up in a friendly environment where they can learn skills from all the people around them, and live in an house with a bit of character and a large garden with chickens in it!

Sounds perfect – I just need to find some similar-minded friends…………

National Family Week (UK) runs from May 31st to June 6th – but make yours and eco friendly one!

The event is all about celebrating Family and your time together – either indoors surrounded by books and films or outside knee-deep in grass and surrounded by bird song!

But there is no reason why your events can’t be green, local and without creating enough waste to fill your entire bin!

There are many events being held around the country that are on the official website, but why not use their guide to make a week of eco friendly fun for yourself your family and your friends.

The weeks events are running along a sort of ‘schedule’ to help give people a rough plan if the week, and you can do as little or as much as you like – or create your own eco fun, but the week is as follows:

Monday – Eco Friendly Picnic:
Why can’t you arrange an event where you make an old fashioned outdoor feast, with local or organic produce brought in bulk – rather than everything in it’s own tiny bottle or individual wrapping.  Why not get one person to bake an enormous cake, one to bake a loaf of fresh bread, one to chop homegrown salad and bring home-laid hard-boiled eggs for the filling. 

Buy huge bumper packs of crisp and nibbles to share out and bring all fully reusable plastic plates and bowls to take home after.  And don’t forget some tubs to collect wild blackcurrants or fallen apples in!

Tuesday – Family Film Day:
Why not extend the picnic theme indoors with a great matinee of one or two of the families favourite films – make sure one is a classic musical to get everyone singing and dancing.  Before the first film, maybe all spend time in the kitchen mixing pastry and cakes so that when the film is over there is plenty of home-made food for everyone to tuck into before the next film!

Wednesday – Great Story Telling Day:
Rather than read other peoples stories – why not spend this day surrounded by scissors, glue and old magazines with a selection of pens and string – and have everyone create their own great adventure story from all your old magazines and bits of the outdoors like pressed flowers and leaves!  Something they can take away and keep.

Thursday – Green Road Trip:
Car or minibus, it doesn’t matter – but if there is an adventure to be had getting there is half the fun.  Rather than take the straight route – why not find the country lanes that go through tiny villages, steepled churches and fields of cows and horses.  Maybe even take in a ruined castle or 2 on the way as well – and don’t forget the camera and a tasty home-made packed lunch!

Friday – Eco Friendly House Party:
Anything goes here – whether it’s literally a party that goes on all night (without annoying the neighbours of course) or whether it’s a day-time party where people bring their family and some tasty goodies to share.  Or maybe help out with some spring cleaning or reducing and recycling.

Take one room of your home that really needs a sort out and get everyone involved. Whether it’s taking stuff to the recycling centre, community furniture project or around a friends – many hands make light work! Maybe get together to help an elderly relative or neighbour – or just your own home and ring some green changes!

Saturday – Eco Garden Fun:
Maybe this one could be an eco garden house party, where you all take it in turns to attack someones garden for the better, laying hedges, creating a wildlife pond, a bug corner, putting up bird feeders or just planting some veg! Things you never really get round to yourself – especially with the kids under your feet! Imagine to things you could achieve with 10 people instead of just you and your mum!

Whatever you choose to do, I hope you have fun – and maybe send in some photos!
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Here we are again – with some quick easy steps to staying green…..

1) Buy Old Stuff:
Choose products that contain recycled materials otherwise why are we bothering to separate out our rubbish in the first place! 

There is no point expecting people to wash out and separate out all their plastics and glass if we aren’t prepared to buy the stuff we make out of it all!  Something is only worth making if people are going to buy it – I mean you don’t see trifle flavoured crisps or eyeball pies in your shops do you?

2) Buy New Stuff:
If you see a new product that supports Fair Trade, palm oil certification, MSC or anything else – make sure you are one of it’s new supporters!

If someone has bothered to make something that supports something you believe in, then the least you can do is buy it occasionally.  Sometimes these eco friendly versions are just as tasty as the normal things you buy, but that extra 50p you spend could make all the difference.

3) Bring Your Own Stuff:
We all remember to save our bags for shopping, and nearly all of us remember to take our bags to the stores – but then we go and leave them in the car! 

So, try to make a concerted effort to remember your bags when shopping, and to take more than you think you will need.  The number of times I only wanted ‘a few things’ and ended up remembering a whole load of other stuff – far out-weighing my original bag capacity! 

4) Leave Stuff Behind:
Make sure that you don’t buy fish that is not MSC certified – otherwise that might become a type of fish that you won’t be able to eat in the future – especially if it is being over-fished!

Isn’t it better to go without it this week rather than lose it forever!

The same goes for everything really.  My local store didn’t have my usual organic, free-range medium hens eggs.  So I didn’t buy any.  Firstly, I can go back to the shop tomorrow without having starved to death overnight: and secondly, buying the less chicken-friendly alternative in the shop lets the shop manager know that I’m not really that bothered about the type of eggs I buy!

I mean, if non-organic supermarket eggs sell just as well when the organic ones have sold out – and there is a better profit margin on the non-organic ones – then they might well let the organic ones ‘run out’ more regularly knowing that it’s more important that customers have eggs than the fact that they are organic!

Don’t let supermarkets decide what you can buy – make sure you tell them what you want to buy.

5) Make Your Own Stuff:
Rather than buy processed foods from Asia, and vegetables from Africa – why not try out some new recipes and using veg you can grow in your own back garden!

Try shopping in the fresh and home baking sections only for a week.  Don’t rely on someone you don’t know making a meal for you miles from your kitchen and then sticking it in a box for you and shipping it to your nearest store!

Give it a go!

Bad vegetable planning results in more food that you will want to eat!

I’ve seen it over and over again when people start growing their own food – they grow too much.  There is a fear that there may not be enough of something – so over-planting is widespread.  Please don’t make that mistake yourself.

Even on my tiny allotment, I wanted to sow in rows like all the other people were doing, and this resulted in far too many radishes to harvest!  What a waste of the earth resources!  I was using up all it’s vitamins and other nutrients in my soil to grow a crop I just couldn’t face even eating! 

There was also the continuous begging of other people on nearby allotments for me to take some of their courgettes/seedlings/rhubarb/cuttings or runner-beans!  They just had too many too!

I totally agree that it is great of others to share their bumper crops rather than let them go to waste – but why spend your time, effort and resources growing food you have to give away?

Wouldn’t it be better to control your growing and have a better variety than before?

Surely it is better to run out of courgettes but have had some squash and pumpkins too!
Wouldn’t you rather tend smaller areas of crops than have row after row to weed and harvest?

There are many reasons why it is better to start small and learn from last year than to plunge straight in – and here are a few of them:

1) I can’t eat another courgette!
Most important to someone new to growing vegetables is that they need to find it fun.  They need to enjoy preparing, tending and then eating their crops.  And that can’t happen if you take on too much.

There is no need to grow loads and loads of the same things because it’s easy to grow, like potatoes, or because you got loads of seeds or seedlings.  Crops need energy and water to grow successfully – the earth in your vegetable plot on raised beds isn’t self regenerating – it gets used by everything you grow on it – so grow with care.

Also, if you find yourself harvesting a bumper crop of courgettes, it will be fun at first and you will try new dishes with them and tell your friends how yummy they are – then it will become apparent that you have been eating courgettes for dinner nearly every day for the past 2 weeks – yet there are still more in the fridge and even more ripening in your garden.

Soon, you will actually try to avoid eating courgettes at all because you are sick of the site of them and will no doubt end up throwing a few away as you picked them before you needed them and they have ‘gone off’.

Then you will run out of people to give your spare one’s too.  You will have asked the neighbors and friends at work or down the local club, and they will love it at first but then you might get embarrassed to turn up with a carrier bag of yet more courgettes to be palmed off to whoever will take them, or you might just get fed up with trying to find homes for them….

Basically, if you grow too much of something – it’s not fun anymore!

So, join me in a few days for Part 2 of this article for some more reasons to start small – if that wasn’t reason enough!

Thanks for coming back – and I hope the first few tips have been of help to you.

Now lets look at the final 2 tips which include; Choosing the right variety of fruit or vegetable for your needs, and thinking about growing food organically.

4) Variety Is The Spice Of Life:
There are now so many varieties of each fruit or vegetable to account for your tastes and for the locations they thrive in – so pick yours wisely.

Don’t just buy the one that has the cheapest seeds in the store – pick the one you are going to enjoy the taste of and that will grow in the place and in the time you want it to.

If you are busy at work during the summer or going away for a few week in spring, then make sure your variety don’t need too much attention at that point. If you have an alkali soil – then make sure you don’t buy a variety that loves acidic ground. I know it all sounds a bit technical – but just ask the experts where you live.

Take time to visit a local fruit grower near to where you live (same soil and same weather) and find out what they grow – then buy their seeds and take their advice.

Tell them your requirements too, for example there is no need to buy a product that gives off tonnes of fruit or veg at the same time if you are living alone as you will never be able to eat it all yourself (unless you want to learn about preserving it as well).

At the other end of the scale, you don’t want a rarer vegetable that only produces one or 2 edible parts if you have a family of 4 to feed! Plan your seasonal needs way ahead, and then link these up with the types and cycles of the plants that are available.

5) Growing Organic?
Don’t forget that the seeds you buy, or the plants you purchase might not have been grown organically – it’s a very complex chain. Decide how far back you want to be ‘organic’ for or how strict you are going to be.

And, unless you test it – how do you know that your yard isn’t full or chemical residues from previous land-use? You can’t, so you need to start from scratch and apply no more chemicals at all to it.

And, most importantly; how do you even know that the soil you wish to use is even full of nutrients? It is possible that the type of soil is not suitable for retaining nutrients or has been completely drained or natural resources over the years.

If you are on a purpose built housing estate (even if it is 100 years old), it is possible that just below your topsoil is a layer of industrial waste like broken bricks, wooden poles, or previous garden waste from past owners? I found and entire flat tarpaulin sheet and a concrete pillar buried in my back yard!

So, if you want to grow healthy and organic crops yourself, it may be wise to install raised beds for your plants so you can control the soil yourself.

Once the sides are up (obviously using chemical free and naturally strong materials) I would dig over the existing soil (not too deep) and remove any large stones or other objects. Then mix in a few cms of well rotted horse manure (or organic alternative) – then completely cover with alfalfa, clover or mustard.

These fast growing plants are great for pulling nutrients back into the soil ready to grow something worth eating! When they are fully grown and covering the inside of your raised bed, then dig them back in to the existing soil and add more organically sourced soil or horse manure to raise the beds to the top.

Then you can get started knowing that from now on you are growing your fruit and vegetables organically!