Eco Friendly House And Garden

Ordering your food shopping online just acquired a great eco planning tool!

Online shopping always worked for clothes and furniture as what you see is what you get – you order a red top in size 10; you got a red top in size 10.

However food shopping had an extra variable – all food is different.

We all know how long we spend choosing the right pack of tomatoes or bananas – are they too ripe, too big, too small or too squished! I’ve seen people not happy with the whole top tray of melons and then heaving off the top tray and start to look underneath instead.

photo credit: edkohler

How Long Will It Last?
And what about the shelf life of the product? Surely we want the longest shelf life for most products – or at least enough time to eat them before they ‘go off’. I mean cakes or crisps for a birthday party next month will need to have a date at least that long to be worth buying.

And we really don’t like wasting food in our eco kitchens – so could you ever really trust your store to give you the best produce on your order?

I mean, it is in their best interest to give you the food with the shortest date on it, isn’t it? They don’t want everyone to leave the short-dated food on the shelf – as then they lose the money.

That’s why shops rotate their produce to sell the short-dated stuff first. And by short-dated, it doesn’t mean that it is any less nutritious or healthy than food with a longer date – it just means that they can’t sell it after that date – even though you can still eat it.

In an ideal eco world – we would all buy the food with the shortest dates on it anyway, and plan to eat it within that time.

Not only does this save on wasted food in the stores – it inadvertantly allows people who aren’t quite so eco conscious to have the longer dated foods in their cupboards and so are more likely to eat it instead of throwing it away – well they do need help to ‘do the right thing’.

Along Came Waitrose!
So imagine my delight when I found an advertisment for a UK supermarket chain who promised to only deliver food to you that had a decent shelf life in the first place.

They also say that they will print out your receipt for your online delivery with all the ‘Best Before’ or Use By’ dates clearly shown on it.

This could make your life so much more eco friendly and easier too!

It means that you don’t have to spend ages looking for all the dates on your fresh foods when they arrive to make sure nothing is short-dated.

You also don’t need to write yourself a list of the dates to help plan your eating – it is all done for you! Just stick the receipt on your fridge or pin board and you can refer to it whenever – and better plan your eco dinners.

It almost helps you to say goodbye to wasted food completely and make better use of your money; I mean by reducing wasted food, you are leaving your money in the bank!

I think planning in your eco kitchen just took a giant leap forward!

Welcome back, and I hope you are ready for more top tips for your eco friendly vegetable garden!

Moving on from just growing too many in the first place, these next 2 tips cover storage issues and gardening overload!

2)  Where can we put them all?
What could be more disappointing to the end of your growing season than to have runner beans (or whatever you grew too much of) going rotten in the fridge. 

Home grown crops – especially when grown organically – do not have the same shelf life as those brought from super stores.  They are not designed to stay fresh for a week or so for retail purposes, and if picked or dug out of the ground will only last a few days.

Yes, there are many veg that can be stored for months if you do it right, like potatoes and onions for example, but generally everything else needs to be eaten or preserved as soon as possible really – or given away to who ever will take them!

So, you need to learn which crops can be stored for a long time, those which can be frozen, veg that need processing in some way before storing, and which ones only have a short shelf life.  Then plan how many of each you can grow.

Many beans and peas can be blanched before freezing so as to increase the number of nutrients remaining in them, and others need a certain amount of other actions before they are ready for freezing or turning into preserves or chutneys, etc. 

You also need to make sure that you only freeze them in portion size amounts, otherwise when you want to eat them you have to take the whole lot out and smash off the amount you need to cook!

And do you have enough freezer space in the first place?  Most avid vegetable growers need another freezer to store all their summer veg to last them through to the winter!

Planning ahead is the key here – and if in doubt ask someone who is already growing their own crops what they do with all their veg!

3) What a waste of your land:
If you are turning over great swathes of your garden to vegetables because ‘that’s how many seeds there were in the packet’ then you are taking the fun out of your garden.

Imagine the kids playing ball and they keep tripping over plants and cane poles.  You want a few minutes to yourself on the patio but all you can see are plastic bottles and rows and rows of pots and mud!

You won’t get a moments peace either, as you will have so many crops to keep an eye on that you will constantly be out there checking on everything.  When you look out of your windows making your morning coffee – you’ll see something wrong with the plants, or something has fallen over or whatever.

You could end up out there on your afternoon off from work, tending to a huge number of plants that you might not even end up eating (see points 1 and 2).

The Answer?
Growing your own veg should be fun, and if you grow too much of one thing, then you lose that fun. 

Eating artichoke every so often is a nice treat, but when you always have another 2 in the fridge, it loses it’s speciality.  It’s not even fun to eat it anymore.

Also, if you know that you always have more of something growing outside, you may actually care less about each individual vegetable you have indoors.  For example, will you care if one parsnip goes rotten waiting to be eaten in the fridge if you have another 2 meters of them left outside to dig up?  No, you won’t. 

Too much of something actually tends to encourage waste as if you have so much – why does one matter?

This certainly wouldn’t be true if you had brought the parsnips. Every penny counts these days and you can see it when you have brought something yourself out of your wages.  But vegetables you have grown don’t seem to be worth anything, you don’t see the money and energy they have cost.

Your back yard vegetables aren’t free, so don’t treat them as such.  Value them as your time – and your time is worth more than money.