Skip to main content

Food Waste Avoidance 6 - Grow Your Own Food

Benefits of a garden:

A garden is a fantastic storage method – it keeps food fresh and delicious, and helps you to cook with the seasons. When growing your own food, you can be sure of what is in the food (i.e. no chemicals). Growing your own food reduces waste – as you only use what you need each time – and save the hip pocket. Getting out in the garden is also great for your Vitamin D levels! (sunshine)

Leafy GreensHerbs and leafy greens are a great place to start when learning to grow your own food. They are very easy to grow and can jazz up your cooking. Since you only need a small amount at a time, growing your own herbs and leafy greens can save you money as you won’t need to repeatedly buy them from the supermarket.

Tips for growing leafy greens:


Lettuce (just one type of leafy green) offer a range of shapes, sizes and colours but they are all easy to grow. Choose a variety marked on the seed packet as suitable for the time of year as some do badly in the very hot months.

Try to provide some shade to prevent them 'bolting' to flower and seed in the hottest months. Lettuce are shallow rooted so water daily in hot or dry weather to prevent bitter flavour and bolting (going to seed).

Try to regularly harvest the young leaves as they will not be bitter.

Nutritional benefits:
A one-cup cooked serving of most greens contains lots of iron and calcium, several B vitamins, more vitamin C than an orange, nearly a full day's supply of vitamin A ... and less than 20 calories!


Tips for growing herbs:

Herbs need sunlight, good drainage and regular water during dry weather. Most prefer good soil, but don’t be tempted to add too much compost or manure, as you’ll get rapid growth at the expense of flavour.

Continually harvest herbs to keep them trim and shapely. When it comes to thyme, mint, sage and lemon balm, regular pruning – by shortening the stems by more than half – will rejuvenate your herbs when they’re looking tired.

When the weather becomes cooler, annual herbs, such as basil, coriander and dill, will begin to flower and set seed. Never fear, once mature, these seeds can be collected by hand, then stored in paper bags in a cool, dry spot until next spring, when you can sow them and start the cycle all over again.

Frost-sensitive herbs like rosemary should be brought into warm spots, while herbs such as parsley, sage and thyme will carry on through the winter cold.
What to plant when.
  • Annual - Plants that perform their entire life cycle from seed to flower to seed within a single growing season.
  • Perennial – Plants that persist for many growing seasons.
  • Biennial – Plants which require two years to complete their life cycle.
  • Companion planting – some plants can enhance the productivity of others by keeping away certain pests, etc.
Read more here: http://www.gardenate.com/ – a fantastic resource on what to grow in the temperate regions of Australia (like Melbourne!).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Box Hill High School Zone

Parents are struggling with moving into a good reputable school for their kid(s). Here is the zone for Box Hill High School.   Good luck with house hunting!

The Bose Soundbar 700 Won't Connect to App

Bose has one of the best speaker sound. I learnt about Bose more than 25 years ago and still a fan.  I bought Soundbar 700 in 2018.  It took me a while to set it up but it has been giving me troubles once a while.  Recently, I was not able to connect Soundbar 700 with my phone.  Done the factory reset on the soundbar, it didn't work. I spent hours reseting everything multiple times and finally I found this article,  https://www.bose.com.au/en_au/support/articles/HC1380/productCodes/bose_soundbar_700/article.html .  Tweaking them all and finally got it to work again. I think the most important setting is to TURN WPS OFF on the router!  Hope it helps.

Brivis Heater - Error Code #69

My Brivis HX23 Heater broke down this week.  H01 Code #69.  This code was not even listed in the User Manual!  Searching around the web and here is what I found: Secret Reset: This is not in the User Manual.  On the networker controller press FUNCTION > 1 > 4 keys and the screen will go blank and come back on after 30 seconds, this has rebooted the main PCB and reset the fault code. Use this with caution as too much gas build up could cause an explosion. Use it only after the unit has enough time to air out the gas build up. What is Code #69 or any other unpublished codes?  The best way to find out is to open up the heater unit.   There is a little LCD on the PCB showing what error exactly is. (Note: Opening up the unit may void your warranty.)