Archive for the ‘Starting your own patch’ Category

There is no time in history that I can think of where food has been so disrepected and taken for granted like the present. The very building blocks of sustaining our existence have been diminished down to whatever source that can provide them the quickest, cheapest and with the least preperation and cooking time required to get something onto a plate.

Supermarkets have taken over our lives. The branded goods that control our weekly shopping trolley groan under the sheer weight of false allegiance. Loyalty counts for very little these days. I know that when I do the shopping I speed around the ailses putting the same goods in my trolley that I did last week. However, the sections I struggle with the most is the meat section and the produce section. Read the rest of this entry »

I spent many months thinking about starting my own garden. For those of us blessed to have a patch of land no matter the size go into overdrive in the mind of all the things that we would like to do with this commodity. Where are the kids going to play, what about colour, where do I grow the vegetables, what water source will I use? The questions are endless. The biggest question is what to do with the lawn. Lawns are nice to look at but what purpose do they really serve? Your kids might play on it, you may have a picnic or family bbq in the back yard and it gives you somewhere to sit, but its uses are few. The biggest inconvenience is mowing it, especially week after week in summer!

Unfortunately I am no garden designer, I have enough dreams for my own, but one of the easiest decisions should be that it is imperative that we establish our own food growing family business. That’s right, growing produce should be central to any family home if we are to sustain the planet, fill our mouths will good food and minimize our spending at the supermarket. Please don’t get me wrong I am all for supporting Australian farmers, my concern is that Australian agriculture needs to move away from traditional European styles of farming to methods that suit the Australian climate. Read the rest of this entry »

My patches are looking a little bare right now after all the harvesting these part couple of weeks. Thankfully my Mother-in-Law has given me a bag of seed potatoes and I have been growing a few seeds of my own. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the main reasons people don’t try things for themselves is because: a) they don’t think they will suceed, and b) they feel intimidated because there is always someone who knows more than they do and has been doing it forever. I have always been held back from trying new things for these reasons.

Growing my own veggies only started about three years ago. Fresh off the plane from the UK, I was amazed by the amount of available space. England is crammed with over 60 million people, where growing veggies is done on a rented allotment rather than in the back garden due to its small dimensions. Read the rest of this entry »

As I talk around I am constantly amazed at the response when I ask people if they would grow their own veggies. The most common responses are, “I don’t have time”, “I’m not practically minded” and I don’t live in a big enough space”. Our addiction for junk food, instant meals and ‘low-fat’ fixes, have blinded us to the reality of how food is grown, produced and finds it’s way to our supermarket shelves. Read the rest of this entry »