How to achieve sustainable living

In a sustainable system, the energy we produce is more than the energy we consume.  Unfortunately, the way most of us live in society, we consume more than we can produce.

If you rent or own a small house, townhouse or unit, check out our gardening ideas, wicking bed gardens and aquaponics pages, or if you have a good size backyard or acreage also have a look at gardening ideas, or our permaculture pages.

If you are considering building and renovating, careful design will save you money and using natural materials will give you a sense of belonging and healthy living.

Clean green renewable energy is more viable today than ever before and the payback time for solar and wind is only a few years, making it an economic decision as well as an environmental one.

Permaculture, renewable energy and natural building all go hand in hand.

Throughout our website you will see examples of people making choices to live more sustainably. We are going to experiment and document on this website our progress. We love our making a change page and in our new rental property we hope to put lots of these ideas to the test.

Both Kerrie and Andrew have completed an intensive permaculture design certificate (PDC) course in July with Geoff and Nadia Lawnton and we are booked in for a super adobe course in October.

With what we have learned so far, simply reading a permaculture book or watching a dvd in our recommendations page is a great step. Doing the PDC has not only increased our resolve to make sustainable changes in our lives, but now we have the knowledge and confidence to help ourselves and others. Check out "Our" PDC experience here.

Follow below to track our progress from complete growing novices to .... well lets see how the journey goes...

Our initial experiments with "no dig gardens" has brought mixed results. "Sharing" a veggie garden with a scrub turkey wiped out many small seedlings although bird netting should alleviate this problem, we think?

We helped Kerrie's brother Wayne to build this no dig garden. Straight over the slashed weeds (or even over concrete if you want)! Slash weeds, scatter food scraps and manure, lay cardboard or paper (we scavenged ours from an industrial waste bin), apply 6" of mulch, make little cup holes in the mulch and add compost (prefer organic or later we'll show you how to make your own), plant your seedlings and ....

 

10 weeks later here are the results. Diversity and more than a few Marigolds kept the garden healthy.

 

We also helped our friend Carolyn to renovate her garden and set up a "no dig" garden over the top of the dreaded nut grass. About ten weeks on and Carolyn entered the local curcurbit competition with this beautiful organic zucchini. Only pig and geese tractors will eraadicate nut grass, but a no dig garden can still overcome this obstacle with little effort. Tip... if you are renting then a "no dig" garden can go straight over grass and if you leave out the veggie scraps and manure step above and just lay the cardboard over the grass, the grass will come back when you remove the garden when you move out.

 

Our first baby steps earlier in 2011 ...

Our first worm farm perfect for an apartment or small house. We have harvested plenty of worm wee and the castings will be excellent for the plants.

 

We also started "kitchen top" composting using a Bokashi fermenting system. After a few minor hiccups trying to compost prawn heads (which were not odourless as Bokashi claims!), we have refilled this bucket many times over and the fermented food dissolves in the garden very quickly after burying it. Recommended for units and small houses, although you will need access to a garden to bury the food.

 

Our food growing pot plants are not setting any records although we have eaten a few tomatoes and shallots, but our local possum was well fed, he loved the coriander and tomato leaves. Photos of our early days.

 

Many weeks on and our results are encouraging but we certainly couldn't feed ourselves with our produce and survive. What we have taken away from this experiment is a few lessons learned and we have managed to grow food from seed. Certainly is small steps but we were waiting until we moved to get really serious about growing.

Small but very tasty