I thought some might be interested in this link - I love Ted.com

Roger Doiron: My subversive (garden) plot Video on TED.com www.ted.com

Some Random Thoughts

Where to start – so many things have been happening – this
competition really makes you think about life and your impact on the planet. Following is a brief run down on some of the stuff that’s been happening in our garden, kitchen and Christmas preparations.

In the Garden

When we first started talking about the greenest street competition two households that are not full participants said they would happily contribute their scraps to our compost and have been given 10lt buckets with lids and all is ticking along well - we had one household already contributing so our compost and worm farm are doing well. Then there is Tony who is passing his cooked food scraps our way for the chooks. Our chooks are very happy and I have already enquired about one of his recipes – the scraps smell so yummy.

I propagated a large number of seedlings, mainly tomatoes for the school gala - I love growing tomatoes. They were ready a few weeks early but I was pleased I managed to keep them growing strong and healthy with a seaweed liquid feed I had brewed. Several of the neighbours made the most of the opportunity and supported the school and now have full vege patches. I have most of my tomatoes planted out – a few over in my patch at the neighbours, some in 3 places in our main gardens down the back then some in bags the potting mix came in up the top. I got hit by the blight a few years ago and will never put all my toms in one spot again – I cried that year.

When my seedling were small I covered them with the bottom ends of soft drink bottles – had to do some recycling bin raids – the 2 ½ lt ones were best – I cut breathing holes in the top and it just helped protect them from the wind and cool during those early days – and snails for that matter.

Our raspberries are doing well and we have some in the freezer ready for a jamming session and I experimented with a desert the other night – a little refinement is required with regards to consistency but the taste was seriously good.

Today I planted out more corn – I have put the seed straight in this time, so we’ll see how they go. I also planted a small patch of carrots – I recently bought some neem tree granules and it recommended they could be used against carrot fly, so I have lightly worked them into the soil as per the instructions – fingers crossed that one day I will be able to successfully grow carrots.

My comfrey is finally growing well and I harvested a bunch of leaves for another brew. I have
really noticed the effect of the liquid feeds on my sprouting broccoli – they have just kept on going and they have been the largest sprouts I have ever had before – we are still going on my last few plants – my other garden favourite. My next mission is to sow some more broccoli seeds but I am going to put neem tree granules in the seed raising mix – something I read suggested that they might take it in to the leaves and then the caterpillars won’t like them – I live in hope and figure it is worth a try – will keep you posted.

In the Kitchen

We had family visit from the Hawkes Bay bearing gifts which included a large bundle of rhubarb some of which has gone into an experimental rhubarb gin – based on a recipe from a reliable source. We will be testing this week – best I get this blog done before that jar is opened.
I have been making yogurt from a starter I got from a workmate – I am doing it in an old Agee jar and simply wrapping it in a towel in the cylinder cupboard – I have figured out it is best if left just 6-8 hours, after that it seems to get bitter. Made a riata with it tonight – yum! Have
added fruit and the kids gobbled it down. I think I need a cow!

I made a batch of lemon curd as I had a plentiful supply of eggs and lemons. I gave some as a gift
to a friend; she quickly decided this was something she was not going to be sharing with her kids. The short fridge life was still not going to be an issue.

Christmas

Our eldest got the Christmas bug early so we made salt doughand he was away with his own idea of an advent countdown tree, taking off a home decorated peg and adding a new salt dough decoration each day.

We also received a decorated egg carton with 12 very yummy mini carrot cake cup cakes complete with cream cheese icing. Completely environmentally friendly – going to use that idea.

And Finally Nappies

I have gone a bit cold on my nappy recycling attempt – I was taking the insides out – wet ones only – and popping it in different places in my garden. It seems to act very like mulch – but I’m not sure the soil gets to breath. My enquiries into what was actu ally used in the insides got answers that were way too short and I don’t want to contaminate my garden until I have experimented a bit more. But I can’t help thinking the gell could have great benefits for retaining water in our sandy soils. And they make up a third of out weekly rubbish – I live in hope of nappies becoming a distant memory.

I will try to be more regular, so you don’t get such a big blast next time. Wish there were more
hours in a day.

Merry Christmas

Vegetarian food

Sue mentioned she may try to cook a vegetarian meal from time to time. Good on her!

There are lot of myths around vegetarian food, for example getting enough iron or sufficient protein. I'm a very active athlete so it's important that I have a diet that supports that, and I've had to learn what that involves.

Jess too is a longtime vegetarian, and was vegetarian all through her pregnancy. So young Rylan has been a vegetarian all his life, and he is a very healthy, active, and alert young boy.

Once you get used to it, vegetarian cooking is easy-peasy, and relatively cheap.

It's claimed that if everyone in the world was vegetarian then we'd have enough food to feed the world, and we'd be much kinder to plant earth. It goes without saying that various animals are pleased too.

Diet is so much tied up with lifestyle, therefore it involves the whole family. I applaud anyone who is willing to make changes and give it a go.

We are happy to give suggestions or share recipes, or help in any other way.

Tony Number 6

Green progress!

Hi, Teresa here. I decided that a place to start with lessening my footprint was to convince the boys to walk to school more often. The main challenge was to get 5-year-old Alan to comply (and I'm a sap!) Day One, Alan was not happy! By the time we got to his classroom he said he didn't like me anymore! I said I understood. By the time I collected him at 3pm, all was forgotten and forgiven - until he realised we were were walking home!! Certainly this is an adjustment for the whole family, but I believe it's worth it. It's great that all of us in this household are becoming more aware of the petrol we use, of the cardboard we throw away, AND the cat food tins that end up in the trash!! (Seriously!) It's definite that habits are changing at number 9! :-)

Emergency storage.

We brought a plastic crate from Mega Mitre 10 to store our Civil Defence emergency things in. If we win this competition maybe we could all buy one . Its ideal to store your supplies outside in.

Lemon crop

Have a huge crop of lemons, if anyone would like some.

Someone told me to take the lemons off the tree when flowers start showing again.

Have been making use of recycled bottles, even had to steal some out of someones recyling green bin at their gate!

 

Have made lemon honey and lemon syrup which stores well in fridge for the odd sore throat and instead of buying ready made juice from supernarket.

 

Get the kids to help you if you would like to make .

Recipes to follow in another blogg after the christmas rush!!

 

I did yesterday write on the street board but with last nights rain its probably not that easy to see ( I need to get a new thicker pen)

SUNDAY NIGHTS on Prime at 5.30pm New Zealand Gardening show with yesterdays being how to collect your rain water for your garden.

Got my first christmas present yesteday
To me From me : a storage box lockable for outside to store my large Emergency kit.!

 

Greening the Pool

Even I don't fully understand why I ended up in a property with a swimming pool. Essentially I'm an introvert and none of the family are really keen swimmers. Suffice to say in a previous relationship, with a combined 4 teenagers having loads of energy, it seemed like a good idea, or at least the teenagers of both sides of the new relationship initially enthusiastically thought so.

Since that relationship passed on, left on my own now, I've even invested in pool decking, albeit as part of getting the swimming pool surrounds to compliance status, not a trivial exercise. I sometimes wonder where the rates would go if we had the same prescriptive law applied to the sea, only blocks away and just as much a danger to the very athletic 2-6 year olds the law aims to protect.

Still, as I now have my 2 year old grandson Rylan living with me, and I see him daily working his way through 999 Ways For A Toddler To Kill Himself. So the fact that the swimming pool surrounds, rather than the inviting images you tend to see in glossy magazines of blue water and beautiful happy suntanned people lying half naked; looks rather more like Colditz – and is a suitable thwart to Rylan, who has a passionate interest in escaping the house and getting into the pool area (# 698).

If you mention greening the pool people tend to make one of two comments:

1. You're nuts. What do you mean green the pool? The aim is to use loads of chemicals to get rid of the green stuff that naturally develops in still water.

2. You're nuts. Greening the Pool is an oxymoron – all swimming pools are a blight, they waste precious water and pollute the environment with nasty chemicals – and the only green thing to do is fill it in.

Given these attitudes, and many may be surprised, but in my experience having a water tight hole in the ground capable of holding 30,000 liters means rain water naturally gathers in it, even to overfilling; so that over the 8 years I've lived here I've but once had to use public water to top it up, and that was when I accidentally left the backwash running in a dry spell.

Clearly the pool does not leak, which is generally listed as one of several ways to socialize your pool. Another one, which I got onto a few years ago, is to cover it with a solar blanket. This prevents evaporation, especially troublesome with the winds that buffet the pool. It also means the sun heats the pool and -- notwithstanding the many comments that a pool is a waste of space, time and money in our climate -- the temperature gets up to around 28C by the end of the season.

The pool I inherited also has electric heating. I'm not at all sure if this works, not only practically in terms of the elements still being a goer; but I get the feeling, as sometimes on a wonderful still evening I stand near the pool, look up at the mysterious stars, and think I'd most likely waste my money (and the country's electricity) in a futile attempt to heat not only the cold night sky but the universe.

One of the other anti-social complaints about pools is that the nasty chemicals in the water are backwashed into the public sewerage system. Happily the backwash system of our pool is not connected to the public system – it is pumped to the bank beside the pool. There native trees blossom, as evidenced from the wonderful self-sown Nikau fern, Cabbage trees, and various other native bushes that grow there. And, somewhat interestingly, the hydgranga flowers are white.

Another step to green the pool is to put a timer on the motor driving the filtering system. This I haven't got, but as I care a lot about how high my electricity bill is, my internal timer is very effective, hence I never run the pump unnecessarily.

Having a relatively 'green' pool, as part of the Greenest Street competition I thought I could look into more friendly ways to prevent bacteria and algae growth. Currently the chemical of preference is chlorine and the initial thought was to put in a salt water system. However, like a lot of things, under investigation this is not so straight forward. It appears that the salt water system generates it's own chlorine and may be, assuming the backwash is connected to the public system, even more harmful to the environment, otherwise I'd be interested to find out if plants respond so well to it.

There appear to be other greener cleaning systems, like ozone, or growing certain plants, or a mix of systems; that may have varying degrees of effectiveness or at least enable a reduction in the amount of potentially harmful chemicals used. My next step is to talk to others and to outlets to see what may be on offer in New Zealand.

A final thought is, as Carolyn reminded us, as did last night's violent shake; in the event of a natural disaster having so much water on hand may put our street at an advantage over neighborhood streets, or at least enable us to carry on watering our veggies or flushing the toilets; thus we are tossing around disaster contingency plans for barricading the street entrance.

Meanwhile... Rylan has escaped and is heading down to the beach (# 821) so I'll have to chase after him -- then I'll clean the pool and, hopefully, back to my veggie garden, which I'll write about in the next blog.

Anthony (Tony) Number 6

Whats been happening? Think there was a radio interview yesterday with Theresa being our spokes person. Anyone hear it?

Today I brought home from work a big bag of shredded paper for my compost bins.

The rain today will be useful for those of you that are collecting the rain water.

Energy saving

Hi fellow neighbours,

Ive just been looking at the Genesis Energy site and they have some great specials for energy saving! Have a look , just go to their web site and have a lok. There maybe something there you can use or that you can buy for a christmas gift for someone.

I've just ordered a ELTO Power meter for us all to have ago at using! It measures the energy your home applicances are using at any given point so you can see which appliances are using a lot of power. Could be handy! I will let us know when I have it and after we have given it a trial then anyone else can use it for a month at a time to see where they can power.

Was going to talking on the radio this morning but don't know where it is today. Went to local station but they didn't know anything. Must find out more!

Sunny today but was raining this morning. Noticed the gutter grate was blocked so must go out and collect the stuff collected there to throw in my compost.

Today I am also going to take my bike tyres into the bike shop to get them fixed so I can bike to work. Sunny days only though!

I am now doing my dish washing in a plastic bin inside my kitchen sink. (They do this in the UK)

I think it must save water and also I can throw the leftover soappy water on my roses to kill any aphids.

Anyone else with any bright ideas ??? Post on this twitter.

Carolyn has made little covers for her plants from cut off drink bottles. She says she gets the empty bottles from raiding recycle bins so watch out for her! Perhaps she does it in the dead of night. She has veggie plants for sale too, she will have them at Raumati South School Fair this weekend. Fair is 10am til 2pm.

Sunday 13 Nov. Garden Meeting

A sunny morning for a get together to talk and walk about our gardens.
Eight of us met at Number 8 , thanks to Amanda for the home made muffins.

It was good for us to meet some of the others in the street and to catch up with the competitions goals as we have been away over the last couple of months.
A good way to meet those new to the street too.
Its good to get together as we would like to start a neighbourhood watch group which would also link us into Civil Defence.
The best form of support in an emergency is your neighbours.

We talked in general about some of the things we as a street could do, a street garage sale in the New Year. This could perhaps add some funds to a common bank account which could help to fund some of our ideas.
Carolyn is looking at getting the street a mulcher which would be shared amongst us , month and month about.
Sharing our excess produce. At the moment there are Lemons aplenty.
It will be great to be able to swap or buy plants from each other too.

Personal family ideas are changing use of disposable nappies to cloth ones, biking to work , and using the local butcher for meat to cut down on the use of plastic packaging.

The men are keen on investigating wind power using Smartdrive motor and also trying to make some solar power panels.
The families present are keen to do water conservation : for some mulching for others water storage from rain collection.
Carolyn is investigating the way disposable nappies break down.
One family would like to start a veggie garden.

So then it was off to look at each others garden.
We have an interesting variety with large family gardens and gardens for couples.
Some already established and some that are wanting to be extended.

The exciting garden was the one with the possibility of helping to add a vegetable patch.
Maybe we can make this a street project!

Look out for our sign that will be erected outside Number 1. It will have an area where we can leave messages .

Hoping to have regular Sunday morning meetings once a month or as needed, hope some more will be able to join us over time.
Let me know if anyone wants some lemons or if you would like some lemon cordial. I could do with any suitable bottles.

Sue NO.1

The Official Launch

Sunday saw the arrival of the judges to our street for the initial ‘meet and greet’. A few of the street members were unable to make it due to prior commitments (we did only enter a week ago), but while the numbers were low, the enthusiasm was high.

The judges are:

Mayor Jenny Rowan

Liana Stupples, special advisor to the Hikurangi Foundation

Joy Darke, Wellington region Gardener of the Year in 2010

Robert Glensor Owner of Paraoa Bakehouse, Sustainable Business of the Year 2008 winner, Organic Enterprise of the Year by Organic Aotearoa New Zealand, 2010.

Brenda Vale. Architect and academic concerned with sustainable architecture and lifestyles.

Also present were Councillor K Gurunathan (Guru) and Stacey Gasson who is coordinating the competition.





The Judges
 L-R  Stacey, Jenny, Guru, Koy, Brenda and Rob



Rob sang us a wee song.

  

We’d like to thank the judges for taking their time to come and visit us and encouraging us.

And thanks to Joshua (8) for the photos and video.

What Do We Hope To Achieve?

You might ask why anyone would want to make the potentially considerable effort to be greener. I'm asking what being greener actually means.


We all want to get to know our neighbours better, and develop a sense of community and belonging. It’s funny how closely we all live in our communities, without really knowing the people around us. The knowledge our neighbours have, the experience they bring and the differences that we may have to celebrate will make our community closer and more cohesive.


So what is being green all about. Kermit said it wasn't easy. For some of us, it's about making a choice to do without. For others, it's about doing things in a different way. We all consume resources and produce waste. Using fewer resources is a goal, and reducing the amount of waste we produce will be a benefit. We'll save money in not having to put as many bags of rubbish out, and potentially save money by not using as much energy in our homes and vehicles.


We're all fairly normal people on our street. We don't (all) wear sandals or go barefoot, keep chooks or grow our own veggies. We have cars and bikes, work, watch TV and eat food that may not be the healthiest. But we do want to see if we can make a difference and try to reduce our environmental footprint.


How we do these things will be covered over the course of the Greenest Street competition, and hopefully beyond. Follow us as we journey together.

The Residents of Grange Park Avenue

Grange Park Avenue is in Raumati South on the Kapiti Coast. The first residents arrived in 1947, and they watched each progressive house being built. Grange Park is a cul de sac, and that feature is the favourite for all of us. There are a lot of children who live on this street, so it is safe for them to play out on the footpath. Those whose offspring have flown the nest appreciate the quiet because of no through-traffic.

There is a mixture of long-term and recent residents.  Those who are new are made to feel welcome, and we look out for each other. Recently, a neighbour, whom one child-resident had not met, came out to check on him after falling off his bike, and proceeded to instruct him on how best to steer his bike from the road to the footpath.

So even though, at this stage, we all may not know each other well, we do, nonetheless, have a tight-knit community spirit because there is an immediate sense of belonging to this street. We look forward to getting to know each other better over the coming months as we partake in “The Greenest Street” competition.