Photo Challenge

I'm a mad keen Instagram devotee. I noticed straight after new year that a few of the people I'm following were posting images with the hashtag #janphotoaday. Intrigued, I did some investigating and it didn't take long to discover the rules over on www.fatmumslim.com.au. It's become quite the phenomenon!

I'm usually hopeless at these 'something a day' challenges. But this one has been quite easy and I find myself planning ahead what I'm going to photograph. You can follow my progress over here or follow me on Instagram (theartofjordan).

From Seed to Plate Grow Your Own Food Workshop

I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow.  - David Hobson

Last night I attended another City of Sydney Green Village workshop - learning how to grow your own fruit and veggies in small city spaces. Most of it I already know to some degree, but I learnt one or two new things.


The basics of growing your own food comes down a couple of key things - where your garden is and what you like to eat. With a bit of research you can find out if your favorite veggies will grow in the conditions of your garden. Generally though, you can grow just about anything with a little creative thinking.


Look around your patio or balcony and assess your available space. Can you hang planter pots over the edge of the balcony? Can you make use of a wall to grow up? As you already know, I've got an old pallet up against a wall which I hang old tin cans from - which I grow a variety of herbs in. I've also used two hanging pots to plant some veggies and strawberries. 

One of the main things I took away from the workshop is that you can throw just about any plants together in a box/container and as long as the soil is good your plants will grow happily. In fact, a variety of plants provides natural diversity to your garden, which will make happier plants and also keep pests at bay. Marigold flowers are also great for attracting the good bugs - they'll eat the baddies. 

I took some perpetual spinach, common mint and strawberry plants and put them all together in a hanging planter that was hanging around the garden. I'm excited to see how they go all together. I also layered my bigger pots with mulch, and will add some worm castings once that's going properly (sorry there was no how-to post on that one, it was set up for me before I took pics, woops!). But I'm super excited to see that my first tiny little tomato has started to grow - woohoo! I did it!


To make sure your soil is in good condition - make sure you layer it with some compost and mulch. You can grab a bag of compost from the hardware store or nursery, but better still use castings from your worm farm (definitely worth investing in!). Layer it with some lucerne or sugar cane mulch, check the moisture and keep an eye out for caterpillars/aphids. That's basically it!
 

I took heaps of notes which I'll be using later to write a proper How-to down the track. Lots of things happening in theartofjordan right now that it's hard to keep up with the detailed blog posts. Bear with me people, there are exciting times ahead!

iWish Wednesdays

Source: weheartit.com via Jordan on Pinterest

Some of the things I'm lusting after in the lead up to summer - rockabilly inspired. Checkered shirt, bustier tops, head scarves, cats eye sunglasses, capri jeans, assorted shoes.

Time to hit up the vintage and second-hand stores!

As a Worm to a Toad...

"Edible - good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm." - Ambrose Bierce

I've had quite the productive morning! First up was the Composting and Worm Farming Workshop at Waterloo Library, held by the City of Sydney's Green Village Workshops. It was a great introduction to the basic principles of composting and worm farming and how to incorporate that into your every day. And we all got to take a compost bin or worm farm home with us at the end. I took lots of notes, so I'll post a simplified How-To later on, along with photos of me setting up my worm farm!

Since it was at the library, I also took the opportunity to join up finally. And then grabbed myself a swag of gardening books. Some of the best books were already nabbed by other workshop attendees, but I'm sure I'll work my way through them all eventually. For now, I'm going to flick through:

• Growing Food in Small Gardens by Barbara Segall - which is divided up into Garden Layouts, Container growing, Vegetables, Fruit and Garden Plans. There's also a section on garden bugs which I am particularly interested in (I found more little green caterpillars today!)
• Pippa's Organic Kitchen Garden by Pippa Greenwood - lots of photos and illustrations and I would expect from a Dorling Kindersley (DK) publication!
• Growing a Garden City by Jeremy N. Smith - a look at all the different people growing gardens in the city, should be very interesting.

I'm moving house this weekend, so the worm farm won't be assembled till next week sometime. I also need to get hold of some worms too!




In the meantime, take a look at this video from Oxfam International Youth Partnerships (OIYP). It's about the current global food market - but what makes it more interesting than usual is it's summary of good initiatives already taking place and how you can contribute. So keep up the good work shopping at your local Farmer Market's, riding your bike and supporting new eco-ethical initiatives!

The 4R's Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

It's not hard to be green. Really it isn't. And we don't even have to be fully fledged swinging from the trees hippy green to be making a difference. You may already have heard of the 3Things movement. It's brilliant. Their whole ethos is that everyone can make a difference, even if they only do 3 things differently. I've still got some bad habits, but I've made some tremendous changes too.

I started by making small changes some time ago. The more I change, the more I learn. And the more I find out, the more frequently my attitudes to earlier changes are altered. For example, I started consciously recycling a long time ago. Most people do now, which is great. But recently I've learned that recycling is really your last port of call.

Recycling still requires a huge expenditure of energy to break materials down in order to be reused. So I started reusing things that I would normally recycle. Tins cans have become herbs pots, water bottle tops are now bells jars over seedlings. But then my 'reuse' box began to overflow. Just how many tin cans and plastic bottles was I going through?

Which let me to the 4R philosophy - Refuse, Reduce, Reuse & Recycle. If you look at things you are using everyday and work backwards, there is usually a solution further down the 4R line that you could be adopting. So, your daily coffee addiction. How many plastic coffee cups do you use? Do you go to a cafe that uses recyclable cardboard cups - great, that's better. You can then throw that in with the recycling. But you can do better. Buy a reusable coffee cup (like a KeepCup), take it with you! Not only is it reducing waste, but you get to make a style statement while you're at it. The same goes with reusable water bottles.

So what else is there? Loads. All those tin cans I was munching through? Well, I can buy beans and legumes dry and in bulk. They can be stored in big cloth bags (in a large plastic box to keep bugs out!). Whenever I plan to cook with them, I just pop what I need into water in a glass jar and let them soak till they're ready for use. So I'll be going further back down the line from recycling my tins, to reusing them as herb pots, to now reducing my consumption of tin cans by buying in bulk and using glass jars and fabric bags etc.

Refuse? That would be all those little plastic bags you accumulate at the supermarkets for your fruit and veggies. Go to the greengrocer or farmers markets, take a cloth bag or basket with you - no need for plastic!

There are so many alternative and solutions that are not only great for the environment, but great for your bottom line too. It just takes a little more effort. And you can always get those tin cans for emergencies to recycle later. Nice.

Heaps more ideas here: The Zero Waste Home