When it all starts coming together

It has been a while since I posted and there has been a lot happening in terms of the garden and life in general. My garden is finally getting to my favourite stage (funnily enough – it isn’t the fruit-bearing stage) which is where all the plants start to get big enough for me to sit back and think, “hey, this actually might work”.

The wood ash seemed to do the trick and kept the tomato worms off the tomato plants. Unfortunately I lost quite a few of these to insects, however I just kept and dried out the seeds so that I can replant them next year – not totally wasted! The other tomato species (I’ve actually forgotten what I planted BUT I think we’ve got: Roma, Yellow Pea and Grosse Lisse) are doing quite well and beginning to ripen. The fun part is that I can actually use them in the kitchen now.

The corn I planted is looking rather magnificent (aka: it’s pretty tall) and will hopefully start food production soon, I’ve staggered this so that we’ve got some corn plants that are about 4 weeks behind. I’ll admit that most of my gardening ideas/tricks have come from the internet – in this case it suggested this so that there would be more corn for longer. The internet definitely has some handy hints and has played quite a large role in the improvement of my ‘organic’ gardening skills.

I’ve dabbled with companion planting rather than using any chemicals on the garden and that seems to be working. The Marigold’s are keeping insects off the tomatoes and the beans and corn are doing … whatever it is that makes them companions.

There is definitely something satisfying about the arduous task of maintaining a garden. It opens my eyes to the effort required to produce crops on a large scale and indeed makes me more empathetic to the plight of farmers who are failing to sell their product at high enough prices. If this was my livelihood I don’t know whether I could sustain it. Luckily, it is not a money making venture for me.

 

An assortment of tomatoes collected from the garden,

Lady-birds are helping to keep the insects at bay

Apricots used in marinade and jam

Companion planting corn & beans

Rosemary grown with honey as the root agent

Garden

 

P.S: The sprinklers in the images are set to a timer, they’ll only run for 20min using ground-water. Summer isn’t being too kind to the plants but I believe they are beginning to adapt, I’ve been watering them less than most people I think.

What prevents sustainability?

I have done a lot of thinking about sustainability recently, perhaps due to the occurrence of the new year and the subsequent ‘resolution’ posts that appear on social media. What prevents individuals from following through on their resolution to ‘be more sustainable’ or ‘create less waste’?

Conceptually, these are quite simple things to achieve. Step 1: think about your consumption and where you can minimise waste, Step 2: Purchase more responsibly, buy in bulk and recycle, Step 3: Repeat. This is, of course, an oversimplification of a much more substantial process but the overwhelming point is, the application of a sustainable lifestyle is often not maintained. Why?

There is of course the initial expense – buying solar panels, purchasing bulk ingredients/storage equipment, planting/maintaining a garden etc. However, these costs are generally no more expensive than maintaining a consumptive lifestyle and indeed, often become far less as time progresses.

There is also the time and effort involved in learning how to be sustainable, how to find alternative uses for things, researching and everything that goes along with it. If a person is truly passionate about becoming sustainable or maintaining sustainability then this investment of time is inconsequential – you do what you love. It is when you haven’t yet learned to love it that the time becomes a problem.

I am going to do a bit more research on this subject – “What prevents sustainability” and potentially circulate a survey around my home town. This is the crux of the matter, if we can get individuals to sustain their positive change then we can make an impact on society as a whole.

I’d be interested to hear opinions on what prevents individuals from making sustainable change. Only through knowing what the roadblocks are can we hope to overcome them.