Garden play

I just love this time of year. Time to plant the summer vegie garden. Have you ever grown your own vegies? It is the most rewarding experience to be able to fill your dinner table with your very own organic fresh food. I am not at all of the scientific way to grow. I just have a very simple method.
1. Give the soil food (and plenty of it) e.g compost, manure a bit of NPK
Let it settle a week or so

2. Choose your vegies. You can grow by seed if you like but that really means raising them in seed trays up to 4 weeks before you want to plant out. I usually just buy seedlings.

3. Plant out your garden and water. It is helpful to do a bit of study inot companion planting because this helps reduce your pest problem.

Each morning I spend maybe half an hour debugging and tending my babies and telling them how fruitful they will be this year and whala! In a couple of months you are reaping the rewards.

So give it a go. You won't be sorry.
I will post here step by step as I create mine.

Have fun

<3M

Update

The oil spil off the kimberly coastline in northern Western Australia is yet to be stopped. Experts are still trying to find a way to cap the leak which is estimated to be about 2000 mt below the ocean floor.



taken from the 'Australian Science Media Centre'

Professor John Buckeridge is Head of the School of Civil, Environmental & Chemical Engineering at RMIT University, Melbourne.

“The concern for me is when the slick reaches the areas of high biodiversity along the shorelines and it’s there that there is greatest likely impact - on marine invertebrates in the shallow zone and on birds, it is also a breeding ground for many species. That is where the corals are, it is where a lot of the algae are, it is an area where filter feeders in particular can get clogged up with oil and organics. One of the rather interesting things that a lot of people forget is that the nature of these hydrocarbons is very complex, there are alkanes and alkenes many of which will have an effect on the metabolism, lifecycles and reproduction of some of these organisms. We are animals which function on chemistry and they are chemicals that can cause things to happen at the wrong time.

It is very light grade crude and it is evaporating quickly so hopefully slicks won’t reach the shore. If it evaporates or dissipates before it reaches the shore then it is less of a problem

There is an interesting subject I want to share with you that I read about in a local organic gardening magazine.
It is about saving the ancestors (the wild beginnings) of our produce trees. Fruits, nuts, all those delicious foods we take for granted. Many of thses trees originated from central Asia. Our food security could be jeopardised if we let these trees become extinct. One day we may need to resort back to these species to develop disease resistant or drought tolerant plants for growth.

It has been estimated that 90% of these forests have been destroyed in the last 50 years. Flora and Fauna International, Botanic Garden Conservation International and a few other organizations are working at the conservation of forests in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.

To find a list of the threatened species go to www.globaltrees.org and look up the 'red list of trees of Central Asia'

Oil spill of the WA coast

A devastating oil spill is happening off the north western australia coast. Crude oil began leaking from the West Atlas offshore rig yesterday morning, 250 kilometres north of Truscott in Western Australia. The spill is currently about 30 metres wide and 14 kilometres long and only 100km from the west australian coast.

At this time of year there are baby turtles everywhere in the area and it is very near to an area whales migrate through. The damage could be enormous and there is a very distinct possibility that the leaking rig won't be capped for months as the spill is coming from approximately 2 km's below the surface.

This occurance has only reinforced the belief that there needs to be a much larger scale attempt at protecting this area. It has been proven that there is wider biodiversity than even the 'Great Barrier Reef' and yet nothing is being done to curb mining in the region.

It is absolutely heart breaking especially if like me you love nothing more than spending time on or around this particular area. I have seen first hand the beauty of this region and its wildlife. It is a place to be protected and we need to do more to keep it in pristine condition.




For more information on the area go here

http://www.wilderness.org.au/articles/wa-unique-marine-world

Environmental concerns

We all know its happening. Yes climate change. And we can all do our bit to help. I truly believe if we all work at living greener lives that together we can make a huge difference. This is not just a problem of our leaders. It is a worry for us all. What sort of world are we going to leave our children. I've done a lot of small things in my life to change my impact. Things such as growing a lot of my own fresh produce. You would be suprised at how little an area you really need to produce a decent quantity. I also have outfitted a lot of my house with energy efficient appliances, such as lights, washing machine, solar hot water. We have our own water tank and my vegies are strictly organic and fed either through compost or seaweed. But there is just sooo much further I can take it as can we all. It is a continual learning process.

If you are interested at all in learning greener ways and not to mention animal and environmental welfare. A great site to visit is nature.org

Lets make a difference my friends.

Here are a few pictures from north Western Australia.

The poetry of nature......

beauty is all around us if you only just look





'It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature's gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.'
Jimmy Carter