Steven Perich

With the doom and gloom going around at the moment what better time is it to get stuck into something in your spare time that doesn’t involve work, and is cheap, environmentally friendly, delicious and sustainable?

I’ve caught the gardening bug. I think it started when I thought it was high time to finally clean out all the dead plants and mess in the garden, or when Laura’s brother in law dismantled his pergola and had a big gap in his back yard left, surrounded by brick, and I suggested turning it into a vege garden.

Any rate, moving on a couple of months.  He’s installed a 5000L water tank, I’ve donated a (now very healthy) worm farm and I’m usually over there with him once a weekend doing a bit of whatever needs to be done… Because the pergola area is now a huge vege patch!  Currently growing over there:  Tomatoes, cauliflower, pumpkin, corn, lettuces, carrots, broccoli, silverbeet, oregano, capsicum, onions, cucumber and probably one or two other things.

We don’t have much space here but nevertheless I’ve cleaned up the gardens and planted some seedlings and seeds. Here’s the result:

This is a coriander plant that was the size of the basil plant next to it a month ago. Down the bottom is a little chilli plant that’s starting to fruit one or two chillis.

This is a bunch of spouted seeds. We have.. Oregano, silverbeet, tomatoes, carrots..

Next to the seedlings are a few containers I’ve turned into makeshift vege grower things. In them are watermelon, silverbeet and brocolli seedlings that I raised from seeds. Now have to be patient and wait for them to grow..

This is the back area of the house which I just tidied up after a LONG time, put in some greywater diversion hoses (you can probably see them hanging off the white pipe) and then some nice red mulch.

What’s next? Installing a 2500L-ish water tank and building a bigger area on some concrete to lay down some mushroom compost and plant MORE veges!!

I installed Remember the Milk for the iPhone over the weekend and it’s fantabulous!! I’ve even written a review over at canttouchthis.com.au which you should check out.

Already I’m using RTM tenfold, although I’m using tags and smartlists less and Lists more - just because it’s easier and Idon’t have that many cross-contextual to-do’s I guess