I’ve just finished reading Choosing Eden, which coincides well with the rising oil and fuel prices that are dominating media headlines.

The author, Adrienne Langman, tells a compelling tale of how she and her husband learn about the peak oil crisis. As a result they leave their comfortable life in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney to create a more sustainable life in Northern NSW - Nana Glen near Coffs Harbour.

Their dream is to establish a permaculture farm, which they call Eden Forest Permaculture Sanctuary. This is so they won’t be reliant on the rising costs of living associated with increasing oil prices.

The story begins with Adrienne and her husband’s first discovery of the peak oil crisis, to selling their Sydney home, buying a farm, and learning about and setting up a permaculture farm on their land.

The story is incredibly inspirational because Adrienne and her husband are in their 50s and they leave a well established community of family and friends in Sydney to step into the unknown.

If you’re like me – you live in a city but are always dreaming of moving to the country to create a more sustainable lifestyle then this book will make you want to do it even more. Choosing Eden is a really great read and although it was only published last year, I’m already waiting for the follow up book, which I hope Adrienne is writing now.

One thing I love about having a garden is being able to grow food that I can’t usually buy.

I have just finished harvesting my first native finger lime crop. I bought the tree last year and keep it potted in a sunny spot in my backyard. Although the tree is tiny, I managed to harvest about 15 little finger limes.

Native finger limes are amazing fruit. They start off as long green fruits that look a bit like rough, scaly chillies – in fact my husband thought it was a chilli plant. When they are ready to eat, they turn a deep, dark orange-red colour.

Inside, the lime’s flesh looks like orange caviar (although pulps can range from white to pink, lime green and lemon – depending on the type of lime you have) and smells fresh and citrusy. It’s hard to describe the taste – they sort of taste like limes but with a fresher, more tart flavour. And the little balls of fruit just burst in your mouth.

I am still experimenting with them in terms of eating. So far I have spritzed them in sparkling mineral water and added them to fresh fruit salad but that’s about it. If anyone has any other ideas, then please let me know.

This morning I snapped these naughty cockatoos raiding my mandarin tree. They are such messy and wasteful eaters. First, they break off a mandarin, scoff about half of it, and then throw it away and move on to the next fruit.

While I’ve been patiently waiting for my mandarins to ripen – they are almost there – I have noticed a lot go missing. I thought it was the possums again but now I know the real culprits.

It seems that competition for home grown produce with the local wildlife is extra fierce in suburban areas like mine where people are demolishing old houses and flattening existing gardens to make way for McMansions.

Unfortunately, this increasing trend in housing is reducing garden space to tiny lawn areas bereft of food producing trees – native and cultivated. In fact most of these gardens are devoid of anything really. This means that if you do have a garden that bears fruit in such an area, then wrestling your produce from the local wildlife becomes even harder due to lack of native food sources.

While I don’t mind sharing some mandarins with the local wildlife, I will net the trees soon if too many go missing. It’s been two years since I’ve had a good mandarin crop and I am not keen to let it all go to the birds.

Aquaponics is one thing I haven’t thought about venturing into. I always thought setting up an aquaponics system looked too labour intensive, and it needed a lot of water. Plus I love the smell and touch of soil, and all the little critters that good, healthy dirt brings.

However, through Greenfoot I have been in contact with a few people who run their own backyard aquaponics systems and, once set up, they assure me aquaponics is less labour intensive and uses very little extra water.

It’s also the symbiotic nature of such a system that I find quite fascinating. (more…)

Early last year my friend Matt began his journey into the mythical world of growing garlic. Towards the end of last year I was able to sample some of his delicious and potent little cloves of garlicky goodness.

According to Matt, late February to early April is the best time for planting garlic in Sydney.

Taking Matt’s advice, I’ve held onto my bulbs from him until now - although I did eat about half … yum. I finally planted them today. My son helped by stuffing a clove into each hole I made in the soil. He then used his little watering can to moisten the soil.

Being 29 weeks pregnant, my belly and bad back are beginning to hamper my gardening abilities. Therefore, I’m winding up most of my garden beds for winter by heavily mulching them over and letting them rest.

However, I figure garlic will be pretty easy to grow over these months and won’t need much care or labour. The garlic now lives in the sunniest sections (during winter) of my garden.

Matt has kindly provided another update on his garlic expeditions - no doubt he has just planted some more garlic in his own garden. Read on for Matt’s update. (more…)

This time of year is pumpkin eating time in my house.

It’s the time when I harvest my mini pumpkin vines and the little, knobby, round, orange vegetables lie happily around our kitchen and balcony.

They are really easy to grow and perfect for smaller gardens that don’t have a lot of space. I usually plant a few seeds and keep a couple of the strongest seedlings alive.

I let the vines ramble about my herb and vegetable patches, plus let them climb up the back fence trellises. They probably only get up to about five metres long so are quite manageable. (more…)

I love beer, especially now that I am pregnant and shouldn’t drink it

My husband brews a pretty good drop from our garage, which usually comes top of my list for taste.

But now there’s a new beer I’d like to try (when I can) and that’s Cascade Green, which Cascade claims is 100% carbon offset.

What does this mean? Well according to the Cascade brewery, all remaining greenhouse gas emissions from the beer are offset from the moment the company sources its hops to when the beer bottles are placed in recycling bins.

Cascade also says that it uses bio-degradable vegetable oil based inks in the beer’s packaging, and the carton is 100% recyclable.

Have you tried this beer? Let me know what you think.

Last year I was tortured by tomatoes. This year I’ve found a solution - cherry tomatoes.

Since cherry tomatoes are so small they grow and ripen quickly, leaving less time for disease and pests to set in.

My vines have just finished producing but during the past couple of months I harvested a good handful of small, deliciously sweet cherry tomatoes every day.

They are excellent in salads, and make a great fresh pasta sauce with home grown basil. Or you can eat them straight from the garden, which my son loves.

To keep my sanity, I will keep to cherry tomatoes from now on.

Has anyone else got any great tips for growing tomatoes?

I just love olives and can’t wait till my tree, which is still very young, starts producing these tasty little treats.

I planted my olive tree about a year ago against a fence and have been patiently training it to resemble an espaliered plant. I say “resembles” because this is my first attempt at espaliering so I am not really entirely sure that I am doing the right thing. So far so good - it looks flat against the fence and is slowly fanning out.

However, I think it will still take a few more years before I experience my first crop. But I will keep dreaming of home grown olives.

In the meantime, I found a great website called Planting Milkwood, which has an entertaining video about how to pickle olives. So if you are interested, check it out.

Although all of my organic matter is composted or fed to the worms there are a few items I keep aside for special purposes in the garden.

Coffee not only provides a great pick-me-up but it’s also excellent for nitrogen loving plants. So is tea. Lately, I’ve been sprinkling left over coffee grounds and tea leaves around my tomato and capsicum plants - in the hope of improving their yields.

If you don’t drink coffee you can always ask coffee shop owners for their left over coffee grounds.

I also like to hold onto egg shells. Although they don’t break down that well in my compost bins and worm farms they work well in the garden. I dry them out on the balcony, crush them up and sprinkle them around the base of seedlings to deter slugs and snails.

Beer also works a treat in killing these slimy pests. Place some in the bottom of a jar turned on its side. Slugs and snails can’t resist such a delicious temptation so they crawl into the jar and well erm… drown. Beats toxic pellets any day.