That’s why I think these guys are amazing! They managed to live a whole year without generating any rubbish – well just one super market shopping bag of rubbish.

The Christchurch (New Zealand) based couple Matthew and Waveney consider themselves a normal couple. Matthew works 30 hours a week, and Waveney works part-time and studies. They have no kids, own a car (but bike a lot) and eat meat (although not every day). They also live with their dog and two chickens.

However, their rubbish free year puts them more in the category of ’super’ rather than ‘normal’ couple.

In February 2008 they challenged themselves to create no rubbish for landfill for a whole year. In February this year their challenge ended, leaving them with only one super market shopping bag of rubbish that weighed just less than 2kg.

They did this through the normal channels of recycling -  reusing, rehoming, composting, gardening, making things, exercising their consumer power and asking friends and family not to bring any rubbishy stuff over.

Normal channels maybe, but their journey into a rubbish free year is far from normal. You can follow their story on their blog.

All I used was one lemon, some cheap white vinegar and soda bicarbonate.

If you would like to try this recipe, here’s what you do.
1. Squeeze the juice of the lemon into a cup.
2. Add about four heaped table spoons of soda bicarbonate– watch out because this will fizz up.
3. Add about a tablespoon of vinegar, which should help ease the fizzing.
4. Mix and keep adding soda bicarbonate until you have a thick paste that is pretty solid and doesn’t dribble.
5. Scoop the paste into your dishwasher’s powder holder.

This mixture made about four washes in my dishwasher but it will probably vary a bit for you.

Anyone got any other green cleaning recipes and tips? Please share them in the comments below.

In case you’re not sure, feral fruit is basically any fruit you can glean from a public space like a park, by the road side or overhanging a fence. It’s not only free, but grown locally and chances are its organic.

The concept of feral fruit tree mapping was first introduced to me by the folks over at Milkwood but I think it’s really been something people have been doing in their heads for ages. As a kid, my friends and I always knew where the feral mulberry trees and blackberry bushes were in our neighbourhood.

Years ago my brother and his partner were known as the “hunters and gatherers” by their friends and neighbours because they were often seen out picking berries and fruit from trees and hedges growing randomly in their neighbourhood. They also always knew where the good feral fig trees were near my mother’s place in Canberra. There is nothing better than eating a freshly picked fig …yum.

But how do you remember where all those fruit trees are - particularly if you notice a feral tree full of fruit one season but forget where it is the next season? Creating a map is the best way – either traditionally with a map, pen and paper or, my preference, with Google maps.

Google maps allow you to share your map with many other people. This is the beginning of my map, but Kirsten (from Milkwood) has created an excellent feral fruit tree map in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy. A Google map is fairly easy to create – see directions here. I haven’t seen a lot on feral fruit tree mapping in Australia but there is a group in the US called Fallen Fruit who are collecting feral fruit tree maps, they also have some good tips on creating a map.

Wouldn’t it be great to hook up Australian suburbs through feral fruit tree maps? I love the idea of fruit and fresh food as a free-for-all. Does anyone else have a feral fruit tree map they would like to share?

Or have you heard of any free-for-all areas? I’ve heard that residents in the inner Sydney suburbs Chippendale and Marrickville have set up free food gardens by the street kerbs, but I haven’t seen them – see the Sydney Morning Herald article - Green solution just outside your door for more information.

People in the UK also seem to be onto it. Read these stories about cultivating and growing free food: Todmorden’s bid for self sufficiency and Free fruit for all in Sheffield.

Happy mapping, and please…let me know how you go.

Lilly pillies are originally rainforest plants and native to Australia and south-east Asia.

People love using them as hedges. The ones near my house spend most of the year as leafy, green, glossy bushes. Occasionally, they break out in fluffy white blossoms and then today I noticed little dark pink cherry-like, apple shaped berries. A quick Google back home and a lilly pilly confirmation.

Since my travels into the world of native spinach, I’ve been looking into what other native edibles grow in my neighbourhood. I now know lilly pillies are everywhere.

However, I have to admit the ones I picked weren’t really that tasty, kind of bitter. Nice, crisp and juicy though. They look better than they taste. However, a great food source that seems to grow freely in people’s gardens.

Rather than eat them raw, the recommendation is to turn them into jelly, jam or chutney.  I haven’t tried this yet – I need to collect more fruit.  I’ve also heard of adding them to an apple pie for extra colour.

Does anyone out there have any other good recipes?

The book is called Growing Stuff: An Alternative Guide to Gardening and it’s published by UK company Black Dog Publishing. It probably won’t hit shelves here in Australia until next month.

The book follows on from the two books - Making Stuff and Making Stuff for Kids - and it covers all sorts of gardening stuff from getting started, planting edibles and flowers to attracting wildlife plus a few other quirky things. It contains loads of practical advice, greats pictures and how-to guides.

For more info about the book, download the press release. Or check out what I’ve written about composting and building a worm farm.

He often likes to stick his tongue out at me, so I just stick mine out right back at him. Although, my pink, pointy tongue is nothing on his fabulous blue one. Barry’s tongue poking is probably more to do with him feeling threatened, rather than just wanting to be rude.When threatened, blue tongues rely on bluff tactics to survive.  They stick out their tongues to scare potential predators, flatten their bodies to seem larger and even hiss to appear fierce.

Since Barry’s cold blooded, he’s often lying around on our paving and many times I’ve almost trodden on him while hanging out the washing. But no hard feelings, just a lot of tongue poking.

Blue tongue lizards are quite common in suburban areas.  They are the largest members of the skink family and considered quite docile. However, they do bite when frightened so be careful when handling them.  Bites are painful but not venomous – ensure bites are cleaned with an antiseptic solution and covered.

The three most common types of blue tongue lizards are the eastern blue tongue, the botched blue tongue and the shingle back.

Blue tongues are beneficial to the organic garden in terms of pest control.  To attract blue tongues to your garden keep pets in check and provide rocks and plenty of ground cover like cassock grasses and leaf litter.  At night they shelter in the leaf litter or logs and rocks. Steer clear of using pesticides or snail baits, which are also poisonous to blue tongues.

During cold weather they remain hidden and inactive so don’t be surprised if your blue tongue disappears over winter.

There’s nothing I love more than gardening in a light summer rain. The garden comes alive with dripping lushness and the soil smells sweet and earthy.

Today, I planted some of the native spinach I found last week into one of my vege patches. It’s in a spot I don’t really use much so I am hoping it will spread out quite a lot. This is an experimental patch to see how the spinach grows.

My son helped plant it, so we’ve called it Liam’s spinach patch. It was lovely watching him fuss over it, and then spend the rest of his time trying to catch rain drops on his tongue.

A month back I wrote about finding native spinach at Smiths Lakes and I was annoyed with myself for not taking a clipping to plant back in my garden. Ever since, I have been on the lookout for native spinach in Sydney.

It was by sheer accident while I was getting the pram out of the boot that I saw the little green plants growing by my feet. They looked a lot healthier than the specimens at Smiths Lake, no doubt due to better soil and some shade.

I pulled up a few plants and transplanted them into pots back home. I have great plans for these little beauties. I want to use them to create an edible ground cover over some of the less productive sections of my garden.

I must admit spotting native edibles is quite exciting and something I could get addicted to. Anyone know of any other good edible natives that people can find growing wild in their local areas?

However, over the New Year break my family and I shared a holiday house on Smiths Lake with two other families. Since the house was a holiday rental there was no composting or worm farming facilities so all our organic scraps went straight in the bin. I was amazed at how quickly our bins filled up and how much was thrown out that could have been composted. It was enough to make me cry – well almost.

Although this was a holiday situation, with more families in a house than usual, according to the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) roughly 50 per cent of rubbish sent to landfill is food and garden waste. Not only does this compostable or reusable waste take up valuable landfill, it also produces greenhouse gas emissions.

The ACF says when one tonne of organic waste is diverted from landfill, nearly a third of a tonne of greenhouse gas emissions is saved.

So, composting food and garden waste could reduce a household’s waste by half - that’s roughly 560kg of waste kept out of landfill per person each year, according to the ACF.

A composting system is easy to set up in a backyard, and worm farms or Bokashi bins are ideal for flats, or small living spaces.

All sorts or organic scrap are compostable such as vegetable and fruit scraps, fresh lawn clippings, farm animal manure (no pet droppings), old vase flowers, garden clippings, coffee grounds, tea leaves and seaweed. However, before taking seaweed from a beach get permission from the local council first Even hair, fluff, vacuum cleaner dust, used potting mix, paper, cardboard, crushed egg shells and old clothes can be composted.

I’ve written some guides to setting up a compost system, how to build your own worm farm and looking after worms so have a read and good luck.

Let me know how you go or if you have any other tips.

This is what I returned to in my garden after two weeks away on holidays.

An almost dead Lotsa-Lemon tree – something had stripped it bare, a fig tree covered in scale insects, a passionfruit vine also almost stripped bare, my zucchini and pumpkins infested with white fly, and my two small guava trees dead from lack of water. Tears, tears and more tears.

But what have grown well are loads of huge weeds that have taken over whole sections of my garden.

Gardening can be so cruel sometimes…sigh. Looks like this weekend will be spent reviving my ailing garden.