Well, since my husband and I signed up to Riot 4 Austerity this year, we have been taking a close look at the 7 basic areas and their relationship to our life style. We passed with flying colors in 4 areas. The areas we found that we could really reduce our impact was driving, natural gas and food.
Since my husband commutes a long distance to work, so gas wasnt a big surprise. The second area was food. WOW! By Riot standards we failed big time. Some how I thought we would fly past this one also since we cook most of our food from scratch, shop at the farmer's market and buy organic. Since starting this program I began asking the vendors at our farmer's market where they are located. Turns out that many of our venders come from more than 200 miles away. Thats not local in my book! Also, since I work part time, we do buy some packaged and pre-mixed foods for when Im too busy to cook for the family. The end result is that I have found that I need to invest more time in our garden.
We responded to this by adding a third raised bed for vegetables this year. We also added framing to two of our beds so we could incorporate a hanging container garden.
In the front of the house we have tarragon, thyme, tomatoes, potatoes, wing beans and broccoli.
In the south bed that gets the most sun I planted chard, spinach, peppers, corn, soy beans and squash with hanging chick peas and lentils.
In the shade bed under the deck we have lettuce, carrots, kohlrabi, cauliflower and turnips.
In our new bed under the fig tree we have zucchini, watermelon, pumpkin, onions, beets, mesculin, sugar peas, wax beans and Im trying to grow a peanuts and garlic with no success so far. Hanging above we have tomatoes.
Out of the beds around the yard I have planted sunflowers, black berries, raspberries, sugar cane, grapes, boysenberries fennel and dill. Im also trying to start sweet potatoes, asparagus and millet.
In our container garden on the deck I have two more potatoes, blue berries, stawberries, keffier lime, lemon, lemon grass, artichokes, sage, and curry leaf.
We are also very lucky that our home has established fruit trees. We have 2 plums, a walnut, almond, pear (not very good), apricot, fig, 2 California bays, apple and an orange tree.
We will add pictures as the garden begins to grow in earnest! This summer we hope to build a green house so we can start our garden earlier next year. We are going to try and feed ourselves out of our own yard this year. Wish us big luck!
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