Yearly review

Review and Renew 2009

by with No Comment Permaculture & Garden

Yearly review

I have been thinking about the garden what went well and what didn’t go quite so well and what I want to try in 2009.

Went well

  • Compost – composted all household compostibles
  • Lettuce (I had home grown lettuce most days)
  • Mint – great but has now passed its best lasted about 3 months
  • Rosmary – can’t fail with this
  • Dwarf broad beans – I harvested a few and killed them and left in soil (fixing nitrogeon)
  • Garlic (from sprouted cloves)
  • Basil – good but bolted quickly

Almost Worked

  • Peas, tomatoes – started well but got rot
  • Cabbage, broccoli – started well be savaged by snails cabbage moth & slugs.
  • Broad beans some looked promising but rotted or just died
  • Strawberries, grapes (produced but eaten by birds)
  • Chillis (from from chill seeds from kitchen) kept getting eaten when young
Failures (didn’t grow at all)
  • Soybeans (maybe the seeds were bad)
  • Grow from seeds they kept dying
Things I have learnt
  • How to use mulch
  • How to water
 
 
lightbulb

Energy Efficient light globes are harmful

by with No Comment Behind the NewsCritical Thinkingpower

I have long suspected that the claims made for energy efficient light globes is nonsense so armed with google I did a bit of research

The claim for energy efficient globes (Compact fluorescent lamp)

  • More environmentally Friendly

  • Use less electricity

  • As good as existing light globes
  • Last Longer

Let me take these items one at a time

More environmentally Friendly
These bulbs are much more energy and resource intensive to manufacture and they also contain mercury making them difficult to dispose of properly.
Use less electricity
They do use less electricity however they are basically using the same technology as old fashioned fluorescent strip lights and they share the efficiency profile of these. If you turn these lights and never turn them off they use about a quarter of the energy of a conventional bulb. However if you turn your lights on and off frequently (like we do) then the efficiency goes right down because these bulbs (just like fluorescent strip lights are a lot less efficient when being turned on and off).

As good as existing light globes
I hate the light from these (the wave spectra is different). They also take a while to get to full brightness. They have also been shown to cause epilepsy and they can buzz. The EPA take the safety and disposal of these pretty seriously if you break one you need to evacuate the room for 15 minutes and dispose of the bulb in a glass jar
Last Longer
I suspect if you have a modern house with electrics then they would last longer but I frequently have these (expensive) babies blow on me. Also as they get older they get less bright. The life is also dramatically shortened by turning them on and off.
 
SOURCES – WIKIPEADIA
 
NEWS ARTICLES
 
australian tsunami

Australian Tsunami

by with No Comment Disasters
NSW, Victoria Lord Howe Island and NZ were on Tsunami alert yesterday! I watched the unfolding events using tweetdeck – it was fascinating!

“The weather bureau says east coast beaches may experience abnormal wave conditions today after a tsunami warning was cancelled overnight.

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake off the coast of New Zealand last night prompted the Bureau of Meteorology to issue a tsunami warning for parts of the east coast.” FULL ARTICLE HERE