Saving money while being sustainable
Sustainable Neighbours Community Market Day giving tips on how to save Show your soil some love this National Gardening Week
While the concept of sustainability can be a candidate for the too hard basket, mention money savings, and people often start to take notice.
Tauranga Envirohub is hosting a sustainable neighbours market in Te Puke at the weekend that aims to take the concept out of that basket and bring people ideas that might be good for their pocket.
The community market follows on from Envirohub’s street-based sustainable neighbours programme. In Te Puke, the programme saw households from two streets take part in a variety of initiatives designed to help residents live more sustainable lifestyles.
“We adopted 10 houses [in each street] and went on a bit of a journey with them,” says Envirohub’s community co-ordinator Cathy Donnelly.
“But after we assessed it, our learnings from it were people are time poor and often sustainability is in the too hard basket for a lot of people. But if you turn around the conversation
The call is out to stop treating soil like dirt and start giving it some love this National Gardening Week (October 17-24).
Damage to the planet’s land is accelerating with up to 40 per cent now classed as degraded, the United Nations reports.
In 2015 the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation claimed soil is degrading so quickly that we may have less than 60 years of growing food left.
Soil nutrient loss is a major soil degradation process threatening nutrition and is recognised as being among the most important problems at a global level for food security and sustainability all around the globe.
Entomologist, naturalist and conservationist Ruud Kleinpaste says we need to respect soil.
“We’re not standing on dirt, we’re standing on an incredibly diverse ecosystem. It cleans our water, it grows plants and trees — which provide us with oxygen and sequester carbon — and it provides us with food.
“Healthy soil is not only at the very foundation of gardening success . . . but life, itself,” says Kleinpaste.
Soil is a complex ecosystem of microbes, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, algae, nematodes and single-celled and say ‘this is going to save you some money’, then it becomes very relevant for a lot of people.”
That resulted in what Cathy says she hopes will be a series of marketstyle expos, the first of which takes place on Saturday.
“We’ll just set up some tables in the hall and give out some freeebies, have some demonstrations and workshops. We’ll do it in the afternoon so hopefully kids have finished their sport and if you’ve got an hour to spare, come and have a wander up and we can talk about all sorts of things.”
The day coincides with International Repair Day so there will be advice and demonstrations on how to repair things.
“We’ll look at some of the basics of what might be wrong with your kettle or your toaster, to fix it rather than going out and getting a new one.
“There will be advice and tips on tools and plugs — just those things that we have all forgotten in our demands for that instant gratification — getting something new and cheap, but that’s not going to last.”
With a summer coming there will animals. One teaspoon of soil contains up to one billion bacteria, several yards of fungal hyphae (threads or strands), several thousand protozoa and a few dozen nematodes.
“If you could count all the microorganisms in one teaspoon, it is more than the number of people on Earth. Scientists are yet to discover all the functions of soil microbes.
“Generally, they decompose organic
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be tips on growing your own food an information on microgreens and with water restrictions again a possibility, tips on conserving water.
“We’ll be talking about reducing you showers and there will be a giveaway from The Warehouse of rainwater collection kids for our garden.
The water tanks cost around $200 says Cathy.
“That might be a lot for some people, but if you are growing your own vegetables and not spending on that and saving water and using it to grow vegetables, then there is a long term saving.”
There will also be demonstrations of Forushiki — the traditional Japanese cloths used to wrap and/or transport food, and Fukusa, a Japanese textile used for gift wrapping, as an alternative to wrapping paper.
Cathy says she hopes this will be the first of a series, with one each season offering relevant tips for the time of year. matter, creating nutrient-rich soil resulting in excellent compost.”
Most seasoned gardeners have learned and appreciate the value of quality soil.
It will make the difference between a successful gardening experience over plant failure. The easiest way to improve the quality of soil is to apply compost.
Fiona Arthur from Yates says creating healthy soil is as easy as
To celebrate National Gardening Week, Te Puke Times has a Yates Seduce your Soil prize pack to give away, valued at over $220, to help you create healthy soil for optimum growing conditions for your plants.
To enter, simply send your name, address and contact number to: news@tepuketimes.co.nz with Seduce Your Soil in the subject line, before 4pm on October 21. The winner will be drawn at random.
feeding your soil with compost which contains organic matter.
“Add to all those food scraps that shouldn’t be going into the rubbish bin, grass clippings, leaves, sheep or horse poo and seaweed and you have a fantastic compost. Then add blood and bone to your garden to fertilise, improve soil structure and provide natural organic nutrients and lime encourages decomposition of organic matter and earthworm activity.
“You’ll not only have great growing conditions for your plants but you’ll be helping nature and reducing your carbon footprint as healthy soil banks carbon,” says Fiona.
To avoid confusion around what food scraps you can use to make compost, Ruud says anything that once lived can be put in the compost bin.
National Gardening Week aims to foster a love of gardening with a focus on growing not only plants but friendships, good health, strong communities and closer connections with nature.