‘Bellis’, Brisbane’s sustainable house and garden, will be part of the 7th annual Sustainable House Day. ‘Bellis’ will be open on Sunday 14th September only. With a gentle nudge from ‘Bellis’, budding Solar House Day has bloomed into Sustainable House Day. People realise they need to reduce their use of energy and water and to…
Category: Sustainability
Agrochemical Farming – A System In Crisis
John Vidal reports that “Fertiliser prices have mostly doubled and in some cases risen by 500% in 15 months as US farmers have rushed to plant more biofuel crop”… ”There have been fertiliser riots or demonstrations in Vietnam, India, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Taiwan in the last few months. Last week one man…
Families Dig For Dinner As Oil Crisis Hits
Here’s a range of news items related to the cascading effects of rising oil prices around the world: Degraded land, unsustainable agriculture and unaffordable fuel prices are devastating ordinary people in Lesotho, a small, mountainous African nation. How are ordinary families feeding themselves? Click on this link to read this special BBC News report about…
Sustainability Messages From The USA Salmonella Outbreak
Small is good for your health, especially where locally grown and consumed food is concerned. Why? It minimises the scale and spread of disease. The latest Salmonella outbreak in the USA has important messages for Australians: 1.Wash fresh food before eating 2.Install and maintain rainwater systems properly 3.Local food networks contain and minimise certain diseases
Any Suggestions For Reducing Our Larder’s Ecological Footprint?
I’m looking for simple suggestions as to how I could further reduce our larder’s ecological footprint, reducing food miles, greenhouse emissions and making Bellis more sustainable. The cost of food is intimately linked to the cost of oil so prices are rising and I have a tight budget. Last month I listed all the products…
Open Letter To The Climate Change Minister: How Effective Carbon Sequestration Offers A Healthy Economy
An organically farmed Australia could naturally sequester almost 70% of national Greenhouse Gas emissions. The amount of CO2 sequestered is based on achievements through current low-till, sustainable farming practices. “This is not a theoretical estimate as in some of the tree plantation models, or unproven like the millions of dollars being spent on clean coal or mechanical…
Using Every Drop More Than Once
The last thing we want is for any water to go down the drain. By mid-morning today, heavy showers filled our 21,000 litre rainwater tank. It’s starting to overflow into our network of drainage pipes, which soak the soil deeply from 70 cm down and below. When this network has done its job the subsoil…
Native Bee Day
On Saturday I became the proud owner of a hive of native stingless bees, Trigona carbonaria. A little web-searching found that Dr Tim Heard, a CSIRO entomologist and native bee specialist, supplies colonies and his brother, Frank, makes specially designed hives for them. Stingless bees and honeybees happily co-exist. Happily Brisbane provides an ideal climate…
Real Carbon Capture And Sequestration
While Australian governments state and federal, past and present, throw vast amounts of money at unproven ‘clean coal’ technology they are ignoring a proven method of pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it. A thirty year scientific trial by the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania (USA) placed conventional, industrial farming systems and organic systems…
Level 6 Watering Restrictions
The Queensland government, and the Water Commission in particular, continue as the state’s arch water wasters… People who grow food at home are not exempt from watering restrictions. Some of us do this to save money so we can repay our mortgages.
Gardening In ‘New Summer’
October 2007 is the month that Tim Flannery, Australian of the Year, advised that in 2005 the concentration of CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere passed 450 ppm. Also this month a German study revealed that we passed Peak Oil in 2006. I can think of few more momentous happenings for human civilisation. Certainly for human…
Mantis Mealtime
Hedge Grasshopper, Valanga irregularis Brown Praying Mantis, Archimantis latistyla Observed whilst pruning native raspberries last Friday morning.The mantis ate the grasshopper’s thorax and abdomen but left the gut intact…nice to see biological control in action.
Jerry Coleby-Williams 