Compost is a version of humus found in soil. The Australian gardener’s best friend, this is a mixture of recycled organic and household waste that you can use as a natural fertilizer to renew your soil’s composition and yield bountiful plant growth and harvests. Making compost for your garden is not as difficult as it seems. You can even create one at home using crude materials you may easily locate in your household. Here are the basic steps of making compost:

Step 1: Free the ground from debris and set-up three wooden pallets that are tied side by side.

Step 2: The two basic ingredients of compost is carbon (brown ingredients) and nitrogen (green ingredients). The former provides volume while the latter fuels the compost. A 1:4 carbon-nitrogen ratio is the standard being followed. Collect items which are potential sources of carbon like autumn or dry leaves, newspapers, vegetable wastes, sawdust etc. Nitrogen is found from organic and artificial types of activators. Organic types include soil lawn clippings, hair, weeds and blood meal. Although, artificial type of activator like commercial Nitrogen fertilizers is readily available, organic types are more effective since artificial activators do not contain protein which is essential for microorganisms’ use.

Step 3:  Compost pile consists of layers of carbon alternated with nitrogen. Place larger materials at the bottom of the heap. Putting it at the bottom of the heap increases the chances for it to breakdown and it also allows the air to move through it.

Step 4: Continue layering the materials. Water the heap as it grows and in every additional layer of nitrogen. Ensure to keep the heap moist.

Step 5: As decomposition commences, the heap will begin to subside. Smother the pile with fresh lawn clippings and water it again. You can also install a piece of PVC pipe in the middle of the heap to maintain airflow. Add additional food scraps over time and leave it for 2 weeks.

Step 6: Turn the compost pile. Fork and transfer it to 2 or more bins.

Step 8: After turning it, leave it again for another week. However, turning it more often hastens the decomposition process.

Step 9: You know it’s done when after 4-6 weeks of continuous turning, the organic materials are unrecognizable and the heap looks like organic soil.

Now that your compost is ready, you can use it in many different ways to enhance the soil with the appropriate amount of nutrients for the plants to thrive at its best!

Winter is coming so now’s the time to start preparing your soil for growing delicious Australian winter root vegetables.

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While cultivating soil can be a tedious and messy job it gives you the opportunity to transform your yard into a prolific home garden. Aside from the nutritional benefits you get from eating fresh and naturally grown fruits and vegetables from your own backyard, maintaining a vegetable garden at home can also be a good physical activity to help you stay in shape. Calories are burned when you plant the garden, sow seeds, water the plants, remove weeds, mow the lawn and, of course, it also saves you money that would otherwise be spent buying fruit, vegetables and even flowers from stores and markets.

Beginning a home garden requires a lot of planning. First, you have to decide what plants you would like to grow in your home or backyard. The next thing to do is to prepare the soil which is an essential factor to the survival of outdoor and container plants. To determine a healthy and safe soil, have it checked for water, nitrogen and phosphorus content as well as its alkalinity and acidity. In addition to that, you need to have an excellent mixture of clay, sand and silt. You can test its quality by compressing it and assessing if it can hold its shape or whether it falls apart easily when an external force is applied to it. You can then be certain that you’re close to the standards of a good soil composition. But if you think it lacks one ingredient or another you can remedy that. Peat moss or compost is used for soil that contains too much silk or sand. For too much clay, a mix of peat moss and sand should do the trick.

If your soil is deficient in nutrients you can add fertilizers one to two weeks prior to planting your seeds. Continue adding the same amount of fertilizer a week after the seeds have been sown to be certain that there is an adequate supply of the nutrients that are essential for the plants’ growth.

Garden pests can be your number one enemy in home gardening. Eliminating them totally will be close to impossible but there are ways of controlling their existence in the garden. Planting herbs like chives, coriander, basil and mint can help you with pest control. Insects are deterred by eliminating weeds, leaves and decaying matter where they could possibly reside.

There are so many things that a gardener should consider in home gardening. Spare some time and effort in learning about it and you’ll see that even without a green thumb, you can grow a garden of abundance and freshness.

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The Western Central Pacific is the last remaining healthy fishery in the world and the source of over half the world’s tuna. Yellowfin and bigeye tuna have been in constant decline since 2001 – both are now in an overfished state.

This is taking place in Tahiti.

On the negotiatiing table according to Greenpeace are issues such as closing the high seas pockets to all. In 2008, two of our the four nets were closed for net fishing. Now Pacific Islands which includes Australia, are calling for the other two to be closed.

Another one is to halve the fishing of the threatened big eye tuna and to ban deadly fishing magnets.

Greenpeace want fish aggregation devices to be fully banned after discovering that it wasn’t fully banned despite the rule coming in in 2008.

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Australia’s festivities are that great over the festive period that they tend to go on holidays and leave food in fridges which then gets out dated and thrown in the bin.

It generates a lot of waste for the country and it also sometimes makes the country look a lot messier if the waste is not disposed properly.

It’s not just a food problem in Australia.

While most of it will be ingested, more than a third of food in Europe and the United States will grow moldy fur in the back of the fridge, pass its use-by date and land in garbage.

 In the United Kingdom, according to a leading European magazine, the UK, one of Europe’s worst food waste offenders, around 6.7 million tons of purchased and edible food, worth £10.2 billion (11.2 billion euros, $16.6 billion), are annually discarded.

Around 4.1 million tons of this wasted food comes directly from food manufacturers.

Then comes the smell.

“In Europe we consume so much globalized food, like kiwis from New Zealand and pineapples from Australia – all of which has to be transported over thousands of kilometers to get here,” Harjula told Deutche Well.

Then you think of the countries like Sudan and in and around Africa that are poor and needing food. Indonesia, so close to Australia, has thousands of starving people.

There hasn’t been a bigger gap in world society yet than now.

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Maybe they should be looking to organic food?

Organic food is the best way to curb global warming, heart disease, diabetes and cancer according to a report in the UK’s Daily Mail.

The Mail suggests that the traditional Sunday lunch could become a thing of the past under plans by key Government green advisors to slash Britain’s meat, cheese and milk consumption.

A hard hitting report by the Sustainable Development Commission is calling for a ‘radical change’ in the UK’s diet to prevent dangerous global warming and tackle heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

The study says Britons need to eat less meat and dairy produce, cut down on junk food and reduce the amount of waste they throw into bins.

The food and drink industry has reacted angrily to the report – claiming that the livelihoods of tens of thousands of farmers would suffer if consumers switched away from meat and dairy.

Fruit and vegetables are now on the menu along with eating fish from sustainable sources, buying more organic food and drinking more tap water instead of bottled water.

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Just imagine your plate full of prawns this Christmas.

Commercial fishermen are harvesting huge hauls of school prawns, which due to their size are easily being confused for King prawns.

“In my 20 years in seafood, these catches are by far the biggest ocean schooling prawns I have seen,” Shane Geary of the Coffs Harbour Fishermen’s Co-op told The Coffs Coast Advocate.

“All the pro fishermen have put it down to one thing – the floods.

“When there’s a drought on land, there’s a drought at sea, and when there’s a flood it flows through to the ocean washing prawns and a lot of nutrients from the estuaries out to sea,” he said.

It is understood Coffs based trawlers are said to be pulling up a tonne a day, often close to shore, but as far north as the Gold Coast.

So this Christmas, a tragedy has turned into a real treat.

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In Australia, supermarkets are still selling good portions of organic foods despite their more expensive nature compared to their comparative foods.

Even those things such as organic shampoos and cosmetics are still being consistently bought.

And internationally it seems, supermarket sales of environmentally sustainable or ‘ethical’ products are set to rise by 8.7 per cent to nearly $38 billion this year, according to a report in The Telegraph in London. 

Perhaps even more surprising is that organic food is booming in Eastern Europe. 

In Poland almost every supermarket sells it, while the sales of an organic online shop more than doubled in a year.

In Romania sales of the pesticide-free produce in the first half of this year were more than 15 times higher than in the equivalent period in 2008 in 21 supermarkets owned by the French chain Carrefour. And in Hungary weekly organic markets are being held all over the country.

So the environmentally free people are still paying extra for those natural ingredients but they are prepared to continue even if the tough times financially continue.

It appears that nature is thicker than money for some people.

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SWEDEN’S shoppers are set to be the first to know what carbon dioxide emissions are associated with the food that they are buying with products to list this and restaurants are also following suit.

The New York Times reports  changing diet can be as effective in reducing emissions of climate-changing gases as doing away with the clothes dryer, scientific experts say.

”We’re the first to do it, and it’s a new way of thinking for us,” said Ulf Bohman, head of the nutrition department at the Swedish National Food Administration.

”We’re used to thinking about safety and nutrition as one thing and environmental as another.”

Some of the proposed dietary guidelines could shock shoppers as they recommend that Swedes choose carrots over cucumbers and tomatoes.

And they are advised to substitute beans or chicken for red meat, in view of the heavy greenhouse gas emissions from raising cattle.

”For consumers, it’s hard,” Mr Bohman said. ”You are getting environmental advice that you have to co-ordinate with, ‘How can I eat healthier?’ ”

Some experts say Sweden could cut its emissions from food production by 20 to 50 per cent.

An estimated 25 per cent of the emissions in industrialised nations can be traced to the food, according to recent research here.

It is expected this will be circulated across Europe and around the world in years to come.

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Thermo Fisher is a comprehensive provider of solutions for environment and food safety.

Thermo Fisher is making the easy-to-use resource centers available to the world’s scientific community to share its extensive knowledge and help accelerate scientific discovery.

For further information on the Thermo Scientific environmental and food safety information resources email -www.thermo.com/lcmsenviro.

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They have got the information from a three-year investigation of the global trade in Brazilian cattle products. The Greenpeace report names Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons and Marks & Spencer among dozens of high-profile companies that it says profit from products supplied by Brazilian farms on illegally deforested land. Much of the trade is in processed beef, used for pies, canned meat and frozen ready meals. The supermarkets insist it is not from the Amazon.

“UK companies are driving the destruction of the Amazon by buying beef and leather products from unscrupulous suppliers in Brazil. These products are ending up on our shelves.” Sarah Shoraka, Greenpeace
The investigation also tracked the global trade in other Brazilian goods made from cattle. It names Nike, Adidas, Timberland and Clarks Shoes among companies it says use leather linked to Amazon destruction.
Greenpeace wants companies to refuse to buy products sourced from farms that have carried out illegal deforestation. It wants consumers to pressure supermarkets and high-street brands identified in the report to clean-up supply chains.

“The cattle industry is the single biggest cause of deforestation in the world and is a disaster for the fight against climate change.” Sarah Shoraka, Greenpeace

Cattle farming is now the biggest threat to the remaining Amazon rainforest, a fifth of which has been lost since 1970. Big ranches are blamed for 80% of all deforestation in the region; the number of cattle in the Amazon grew from 21m in 1995 to 56m in 2006.

The report, Slaughtering the Amazon, describes how ranches responsible for illegal deforestation sell cattle to slaughterhouses controlled by a handful of Brazilian companies. These ship beef or hides to facilities in the south of Brazil and process them for export. They are often processed again in the importing country.

Greenpeace says records show that cattle from hundreds of farms across the Amazon are mixed and processed in this way, making it currently impossible to trace the origins of products. “In effect, criminal or ‘dirty’ supplies of cattle are ‘laundered’ through the supply chain.”

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