Hi!

[crwbaird]

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to introduce myself and get some info on living green.
My wife and I are committed to living one year and lowering our carbon footprint and doing environmental things to our house and area every day for this year.
We would love to find out some ideas of how we can be environmentally sustainable as a result.
If you know of ways that we can improve our carbon footprint, despite only being a couple with normal incomes, I would love to hear it so we can use the suggestions in our Green Year.

We are running a blog of our progress Our Green Year

Thanks.

[greenacy]

Congrats on the green move for your house.

A couple of really easy things you can do to help to be green:

1.Get cloth bags to use at the grocery store. Plastic bags even if they can be recycled take needless amounts of gas to produce. And paper is self explanitory.

2. Cut down water consumption - take 5-10 min showers, if you can't afford new lowflow toilets (like me) try putting a bottle filled with rocks and water in the back of your toilet to lower water use each flush.

3. Try to not use air conditioning anymore than needed if possible and get a programable thermostat.

4. Shut of standby power consuming appliances at the wall when not in use. This is usually TV, VCR, DVD players, and phone chargers. 10% of these appliances power usage occurs when they are in the off position. Turn them off at the power strip or wall.

Good luck with your new green life!

You can get more info on green at the site in my signature.

[crwbaird]

Thanks Some of these we are starting, but others we will now start

[debs]

Welcome to the forum Look forward to seeing you around.

[spadlet]

you could try growing a few herbs and vegies

[crwbaird]

Hi,

We are hoping to turn some of the lawn into a herb garden. I live in Southern British Columbia, would you happen to know what would grow best here, or do you have any advice as to what herbs one should grow?

[spadlet]

If your climate is in any way like that in the UK I could suggest some nice herbs to have around, especially for cooking. Otherwise I'd probably be guessing about what will grow well.

[crwbaird]

We are in a small town that is about 3,300 feet above sea level (1 km). We have a lot of snow in the winter, but our summers are usually about 20-30 degrees Celsius.

[forfismum]

One of our exalted moderators is from your part of the world .I refer of course to the world famous "screener" who will be along later to help out

[spadlet]

Ok, and if you have a lawn, there must be a reasonable ammount of rain so I guess annuals will deffinitely be alright.

Basil - this is a beautifully flavoured herb. It's leaves can be added fresh to tomato soup and will even make it taste delicious if you have used tinned rather than fresh tomatoes. They can also be added onto pizza or torn up in a mixed salad for extra flavour.

Borage has eddible flowers which can make salads look prettier.

I think chives are a self seeding annual , is that correct? They are nice added to cottage cheese as a baked potato filling. Also you can make a nice accompanyment mixing chooped fresh chives with freshly chopped tomatoes.

Perenials - I'm not sure if they will be ok with you winters

Mint can be used to make mint sauce, which I am told is good with meat. If you pick a stem or two and put it in the water with potatoes you boil, they absorb a bit of the flavour which makes them extra nice.