The Greening of Gavin

Archives for June 2016

Little Green Workshops – End of Year Update

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Many of you may know that Kim and I run a small home based green business called Little Green Workshops.  We teach cheese, cold processed soap, soy candle, and bath soak & scrub courses at our local community centre.  We also sell kits, supplies, and gifts for anyone who is not close by.

We got the inspiration to start this venture because many of you asked for more information about how we make and do some of the things we perform on a weekly basis, living a more sustainable lifestyle here in the ‘burbs.

Many of you may be wondering how it is all going.  Well let me give you an End of Year update.

This financial year (1 July 2015 – 30 June 2016) we clocked up the following stats;

  • Workshops taught: 27
  • Private Classes: 6
  • Students attended: 247
  • Website page views: 180,355
  • Website orders dispatched: 650
  • Countries shipped to: 6
  • YouTube Videos Tutorials created: 36
  • YouTube views: 815,331
Gavin and Kim

Gavin and Kim

We are pleased with these statistics, especially when it is only our 1st full year and 20 months of operation.  We are also very proud of what we have achieved so far and are seeing sustainable growth month on month (besides the Christmas spike).

You know I’m a fairly modest bloke, but it’s taken a lot of hard work to get where we are today.

They say that many small business tank in the first five years due to debt overload and other factors.  We haven’t taken out loans or borrowed to support the business.

I’m one who believes that debt is a form of slavery in disguise, so we have avoided this as we’ve started up.  And because of it, we sleep better at night!

Thankfully due to the low startup cost of setting up and maintaining an eCommerce presence on the Internet, and in part this blog and our YouTube channels, we have been able to reach a wider audience of students than we would normally have been able to.  Students who are keen to learn and create their own sustainable products, knowing exactly what goes into them and keeping it all natural.

We also began regular shipping to five new countries besides Australia this year due to demand; New Zealand, Canada, United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, and South Africa.

Little Green Workshops - end of year update

Click Through to the Shop!

All in all we are ecstatic that we’ve kept managed to our core green values in every business decision we make.  Sustainably sourced packaging, avoid single use products and plastic, run a carbon neutral worksite and websites, and sell products where others can make and do instead of just consume.

So as a special thank you and a gift for you, and to share in the success that you have helped to create, we have just launched a limited two-day sale over at Little Green Workshops, offering 10% off all products (excluding course bookings).  Sale ends at 2359 hr (midnight) 30th June 2016 Australian Eastern Time.

You can use the coupon code in bold below in your cart or checkout to apply the discount;

eofysale2016

Thank you once again for reading, watching, and listening to our blog posts, podcasts, and videos during the last 12 months and following our sustainable living journey.

Without you regularly visiting this site, I would still be a conspicuous consumer, unmotivated to strive to be greener, stuck in the rat race, plodding through life in misery.

By being able to share our sustainable living journey with you, I’ve given myself permission to live, love, and enjoy life to the fullest!

Quick Inverter Update

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We had a solar electrician visit on Sunday to check out our inverter issue with our Solar PV system.

He tested the voltage from the array, which was fine and the grid voltage which was also fine.  So at least there is nothing wrong with the panels and wiring.

It looks like the main controller within the inverter itself is faulty.  If it’s not under warranty, may cost a bit if they can even get the part for such an old model.

Gavin Webber turning on Fronius-I30 inverter

Fronius IG-30 Inverter when I first turned it on in 2007!

Also, he mentioned that if they cannot find the part it needs, then the inverter will have to be replaced.  This means I may have to foot the cost of a new inverter as well as rewiring and new isolation switches as well because the electrical regulations have changed since I got the system installed.

Pretty ordinary news all round.  Just waiting for news back from the installer to see what our options are.  I will update you know when I know more.

So much fun (not), and we have gone back into energy efficiency mode here at home to save more on our power bill.  Fingers crossed that we can get the solar PV back up and running soon.

How to Plant Garlic

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Planting garlic is also easy that it’s criminal if you don’t give it a go.  So in this post let’s learn how to plant garlic!

In my climate zone, (heat zone 4, cold zone 10), I plant just after the first full moon in May or June.  I find that the soil is still just cool enough so that the garlic shoots quickly and gets a good start.

When I plant garlic, I source the bulbs from a good seed supplier, in my case, the Diggers Club.  This year I bought a variety pack of three types of garlic;  Tassie Purple, Dunganski, and Lokalen.

When preparing the bed for planting, don’t add any fertiliser to the bed if you did so in the summer. You will get more leaves and smaller bulbs. Plant the garlic in a bed that you had a very hungry crop before hand, like Brassica or tomatoes.  But make sure that you add some organic fertilizer as a top-dressing in spring to give them a boost.

Check out the video I made to show you how to plant garlic; https://youtu.be/-Oe3-ABuD6M


Make a hole with your dibber (I use a bit of old sawn off broom handle or my index finger) about 2″ deep (5 cm) and then place each clove in the hold pointy end facing upwards. Plant them about 6″ (15 cm) apart, so that you get good-sized bulbs. The closer they are to each other the smaller the bulbs.

How to plant garlic; Planting Australian Purple Garlic

Don’t backfill until all your garlic cloves are in the soil. You will lose sight of where you planted them otherwise!

Backfill the holes and water well. Within about 4-6 days they will send up the first green shoots through the soil. All you need to do is keep the soil moist for the rest of the season, and keep the bed weed free.

Easy peasy!  If you haven’t grown garlic before, why not try it this year.  It’s not too late!