How do tomatoes grow?

The last couple of months I've been busy carefully watering my tomato plants and watching them grow.  I've found the whole experience of growing vegetables from seed to be very inspiring and thought I'd share the inspiration with you.

Here's a video that I created with photos that I have taken of our plants all the way, from seedlings to bright green tomatoes. 

Lessons learned from a first time vegetable gardener:
- Next time, I think I'll try creating a tomato cage and not relying on a single stake, which doesn't seem to have done anything to keep this tomato plant from looking like a Xmas tree.
- Also, remember to remove sideshoots which are the leafy branches with no flowers that take energy away from the fruit production.

- The truss, is the group of yellow flowers eventually whither off, leaving small green tomatoes behind.  I read this and other great tomato facts on Tomato Lover.

- After a lot of online research, I discovered that inconsistent watering and calcium delivery causes blossom end rot.  Unfortunately, nobody seems to agree how much water the plant needs, some say there's no such thing as too much, others disagree, some recommend putting your finger a couple inches into the soil and if that's dry, add water.  In the end, I stopped researching and just did what felt right and hoped for the best.  (what felt right was watering every morning until the soil looked soaked).

Sharing the vegetable growing experience with my kids has been fun and educational but the sharing didn't stop there.  We shared the experience with many of our friends in the neighbourhood as after starting the tomatoes from seed, I had too many seedlings, and gave away small potted plants to anyone who came to visit us.  The kids even helped me decorate a window container, which we potted up with soil and a small plant for a friend's engagement.

You can read about how I got started growing tomatoes from seed in a previous post. 

Happy gardening!

Top 10 Tips to Save Electricity

Saving electricity is always going to save you money - assuming you pay your own electricity bill - but in my case, the reward has been sweetened. 

Our electricity company is offering refunds on a certain percentage of your electricity bill, if you decrease your electricity usage compared to 2011.  So if we can get our electricity down by 10-30% as compared to last year, we will get money back! 

Sounds great... the tricky part is we have my sister and father-in-law staying at us, in the two guest bedrooms that weren't being used last year and that last year the house was empty when we went on an August vacation and this year there will be tenants.  Theoretically, I feel that I've always kept electricity usage somewhere in the back of my mind and so I really needed to search for the best top 10 tips out there, in order to rise to my challenge. 

Here they are:

1.  Don't use a tumble dryer: 

I've had a tumble dryer for the last 5 years and it has changed my life.  I love soft fluffy clothes and linen, I love saving time dealing with laundry.  However, after reading EVERYWHERE how much energy a tumble dryer uses, and having friends stare at me in shock when I tell them I use my tumble dryer in summer -  it became clear that this was going to be the core of my saving electricity mission.
So I hang up the laundry, instead of checking facebook for the millionth time, and I'm trying some new suggestions to keep my line-dried clothes from getting stiff.  I haven't used vinegar yet - that sounds scary.  I have cut the amount of detergent I use... I used to use double the amount recommended (I don't know why) so I'm on regular amount now and I may even go down to half.  I run the clothes in the dryer for 10 min before hanging them out and it does help (I still don't understand why nobody recommends the dryer AFTER hanging them out...).  I shake out the clothes before I hang them.  I do NOT wait for a windy day to hang them out ... how is that supposed to work? How do I know which day will be windy? and am I expected to leave them in the washing machine until this windy day dawns?

2.  Turn off the lights when you leave the room:

Duh!  Well actually I realised that we always leave a light on upstairs (we all sleep downstairs) when going to sleep so that there will be a little bit of light sneaking through the door of the kids' room and they won't be scared if they wake up.  I don't know why I never did this before, but I found a small lamp we weren't using and put it in the corridor outside our rooms on a timer.  Now it turns on when we go to bed, and turns off when it gets light in the morning.


3.  Don't leave mobile phones and laptops charging overnight:

I totally have a tendency to do that, in fact we often leave these devices charging on Saturdays, when we observe the Sabbath and don't use them at all, what a waste.

4.  Use energy saving light bulbs:

Most of our lights are already energy saving, but I do have a few more that need replacing.  In order not to be wasteful, my intention is to wait until the globes aren't working to replace them.  Is it hypocritical to wish that they stop working so that I can replace them before the summer's over?

5.  Wash clothes in cold water:
I almost never use a setting higher than 30 degrees, and after still managing to turn white shirts and socks pink, I'm happy to stick to the cold setting.

6.  Wait for a full load to run the dishwasher:
I would think that the recommendations would be to not use a dishwasher at all (although I know it does save water), but I'm not going to ask questions and enjoy my full-loaded dishwasher while I can.

7.  Keep curtains closed:

By keeping your curtains closed, you decrease the sunlight that gets in and keep your house insulated, thereby reducing the need for the airconditioner.  We have 'trissim' which are like heavy metallic blinds that close on the outside of our glass doors - I can totally feel the difference, and can't believe I never thought of lowering these trissim before.

8.  Keep your thermostat at around 25 degrees celsius:
This is a constant tug of war with my husband, who will wake up in the middle of the night and turn the aircon down to 22, after which I wake up and turn it back up to 25.  The point is that every degree really counts, so if you need to compromise at 24, there's still a benefit.

9.  Don't leave electronics on standby:

Microwaves, TV's, DVD players... and other appliances that either have a clock, or are standby ready to be turned on with a remote control... all use phantom energy.  Well, after reading this ghostly news, I went to do a search at home, and found that our desktop computer that we never ever use was plugged in, and using little bits of energy for no reason at all.  I've seen recommendations to plug all these items into a power strip and when you're not using them, turn off the whole strip.  So far, my challenge with this is when I turn off my strip with the tv, dvd and cable - it means the cable has to reset everytime we turn it on, so I need to do something about that before the whole family agrees to cooperate.

10.  Clean filters:

Cleaning aircon filters will mean more efficient airconditioning even at higher temperature settings (that is totally tried and tested in my house) and cleaning the tumble dryer filter (which I now use for only 10 minutes per laundry session as per tip no.1) reduces drying time.





Happy savings everyone.

Exercise & Learning Lessons.

Everyone knows that exercise is important.  As a doctor, I tell people every day how important exercise is.  Yet, like many people, I just don't enjoy exercising.  The closest I ever got to enjoying exercise was riding a bike.  Now that's fun.  Plus, using a bike instead of a car, is definitely part of going green, and would score me big points in my saving the environment challenge

So I thought about buying a bike, even a secondhand bike, but I didn't want to fall into the trap of paying money for exercise equipment that is not going to be used.  My first consideration was hiring a bike, certain cities (eg. Tel Aviv) have 'green bike' programs where you can rent and return bikes at docking stations throughout the city.  The concept is brilliant.  They've called it Tel-O-fun - see... I told you bikes are fun!

Unfortunately Modiin, does not yet have a Tel-O-fun system, and hiring a bike from my local bike shop just wasn't worth it.

Fortunately, my parents had an old bike lying unused in their garage (for the last  +-20 years) and they sent it to me with a friends' furniture shipment.

With no more excuses left, I 'upcycled' my broken bike with some new tyres and rode home.

Now which of you can spot the problem with the picture on the right of me riding the bike?

Don't cheat and scroll down to the rest of the story.

If you can't see it, ask your kids, they may be able to pick it out.

....

...

...

...

Answer: No helmet

The first place I rode to, was my book swap group. 

I got a lot of  "wow, that's impressive", even more of  "are you serious?"

and quite a few "Why do you not have a helmet!!?!*" 

To which I replied something about, well I don't ride fast, I'm just trying it out, I'm on the sidewalk not on the road blah blah blah...

The second place I rode to, was a meeting about e-cards.

On the way back, just a few metres from home, I crossed the road, at an angle, with a bump and fell.

Several "Oh my word, I'm so stupid"s later, I was in the semi-emergency room having a laceration on my face glued and a couple scrapes cleaned and bandaged.

I thought of posting the gory picture of me with blood dripping down my face, but some people consider that stuff gross.  So here's a pic of me with my bandaged eye and bruises.

  

The next day, I went to buy a helmet. 

Happy exercising everyone.

What's this all about?

One day, I kind of woke up and realised that I just wasn't taking responsibility.  I think of myself as a pretty responsible person, I am a mother, a doctor, a contributing member of society.  However, because of my actions, the environment was suffering. 

After a bit of web-surfing, it became apparent to me that everytime I throw something away, I am personally contributing to the growing landfills in my country.  Every time I buy new items, I am supporting increased use of energy, fuel, often unnecessarily. 

Soon, I found that there were several practical easy things I could do, to take responsibility, and I honestly couldn't think of any excuse not to do them.  In fact, some of them even became fun, which is why I decided to share this story with you, on a blog.

What's a doctor doing - going green ?

When I was young and naive, I knew that I wanted a career where I would be helping people - so I became a doctor. 

A couple years into medical school ( WITS, Jhb, South Africa), we went on a rural rotation, and a beautifully dressed woman took us to see some new hygienic outhouses in a rural village where there was no such thing as a toilet that flushes.  She mentioned, that if one really wants to make a difference in the lives of a large number of people, one should really be in the sewerage development business, after all, no sewerage means more diseases.  Working as a doctor, you only get to help the lucky section of the population who actually has access to a doctor, and of course, you're only helping them once they're already sick as opposed to preventing them from getting sick in the first place.

Now at the end of the day, I did complete medicine, and I am working as a family doctor, (in Israel), and I did not go into sewerage... however the thought stuck with me.

This is why, when I stumbled upon the rather important information that my life was ruining the planet - and that there were many things that I could actually do to change that - it hit home.  I could almost hear the beautifully dressed woman in the rural village telling me; saving the environment one house at a time - now that's a way to really make a difference and help people.