Saving the World (... in Australia)

Once again, I've been reading about Peak Oil and once again, shitting myself.

To that end, combined with the prospect of (possibly) $380 / barrel, the fact that once again the people I live with have fucked up the food budget enough for me not to have anything to eat [paying A Share of the shopping budget for 3 meals in a week and having to eat takeaway every day of the week... is not my idea of a beneficial food purchasing program], I've decided to think about the costs of localised food production.

Knowing nothing about Gardening and Growing Things, I went searching (in vain) for reliable resources on doing so on the internet.
Gardening bloggers don't exist, and if you find a site about gardening, it's about flowers. I don't want to eat roses when oil peaks...
After much heckling, Niall turned out to be a not so bad resource. He promptly told me to stop bothering him with questions, and go ask a nursery.

The incredibly obvious thing to do had obviously not really occured to me prior to this point. I googled (why does YellowPages.com.au think that it's a sustainable business action to force people to use their portal to find information? Surely letting google into their phone directory would mean people found places and ended up at the yellow pages site far more effectively), and then I eventually found what appears to be a dodgy UBD + yellow pages phone book mashup. It's no google maps, for one thing, but it worked.

Off on my bike, I quickly found a nursey on OG road. I wandered about, I wasn't really certain of how to cope with all of these flower dohickeys... eventually I approached the staff.

Me: Hi
Girl: Hi
Me: I'd like to... make ... vegetables... and such. Do you know how to go about doing that?
Girl: Eh?
Me: At home. In... a garden.
Girl: Uh huh.
Me: Take me to your lettuce heads? (voice in head informs me that she's rather attractive at this point, thus explaining the lack of comprehensible english words emerging from my mouth).
Girl: Oh. You want to Start A Garden.

Success and communication. Hurrah.

After much looking about, it was suggested I consider the cultivation of Lettuce. It has a short turnaround time (ten weeks?), and it's piss easy to grow. There will be photos of this emerging over the next while (hit the flickr upload limit, unless someone wants to fix that for me).

Ontop of all that, I'd like to point to some great links about Lettuce, Sustainable Green Power, and this Handy Chart To Make You Feel Guilty About Shit.