Welcome to Sauced Gardens.

My name is Beth and I live on a 350sqm suburban property in Perth, Western Australia, with my dog, Gus.

There is nothing particularly outstanding about me or my life; I have a 9-5 job, I like to travel and I am fussy about where I buy my coffee.

But one thing that I have always done a little different to others is to question things. 

Several years ago I started questioning whether the food on my plate was actually good for me. Even if it was green, or classified as a vegetable. I had come to learn that the fresh produce available in the supermarket was grown out of season and was propagated from mutated seed. I knew that meat was coming from farms where hormones were added to the animal's grain feed. I knew that our soil was sick. And I knew that Australia exported the best of it's own produce and that its citizens were left with the scraps.

How we were living, what we were doing to our bodies by eating this food and the massive impact that it was having on our planet were all things that weren't sitting right with me.

So I decided to become a vegetarian. To make a change that would reduce my contribution to these problems, spoke with my wallet and brought some consciousness to what I was sticking in my gob.

3 years after making that change I found myself more unhealthy and more out of touch with what I was eating than I had when I started. An imaginative vegetarian cook I was not, so choosing pre-packaged pastas and bakes became a convenient habit. I was stacking on weight, filling my bin with single use plastics and getting none of the nutritional value I needed from my food. 

I certainly wasn't making the contribution I had set out to when I became a vegetarian all those years before.

In the midst of this, I had moved to my new 400sqm home and had started fussing about in the garden. I had always loved gardening; my Mum has an amazing green thumb. I began to eat meat again and feeling totally defeated and disgusted by that choice, I turned to my garden to try to self-soothe a little.

And then I realised out in that space that I could still take control of what I was putting into my body; I just needed to grow it or rear it myself. Cook it myself, preserve it myself. In fact there wouldn't be much in an average, healthy diet that I couldn't make for myself.

So that's how I have been living for the last few years; learning and practising how to grow, harvest and cook using permaculture techniques. I grow most of my own fresh produce and ethically source local and low impact dairy, meat, grain and some sugars to supplement that. Slowly but surely I have been turning my home into a more sustainable, productive and enjoyable space, both for myself and as a contribution to community and planet.

I created this blog because I know I am not alone in that desire to take control of the food that we feed ourselves and our families. Or the desire to lessen the impact that feeding ourselves has on the rest of the planet.

I want to show that even with limited time or resources, limited support from manufacturers or government, you can still find a way to grow, source and eat food produced in your own home. To reduce your impact to the environment and where you can, feed a little bit back into the soil that you live on.

I'm so happy that you are here and to be sharing my experience (and my failures!) with you.