April 2011
11 posts
7 tags
In love with fruit
Photo: My Raspberry bush
Yep. Too right. Fruit is great, good for you and trees make it for the singular reason: for it to be eaten. Right about now, the fruit trees are beginning to quit with their fancy blossom and get down to the real business of growing their seasonal bounty. The entire concept of fruit, the sheer size and quantity that even small trees produce and the efforts that it must...
7 tags
Guerrilla Gardening - community champions?
Are these people the Sir’s, Dame’s and OBE’s of the future. I reckon so.
The Guerrilla Gardening movement is only just being picked up by the wider media but the people who are doing this fantastic and important work have been doing so for some years.
By important, I mean in the way that they are greening the city and actually making a difference by getting out there and making...
9 tags
Simply does it.
If the average sized garden (733sqm) was given over to fruit and vegetable growing, householders could grow 98 per cent of all the fruit and vegetables they consume each year.
The aim of Connected Roots is to develop a level of self-sufficiency in the UK not seen since the end of World War 2. With Connected Roots people in cities with limited space, can concentrate on a select few vegetables grow...
Pushing the cause for self sufficiency
Photo copyright: http://mama-urbana.blogspot.com/
As a nation, as an island, there is an increasing need to go back to an era of enhanced self-sufficiency. For the numerous reasons of which are clear, prevalent and dramatically more serious than ever more, this has to be the answer to the food shortages and price rises that we are likely to experience in the very near future.
Britain is...
6 tags
Land prices are going through the roof
The Guardian recent published an article on the rising price of land and now we are seeing the investments in arable land are soaring rapidly as bankers identify the returns that them create and the application for long term future funding that they possess.
A strange paradox of conflicting forces are at play; the ignorance of many city folk contribute back into the land and/or country that they...
8 tags
Small Space Gardening on an New York City Fire...
Photo: Copyright Mike Lieberman
Really interesting bloke from New York who is quite the opposite of the stereotype: Young, social, and doing a full time job and growing what he can. He has taken to fire escapes, balconies and windowsills to give himself fresh organic produce. The space saving ways he has employed to grow a wide range of food is ingenious.
He employs all the measures and...
5 tags
Green MBA? →
Creating a comprehension by those in power of the green movement is fast becoming imperative to environmental change.
Marbela University has come up with a solution: educate those in key positions in the fundamentals of green behaviour and the effect will trickle down.
It could be said that a Green MBA has been needed for a good while - discussing population growth, climate change and resources....
4 tags
Introduction to Straw Bale Gardening →
When you don’t have much space, every ideas for efficiency counts. This technique surely can’t be unique to Minesota but it is the first time I have read about it.
Intelligent use of something that is readily available and can be used on patios, terrace gardens or balconies.
It gives roughly 1m Sq of growing material - more than enough to have several different crops growing.
9 tags
Are Transition Towns the future?
The shape of towns and the focus of its populace are shifting away from the town centre high streets with their homogenised shops and anonymous union between shop owners and their customers, to a focus on food, fresh and organic created by a community collaboration. Concrete is now being covered with green initiatives across the UK as towns realise the potential in mobilising their number.
...
7 tags
CSA-Community Supported Agriculture in Astoria →
There are clear routes that people living in urban areas can pursue to improve their sustainability and create stronger links with those that live around them.
This is normally through mediocre and uninspiring community sessions and group growing programmes. Why growing for yourself and enhancing your knowledge of your immediate community have to be the last vestage of the hippy movement is...
