July 2008 Archives

One of the most over used words these days is 'sustainable'. For government and business it means keeping commerce going, surviving, more of the same. For eco activists it means not taking more than you give, living simply and respecting that the Earth's resources are finite. I would go with that.

There are various ways of producing food sustainably. Some say permaculture is the only way to go but I am still not sure. Like anything there seems to be extreme positions adopted by some people who advocate going back to a virtually hunter gather culture but without the hunting! Don't get me wrong, I am not booting out all the ideas but my own thinking is that we once had an ideal farming system that was productive and easily reproducible - small mixed farms. Keeping animals produced milk, meat, manure and wool and together with growing arable crops this was almost an ideal system. The farms operated a nutrient closed loop in that no external fertliser was bought it. That was the easy bit as there was no such thing as artificial fertiliser; instead there was just muck and good husbandry.

My aim is to grow food as sustainably as possible. This breaks down into three distinct areas: 1) maintaining soil fertility without bringing in fertiliser, 2) having a source of water on site and 3) saving seeds.

In terms of progress 1) and 2) are pretty much taken care of. All the nutrients are produced on site. There is also a source of water that is used for irrigation. It is pumped around the garden by small solar powered pumps.

The main project for next season is seed saving. I already use open pollinated varieties (not hybrids or F1s as their seed does not come true to type)  so it just means a bit of organisation to save seed from one year to the next. Seeds are also the biggest recurrent expense so it will be good to begin to save money on the seed bill.

Why do all this? Because I believe that we all need to live more sustainably. For me that means using as little of the Earth's resources as possible and being as independent as possible.

Please don't get me wrong, what we do as a family is not perfect. Like everybody else we are on a steep learning curve but it is fun and liberating!

Now is the time for preserving the gluts for later use. I have always thought of doing more bottling, pickling and other stuff but have never felt comfortable with the safety aspects. Recently  I found I free online course hosted by the National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia called "Preserving Food at Home: A Self-Study." You can register online and will receive registration details a few days later. Remember that in the US they call bottling canning, even if you use glass jars.

The BBC have an interesting podcast called "Farming in the City" available here. "Andrew Luck-Baker investigates the pros and cons of urban farming in India. Hyderabad is a city with a booming IT industry. Its streets are also home to thirty thousand buffalo - the animals behind the Indian city's booming urban dairy businesses. But are the two compatible in a fast modernising city? And is re-using Hyderabad's polluted waste water to grow vegetables good environmental practice - or a danger to consumers?" [From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/oneplanet/"]

I just do not understand why journalists confuse manure and compost or even worse think they are the same. I have seen it time and time again over the years. Yesterday The Guardian ran a follow up piece on the contaminated manure fiasco which surfaced in the national press a few weeks back. The headline was "The question is the compost crisis over?" In the paper edition there was a picture at the top of the column showing worms in compost and in the online version it was someone emptying kitchen waste onto a compost pile.

If any journalist out there is interested in getting their facts right for once, I will happily show them the difference between manure (animal faeces) and compost (rotting vegetable waste.)

What do gardeners do when they are on holiday? The answer is simple; visit a garden! Having just spent a long weekend in the Lake District the trip would not have been complete without a visit to the spectacular garden at Levens Hall.

Levens is well known for its topiary, and it is truly impressive, but there is more including vegetables in the ornamental borders.



If ever you are in the area take time to visit this garden, I would rank it as the best I have seen and in terms of horticultural excellence, it is better than Hidcote!

Click on an image to enlarge.

This is from the Treehugger site. If you have never visited it is well worth a look.

 10 Steps to Renewable Energy Future: A TreeHugger Review

I have used 4ft (1.2m) wide raised beds for about 14 years. During that time the soil management has always been 'no-dig'. That has meant digging the beds once when they were created and then not walking on the soil and using cover crops and mulches.

After a major, life threatening illness a couple of years back I am no longer able to make enough compost for the beds. In 2005 the compost bins processed around 12 cubic metres of material and I made around 7 cubic metres of leaf mould. That was a lot of heavy work. Who says using no-dig is for shirkers who don't want to work?

For the last two years the soil management has gone back to more traditional methods. This involves autumn cultivations and the application of copious amounts of well rotted cow manure. I still keep the rain off the beds over winter using cover crops where possible or impermeable covers. The results last year were not so good as the season was a total washout and many crops were ruined. This year is much better.

I have just begun the real harvest of the season with peas, broad beans, raspberries, lettuce, carrots, gooseberries and courgettes in full production. Not only are the yields higher but the quality of the produce is much improved.

The soil in the garden ranges from heavy to very heavy clay. This year I have never seen it looking better. This leads me to believe that the inclusion the cow manure and light cultivation has really improved the soil quality. The downside is far more weeds! Overall I can say that I would not go back to total no-dig even if I were physically able to. The method now used could be described as 'light dig' (not by me!) with cover crops; it seems to work well in this garden.

I have just updated the page about making comfrey juice in a barrel. Click here to see an update with photos. It has worked very well!

In the centre of San Francisco there is an innovative and exciting project; a victory garden in front of city hall! The garden has been created through a collaboration of Victory Gardens 2008+ and Slow Food Nation. Read more about the project here.

This is a brilliant example of what can be done and once again shows how far the UK lags behind the current thinking and action.

More on Victory gardens 08+

What is the Victory Gardens 08+ program?
Victory Gardens 2008+ is a City supported pilot project in San Francisco to support the transition of backyard, front yard, window boxes, rooftops and unused land in San Francisco into organic food production areas.

Victory Gardens 2008+ derives its title from the national Victory Garden programs of WWI and WWII.  Originally developed by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Civilian Defense, the Victory Gardens program promoted the cultivation of food by citizens with the goal of reducing an increased strain on the domestic food supply from the war effort.  By 1943, over 20 million Victory Gardens were producing 8 million tons of food a year.

During the nationwide Victory Garden programs of WWI and WWII, citizens throughout the country plowed front yards, back yards, lawns, flower gardens and vacant lots to grow their own vegetables.  Even public land was put to use, from the lawn at San Francisco City Hall to the Boston Commons to portions of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.  San Francisco's Victory Garden program became one of the best in the country, with over 800 gardens in Golden Gate Park, and a Victory Garden in every City park.

Today, Victory Gardens 2008+ places home fruit and vegetable gardening into the contemporary and pressing context of urban sustainability.  The Victory Gardens 08+ program, redefines "victory" as increased independence from industrial food systems whose practices are far from achieving the economic, social and environmental goals of food system sustainability.  Significantly, Victory Gardens 08+ aims to reduce the amount of fossil fuel consumed in the distribution of food, by encouraging San Francisco residents to grow even a small amount of their food at home.

Current Goals of the Victory Gardens 08+ Program:
1.  Design, Develop, Install and Support 15 pilot VG08+ Victory Gardens.
2.  Educate through lessons in organic fruit and vegetable gardening, public programs, printed material and the website, www.sfvictorygardens.org..
3.  Develop and install a public demonstration of the Victory Garden 08+ starter kit at Garden for the Environment.

Who is behind the Victory Gardens 08+ program?
Victory Gardens 2008+ was ideated by San Francisco based artist and designer Amy Franceschini in the Fall of 2006, for which she received the 2006 SECA award from the SF Museum of Modern Art. 

Amy Franceschini partnered with Garden for the Environment, San Francisco's Organic Demonstration Garden, for the planting of the initial Victory Gardens, and to develop and operate a pilot program Victory Garden program in San Francisco. 

Garden for the Environment has received funding from the City of San Francisco to develop and implement this pilot Victory Gardens program.  Garden for the Environment will coordinate the program, with consultation from Amy Franceschini. 

For more on Amy Franceschini, visit www.futurefarmers.com

For more on Garden for the Environment, visit www.gardenfortheenvironment.org

Last year Channel 4 (a UK TV station) ran a programme called "The Great Global warming Swindle". It was an outright attack on the idea that global warming even exists and that human produced C0² is the major cause of it. It was fiercely criticised at the time and now a report by Ofcom, the media regulator, has upheld some of the complaints.

In an article in The Guardian yesterday, George Monbiot, wrote a justifiably stinging critique of Channel 4's history of environmental programmes. Read the article here.

To listen to an interview with Monbiot click here.

And here is another clip from the US. This time it's Al Gore saying that the US should be totally free of carbon based energy sources in within 10 years. Nice idea...

This is a good site which raises the current issues and although it's US based it is relevant to the rest of the world. Their latest programme is well worth a listen!

Show #596: FUTURE OF OUR FOOD - 19-07-2008 (8.63 MB)  Listen Now
Guests: Paul Roberts, author of The End of Food, and Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap
Subject: We now live in a world where everything costs much more today than it did yesterday. This leads us to ask, Who will feed us tomorrow?
Topics include how rapidly inflating prices will affect the food production systems of agriculture; which population segments might suffer food shortages; and what can be done today to ensure a secure food chain for tomorrow.

A few weeks back a fellow food grower visited the garden. After looking around the visitor turned to me and said that the garden was more like a factory. I didn't think much about it at the time but what struck me recently is that my visitor had an image of a garden based on a recent aesthetic. My guess is that it goes something like this: gardens should be pretty and any functionality should either be hidden, so as not to spoil the view, or incorporated discretely into the decorative design. I could go on and say that I find beds full of flourishing fruit and veg to be very attractive but that would miss the point.

In the UK we have a history of creating ornamental gardens on a grand scale. The many large private and municipal parks and country houses testify to that. Then there are the gardens of ordinary mortals that are constantly judged by friends and neighbours. The pattern is easy to see; they must be pleasing on the eye which means conforming to unwritten standards. The traditional design includes flowers, lots of well manicured lawn and shrubs, roses to be traditional. Lately more modern designs, spurned by TV gardening programmes, have invaded the scene. This has brought a liking for decking, gravel, exotic plants in decorative pots and blue painted structures.

If we are to address the huge issues of food shortages, peak oil and climate change all this has to change. Growing food has become more popular recently but us Brits are not going to give up this relatively short lived garden culture easily. I say short lived because it is a post world war culture that spurned food for flowers. Growing food came to be seen as a little squalid. Having an ornamental garden showed that you could afford to live with beauty in the garden and were not struggling with veg. In short it was a symbol of the new post war affluence.

Even now growing veg is seen as slightly dirty; something that should be hidden 'out back' or disguised; better still it should be confined to the allotment. Here a different culture is at work with similar aesthetics. Many allotments are judged each year and the 'best' are awarded a prize. The criteria for greatness is based on neatness and acres of bare earth. Good horticultural practices are subsumed into a visual aesthetic that shares many similarities with ideas of what a good garden should look like. I recently heard an allotment holder say that he would never win as he did not grow flowers and you needed a bit of colour to take the prizes.

I am convinced that small scale, local food growing can have an enormous impact on the food supply of this country. I fully support the idea that we need another national campaign to encourage people to grow food. That requires a change in priorities away from creating a visual aesthetic to one that prioritises functionality and good horticulture. Yes, we need more food factories in our back gardens, municipal parks and country houses. Every stately home used to have one; it was called a walled kitchen garden. Let's get past the idea that we can plant nut trees in the park, dot a few veg in the flower borders and have apple trees here and there. We need a concerted effort to turn over every available space to food production and we need to do it now. If we don't do this a lot of the population WILL go hungry.

Looking at the garden yesterday I was beginning to feel that things would go right and that we would get some good crops. The squash had huge flowers and were starting to look as if they will do something. Today it is very cool and damp again. The forecast for the next 10 days is more of the same. There has been little real warmth this season and everything is late but, hey, that's gardening for you!

One of the pumpkin flowers.

Entry removed at request of Mother Earth News.

There has been a lot of talk recently about going back to a dig for victory campaign (UK) or victory gardens (US) as a way of combating high food prices, promoting food security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Looking at the history shows they had a big impact. By 1943, over a million tons of vegetables were being grown in gardens and allotments.

Why do it now? The answers is simple, this is from a US site: "Today our food travels an average of 1500 miles from farm to table. The process of planting, fertilizing, processing, packaging, and transporting our food uses a great deal of energy and contributes to the cause of global warming." [www.revivevictorygarden.org/] 

The UK is no different, food travels a long way to reach our tables and the international nature of the food supply chain means that we are all affected by shortages and high prices. Most of all, we are still an island nation and are vulnerable to disruptions in food supply. Some countries have already stopped exporting certain foods and although we can never be wholly self-sufficient we can have a much more resilient local food supply than the present total reliance on the supply chain.

So why aren't national governments and local councils going all out to encourage and promote the new 'dig for survival'? My view is that national government does not like the idea and does not want it promoted because it would upset food retailers, take food away from 'the supply chain' and so mess up world trade. In short, it takes control away from government so is considered far too revolutionary. They also do not want to admit that there is a problem.

What can we do? Do it anyway, grow our own food!

• Look for spaces in towns, cities and villages where food can be grown.
• Ask local councils to give land over for food growing even if it is only on a temporary basis.
• Badger you local council to provide allotments - you only need 6 people and they have to find the land.
• Make sure your local school starts a food garden and uses the produce in its kitchen.
• Make the provision of land an issue at local, regional and national elections.
• Write to your MP and MEP asking them for support.
• Lobby national gardening societies to get involved e.g. Garden Organic, The RHS, The soil Association.
• Ask why there are no food gardens at 10 Downing Street, Buckingham Palace and other such places.
• If you already grow food train and support others in your community to do the same.
• Encourage the use of container growing for those who cannot manage a garden or where no land is available see Making self-watering containers.

This really is absolutely crucial issue and one that needs raising now. Please do what you can and lets us know the results.

This is an excellent video on YouTube from www.peakmoment.tv.



"Richard Heinberg, author of "Peak Everything", reviews the accelerating events since mid-2007, including the credit crunch and fossil fuel price volatility, noting that we've missed most of the best opportunities to manage collapse. He asks, "how far down the staircase of complexity will our global civilization have to go until we're sustainable?" His answer: when managed properly, with deliberate simplification, not as far as we might otherwise. In addition to long term efforts to relocalize our economies, he advocates developing community "resilience" to withstand short-term catastrophic events like food shortages or extreme weather. Noting that healthy fear can move us into action, he encourages an attitude of clarity, concern and informed action in this "calm before the storm" that he feels is soon coming to an end. [www.richardheinberg.com]"


Get "Peak Everything" by Richard Heinberg and help keep this site going by clicking here.

It seems that Gordon Brown missed a crucial point when he talked about food waste in the UK. This is what he should have said:

"UK consumers spend an average of £420 per household each year on food that they then throw away. Eliminating household food waste would deliver major benefits, including a reduction in GHG emissions equivalent to taking one in five cars off UK roads."

(From "Food Matters, towards a strategy for the 21st century." Executive summary, The Strategy Unit, July 2008.)

The underlining is my emphasis. If he had mentioned this it would have created a whole different impression by showing that by not wasting food we could help to meet our greenhouse gas emissions targets AND save money. Shame, a good opportunity missed.

The number and variety of food growing projects happening around the world is amazing. The BBC covered another US project recently but it is not a new reaction to escalating food prices, the end of oil or climate change it is simply about feeding hungry people. Urban Farming was started in 2005 by Taja Sevelle. Have a look at the site and see just what can be done.

I know there are differences between the US and the UK but why oh why can't this happen here? Why is there so much inertia to anything new in the UK?

Was a headline in The Guardian yesterday. He is right of course but if that is all he can say about combating rising prices then he is missing a golden opportunity. Now is the time to be really talking up UK food security but he wont do that as it would upset world trade. Now is the time to encourage people to grow their own food but that would be far too radical. Now is the time to be creative and look at news ways of ensuring the Nation is fed.

Instead Mr Brown shoots himself in the foot by telling us off for wasting food while he is at the G8 summit. He then goes into a banquet. The BBC was more than happy to show the vast amount of untouched food being cleared away afterwards!

The answers to rising food prices are simple; produce more food in the UK, rely less on imports, actively encourage 'victory gardens', reintroduce horticulture in secondary schools, make sure every school has a food garden, use space in towns and cities for allotments and community gardens. Not only will this produce a lot of locally grown food it might also help to reduce CO² emissions.

This project has been going for a while and is now part of the  London Festival of Architecture. It is a brilliant idea from What if...  and shows that food can be grown in any available space. It is somewhat strange that some of the funding comes from the Arts Council! It should be direct from central government and on a scale that does justice to the idea of growing food on derelict land.

I have long thought that every school should have a food garden. Kids need to know where food comes from. Yesterday a local(ish) school had an open day. The Spire Junior and Infants School in Chesterfield is well know for its gardens and has won several awards. My interest was in the food garden and it is very impressive. This shows just what can be done and should be an inspiration to other schools to have a go.

Click on an image to enlarge

Each class has a Square Foot bed                                        The beds are thriving!











Squash in a compost bin                                                                    Red currants

I was surprised to see many ripe strawberries and currants, I hope the gardeners get to sample them! I know I would not have been able to resist at that age.

I have been looking at composters for a way to compost kitchen waste. There are several around including some that cost over £400! The I found this on YouTube. I have 3 of the plastic barrels used in the film... Have a look at TheUrbanHomesteaders on YouTube, there are loads more videos from this young US couple.

This is from the Bangkok Post. Maybe it is an idea that the UK royal family could adopt? Prince Charles is already an avid organic gardener but how about an organic food garden at other royal residences?

"Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn has inspired residents in this northern province to raise organic vegetables in their backyards. The farmland in Thong Noi palace where the princess takes up residence during her visit to Nan once or twice a year spans 42 rai. It has become a model for organic farming.

Sometimes the princess cuts vegetables in the backyard herself. The vegetables grown in the palace are served on her table," said Somsak Yasang, an agricultural officer who takes care of the princess' garden."

The Guardian have obtained a confidential World Bank which claims biofuels have increased food prices by 75%. Quote below, full article here

"Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

[...]

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil."

No argument there, it is about time that we all reduced our dependence on oil.

One of the problems of organic gardening is maintaining soil fertility. In a new garden the first year or two are fine, any natural fertility in the soil gives good crops but in successive years yields will decrease if active steps to build and maintain fertility are not taken.

There are the usual ways of managing soil fertility; using garden compost, farmyard manure, green manures, crop rotation etc. A more unusual method is to use 'humanure', yes, human manure. It is the ultimate recycling of nutrients.

A couple years back I picked up the book The Humanure Handbook by Joeseph Jenkins. He describes how he has used human manure for many years. There are plans for sawdust toilets and good instructions about how to safely use human manure.



For many this will be step too far! Before you dismiss the idea think about it. We happily use cow, horse and for me Alpaca manure since I won 5 bags full in the local gardening club raffle! So, what is the big deal with our own manure? In the past I have mentioned the subject of using urine as a compost accelerator and for deterring cats. One comment implied that it was dangerous to handle as it was full of nasty germs. My response was that if my urine was full of germs I would need to see a doctor immediately as I would probably feel very unwell.

Joeseph Jenkins is aware that there are risks, as with any manure, but is very clear that he has been using humanure on food crops without any problems at all. In a previous post I mentioned some outstanding projects that needed finishing off. The sawdust toilet is complete and ready for use. The shed to contain it is nearly done and we are almost ready to start the experiment! Photos to follow.

This is a great free book "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" by David J.C. MacKay.
It gives details of the energy used in manufacture and use. There are lots of facts and figures and some very interesting results. It's a PDF file which can be downloaded here.