From the monthly archives:

November 2007

Self-Sufficient Veg: Space and yield

by Agric on November 30, 2007 · 1 comment

in SELF-SUFFICIENCY

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Few weeds can fight potatoes!

Ever wondered why we usually grow many veg in rows? Two main reasons: to make it easier to cultivate and weed between the plants, and so we know where they are!

What is the best spacing and arrangement for various crops? It depends how you grow them and what you want to achieve.

First you need to bear in mind my previous post: they must have sufficient light, water and nutrients. The more you want to produce from a given space the more effort you have to make to ensure none of these are deficient.

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Simple in the City 2 – Window boxes

November 30, 2007
Simple in the City 2 – Window boxesWill work for food If living in a metropolis means that I can’t grow my own vegetables, writes Jaana Nykenen what's the next best thing? In central London, there are no allotments, and the council-owned ones nearby have waiting lists of up to several years. If you have your own garden you can grow some vegetables, and even in a flat there are unexpected opportunities. Homegrown Having a balcony is a great advantage, and some herbs could even call a kitchen windowbox their home. An onion can start to grow if it has a little water, and the green tops can be cut into salads and soups, or to spice up a sandwich.

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Eco glossary

November 30, 2007
Eco glossaryKeeping up with the Greenses It's easy being green, but only if you know what the heck everyone is talking about. What if Al Gore suggests you reduce your carbon footprint? Or Leonardo DiCaprio asks about your plans to live off the grid? Eco-vocabulary has gone beyond the three R's of reduce, reuse and recycle. Now, we have carbon footprints to offset and carbon neutral lives to live because of the greenhouse effect.

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Fireplaces Aren’t Just For Decoration

November 29, 2007
Fireplaces Aren’t Just For DecorationSince winter is definitely on it's way we decided to do an article about fireplaces. Since nothing beats sitting in front of a warm fire while it's snowing outside and drinking some hot coco. Now a days fireplaces are thought of more as a decoration then as a source of warmth and even cooking. They can still be very useful in heating your home and even cooking up many things from hot water to popcorn to stew, let your imagination and ingenuity go wild. My neighbor across the street does the majority of his winter heating with a wood-stove and on days that one of us is home we run our fireplace. Since we love history and like ...

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Daryl boosts eco-interest

November 28, 2007
Daryl boosts eco-interestShe really IS a treehugger Daryl Hannah has given the off-grid lifestyle another boost, by re-stating why she lives that way herself. Last week the Press Association reported breathlessly that Daryl had "revealed" she was living off the grid. In fact she gave this web site an interview two years ago saying much the same thing but at much greater length. Press Association's Premier Showbiz section reported that the actress explained: "We sell fruit and vegetables at the farmers' market and I have a bunch of rescue animals. It is all off the grid. I have been off the grid for 16 years."

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Saffy back on the grid

November 28, 2007
Saffy back on the gridWhen Saffy was happy It is two years since former Absolutely Fabulous star Julia Sawalha moved into a canal narrowboat with a group of other off-gridders and turned her back on her acting career. She and her boyfriend eventually decamped to an idyllic woodland cottage with solar panels in deepest Somerset, eating home-grown veg around their woodburning stove. But it seems that while you can take a woman out of showbusiness, you can't take the showbusiness out of the woman.

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Government Grants for Alternative Energy

November 27, 2007
Government Grants for Alternative EnergyBy: Warren Peters In his State of the Union Address for 2007, President George W. Bush called for a 22% increase in federal grants for research and development of alternative energy. However, in a speech he gave soon after, he said to those assembled, I recognize that there has been some interesting mixed signals when it comes to funding. Where the mixed signals were coming from concerned the fact that at the same time the President was calling on more government backing for research and development, the NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of Golden, Colorado was laying off workers and contractors left and right. Apparently, the Laboratory got the hint, because soon after the State of the Union Address, everyone was re-hired. ...

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Enough’s enough

November 27, 2007
Enough’s enoughBecome an activist Citizen action in the UK takes many forms. Enough’s enough is a web based campaigning organisation responsible for many of the newspaper ads defending the environment you may have seen. They could do with your help, support, and money. Their billboards and full-page newspaper pages are among the most memorable political advertising of all time – campaigning on issues like airport expansion, power stations, roads, the rights of minority groups such as Inuits. The picture is a detail from one of their ads from the fake organisation SPURT - whose slogan is "Screw global warming, let's fly!"

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Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Carbon Tree

November 27, 2007
Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Carbon TreeCan't even send it back December 6, tree lights in Trafalgar Square will illuminate a 75ft-high Norwegian spruce, writes Catherine Gregory the sixty-first of its kind to make the journey from Oslo to London since the tradition began in 1947. That’s a lot of tree-miles. Is it perhaps time to end this annual tradition? “The Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is a central part of Christmas in London,” says Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. Christmas trees add a special seasonal atmosphere to public areas, which is increasingly important in combating disbanding communities and the anonymity and animosity of the metropolis. But the spruce that stands beneath Nelson’s Column for a month each year is just one of six million Christmas trees in Britain alone. At a time of year when waste rises by 25 per cent and power stations are working over-time, it is worth reminding ourselves that we are cutting down the very things that absorb our harmful emissions.

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