Home Recycle Plastic Bottles for the Garden Don't Throw them Away! All those empty plastic water and soft drink bottles that you throw into the dustbin each week - whether separated from other rubbish or not - are best held back for a recycling in the garden for a variety of purposes many of which can save your money. Some of our ways of using them are as follows Clodagh & Dick Hanscombe Gardening authors and broadcasters living in Spain. You can visit them and buy their gardening books from Gardening in Spain Growing plants from cuttings Cut the top of all sizes and make a small hole in the bottom and you have a usefully deep flower pot for planting up cuttings from the winter cutback. Moreover if you cut off the top a third of the way down you have a lid that can be taped back on to create a mini green house that will keep cuttings in a constantly moist atmosphere and protected from sold draughts. Heads for scare crows. Telling dogs to move on . Telling white and green fly they are not wanted . Keeping garden twine tidy. Growing vegetables on a mini scale .
Sustainablefoodproduction To E-Mail: Click Here Our Next Residential Gardening/Cooking Course: 'Gardening & Cooking for Life and a Sustainable Future' £200 / £180 concession – residential course that includes food & accommodation Spring: May 2013 Autumn: 12-14 October 2012 Guardian newspaper feature and audio slideshow, Click here! Organic Fruit & Vegetable Farm Situated at the foothills of the Black Mountains, near Hay-on-Wye, Primrose Organic Farm seeks to be a place of calm and beauty, where visitors can find inspiration to live more harmoniously within their immediate environment, their local communities and the natural world. A thriving organic fruit and vegetable business, it is also a wonderful example of how permaculture can assist nature in providing an abundance of wonderfully nutritious and luscious food. There are regular opportunities in terms of Work and Volunteering. Organic produce is sold to the local community through Hay-on-Wye market every Thursday from March to December. Nurturing the Land Biomimicry
How to Grow a Wire and Moss Lettuce Hanging Basket Not only is this lettuce and moss basket attractive covered in foliage, texture, and color, it looks good enough to eat. Moreover, it is! This edible container is so lovely it can hang in the front entryway; and, it's fantastic to eat and healthy for you. One of the benefits of lettuce growing in a hanging basket is slugs can't get to them! The down side to wire hanging baskets is they dry out easily. If you don't want to make this stunning basket of lettuce (see directions below), you can always plant your lettuce in beautiful hanging pots and containers. Directions Lettuce Seedlings Most times, I start my own lettuce seedlings, but a good garden center will carry many good varieties in six-pack or four-pack containers. Wire basket with hanger. Whiskey barrel liner. Moss soaking in water. Starting from the bottom. First row. Second row. A row after it's planted. Planting complete! After your plant settles in, use a high nitrogen organic fertilizer. Gather your materials Tools you will need:
Organic Horticulture HNC - University of Worcester This well established Organic Horticulture course is ideal for those interested in a career change or for those who are already working in horticulture. The HNC in Organic Horticulture is a part-time course (one day per week over two years) validated by the University of Worcester and taught at Pershore College. Using our organically certified facilities, students develop a sound knowledge of organic principles and standards. The course is broad-based and covers both the growi Pershore College is the West Midlands’ Regional Centre for the Royal Horticultural Society, the national headquarters of the Alpine Garden Society and holds the National Philadelphus and Penstemon collections for the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens. To view more details about this course, please visit the Pershore College website.
Vegetables You Can Grow in the Shade | Reclaim, Grow, Sustain Every gardener would like their crops to receive 10 hours of sun every day. And while you can greatly minimize the amount of shade plants will sit in with a little planning, shade is often an unavoidable factor. There's always certain corners of the garden that deal with a fair amount of light limitations: trees, houses, sheds, fences, other crops. But plants need light, right? Well fret not! As a general rule, crops grown for leaves (e.g., lettuce, chard, spinach) or crops grown for roots (e.g., carrots, turnips, parsnips) will manage in a shady environment. Needs 2 hours of sun a day Bok Choy - Bok Choy will do great with only short bursts of strong light. Needs 3-4 hours of sun Arugula - Definitely a vegetable to put in shade, because warm weather and full sun makes Arugula want to bolt. Chard - Chard grown in shade tend to be smaller than chard grown in full light, but the leaves will be more tender. Lettuce - Does well in shade. Spinach - Like lettuce, spinach was made for the shade.
www.charlesdowding.co.uk | No dig gardening Fontana Italian Margherita Outdoor Pizza Oven in South Africa - On The Patio Wood fires change the way you entertain, the way you cook for your family and friends. They remind us of a simpler time when life was a little more laidback, phones were something you had at home instead of in your pocket and filling up with petrol didn’t feel like daylight robbery. The Margherita wood oven’s beauty lies in its simplicity, both in design and functionality, so much more than a pizza oven, it perfectly roasts peppers and veg in minutes and is also ideal for roast meats & breads. It can be used as a conventional oven and reaches optimum temperature in a matter of minutes (10-15 max). If you looking for a bigger cooking area, but want to retain all the mouth watering characteristics of the Margherita, take a look at her bigger brother, the Mangiafuoco. This good-looking little number will keep just about any brood fed, so bust out mom’s old recipes and relive those good old days with a 21st-century twist.
Short Courses If you want to learn about healthy cooking, this is where you need to come! The International Macrobiotic School is the leading macrobiotic centre in the UK, offering a range of seasonal cooking classes, self-development workshops and longer professional training courses. The name ‘macrobiotic’ comes from traditional practices of health and longevity from ancient Greece, ‘macro’ meaning great and ‘bios’ meaning life. This is a way to a full, vital and creative life. Macrobiotic cooking uses a wide variety of plant-based ingredients to create delicious and nourishing meals that are full of flavour and can be adapted to everyone’s personal health and lifestyle needs. The Macrobiotic understanding of health is rooted in a combination of Oriental medicine and modern approaches to nutrition.
Soil Association membership offer: Brocton Leys Organic Gardening Courses Location: Brocton, Stafford 10% discount for SA members on organic gardening courses available throughout the seasons for all abilities. Situated on the edge of Cannock Chase, in an Edwardian garden, a small but wide range of organic fruit and vegetables are grown from seed. We rely on our own compost and green manures, but some horse manure comes from a local stable to add nutrients to the soil. All the waste from the garden gets recycled into recreating compost and fertility for the whole garden. All the lessons are conducted on the theory of organic gardening in a conservatory.
Organic Gardening Courses: Learn How to Go Green with Your Garden | MyGardenSchool Over the 4 week course I will be presenting a series of lectures that will help you understand both the Big Issues – in other words – the philosophy behind organic gardening, and the Practicalities – in other words – how to do it. I will guide you through the steps you can take to adopt a chemical-free, sustainable and benevolent way of caring for the organic garden that will be good for your health and that of the environment – while keeping the organic garden looking great. This course is for those of you who really care about the bigger picture. What is organic gardening? Organic gardening is the science and art of gardening by incorporating the entire landscape design and environment to improve and maximize the garden soil’s health, structure, texture, as well as maximize the production and health of developing plants without using synthethic commercial fertilizers, pesticides, or fungicides.” What is permaculture? Please see below a taster video for this course:
NATURES PRODUCE - Home Building a Vegetable Garden - No Dig Natural Gardening - Preparing an organic Garden Your Complete Instructions for Natural Gardening Success Behind every vegetable plant is a person with gardening desires — you! And behind you there are bees, worms... and millions of other live inhabitants of your garden soil. To keep them happy, here's how to build your vegetable plot. There is no need to wreak havoc and madly dig. Let the microbes and worms etc do what they do best in their own good way and time. Preparing a vegetable garden of this sort is extremely attractive for those sites that start off with poor soil or invasive weeds. Follow the natural gardening no dig diagram below, but first thing of course is to... Choose the site: Make sure it is roughly level and ideally most of the area gets at least 4-5 hours of sun a day. Is it level: Build any walls: If the ground is on too much of a slope, build some terraces for easy maintenance. Soil: Fix the surface first: How to build a no dig garden Here's a guide following natural gardening basics. Satisfying isn't it?