On Monday 30th November at 8pm we have an expert in PERMACULTURE AND BIODYNAMICS coming to give practical help on how to use your garden. The meeting is in the Ralli Room at The Ashtead Peace Memorial Hall in Woodfield Lane. It’s a chance to meet us, get some useful advice on your garden, and enjoy homemade cakes.
The Big Tidy
Do you ever wonder why you put off doing things that you know are going to make life easier but are a bit of a bore so they get the mañana treatment? Well, the clutter-infested allotment shed has been getting mañana management ever since I took over the plot at the end of July. How much procrastination can a woman do, you may ask, and the answer is, quite a lot when it comes to things under the heading of “housework”. I mean, for heavens sake, tidying up would use up valuable digging/pruning/planting/composting time, right? But it was beginning to annoy me, every time I needed a tool, it was a five minute rummage to find the required item. As the more interesting jobs outside are getting done, the time had come for the Shed Makeover. So I am pleased to report the following Shed Improvements:
- All tools now hung on hooks for ease of access (hooks = nails, obviously) so no more untangling of hose pipes and rakes to uncover the fork.
- A coat hook (coat hook actually = coat hook! There’s posh!) on the back of the door for anorak and cycle helmet so no need to delve under debris at home time.
- Table cleared of clutter so now available for storing thermos and lunch. (No doilies yet, let’s not overdo it…)
- Poly rubbish bags inside another poly bag, so they don’t obscure any of the above.
- Floor cleared of mud/litter (litter not mine, inherited) /general rubbish. No, I will never use the tea bags left behind by previous occupant.
- Rubber-backed mat found outside in remarkably good condition spread on the floor. Not sure about this, could get very muddy, but adds a touch of luxury at lunch time.
The Big Untidy...
The Big Tidy...
...and even a coat hook!
So there it is, I’ll be super-efficient now, a place for everything, everything in it’s place, an end to rummaging…do you think a few posters on the wall would look silly….? Maybe a “Home Sweet Home” sign above the door…
We are hoping that our meeting on 30 November in the Peace Memorial Hall will help us start a Transition Ashtead food group. This will aim to encourage more food growing in Ashtead and so the question of whether Ashtead can ever be completely self-sufficient is food is a good one.
The Surrey Organic Gardening Group has organised a meeting on Friday 27 November with the title “Can Sutton Feed Itself”. At least two of us from Transition Ashtead are going in the hope that it will help answer the same question for Ashtead. There is a star speaker – Patrick Holden, Director of the Soil Association, and the UK’s best known spokesman for organic farming and growing. The meeting is at Milton Hall, Cooper Crescent, off Nightingale Rd Carshalton SM5 2DL at 7:30pm on Fri 27 November.
If you would like to join us and want to either get or offer a lift, please give me a ring on 01372-378914.
Surrey Organic Gardening Group (SOGG) is a collection of people who enjoy many aspects of gardens and gardening. They hold regular monthly meetings, often with guest speakers, and also arrange group visits to public gardens and other places of interest. Their web site is http://www.sogg.btik.com/.
Derek Smith
Thursday 12th November 12, 2009
Compost lasagne
Before...
...After!
Compost lasagne!
The volume of vegetation I have hacked, weeded and pruned from the allotment over the past few months has reached epic proportions now and has just been piled up in a heap next to compost Bin I. I’ve been meaning to construct Compost Bin II for ages and today was the day I finally got round to it. The traditional allotment compost bin material is, of course, old pallets. I already had one on the allotment and have acquired 3 more recently, two from Transition Sarah (thanks Sarah!) and one from a chap down the road. I had spotted a pallet in his back garden, left over from his excellent new extension and he kindly let me have it when I knocked on the door to see if it was going spare. Thank you, sir!
With pallets and bits of wood from behind the back of the shed assembled, I set to work…The design kind of evolved to make max use of the pallets and it ended up being a bit of a Monster Bin. It’s lined with that other staple raw material, corrugated iron sheets, also found lying about behind the shed. Beautiful! Then came the job of moving the vegetation heap into its new composting location. I was a bit worried that vermin may have taken up residence and made a nest in the dry grass, so I began pulling it apart fairly cautiously… but the only wildlife I disturbed was a rather sleepy and surprised frog that had been snoozing quietly in a damp clump of leaves. The stuff was mostly very dry, having been in a kind of haystack construction, so to encourage composting I layered the stuff with spade-fulls of soil and a sprinkling of water, a bit like making lasagne (different ingredients, obviously, I usually make lasagne with meat sauce, cheese sauce and pasta layers) but the principle was the same – it was all going to meld together into a tasty dish! Except that the compost will be feeding the allotment, not people…
Monday 9th November
A grave situation
Mr Frog, safe and sound!
Having thought that I had done with digging on the allotment this year, I felt an irresistible urge to do a bit more. There was a grave situation, the possibility that some autumn raspberries in the garden at home would go to waste if they couldn’t be found a home. Obviously, as I surveyed the allotment, I realised there was plenty of space, it only needed a bit of spade-work. The digging muscles were called out of retirement and I got stuck in. Again! It was a hack through the matted grass with the mattock, having carefully raked the long areas to check for frogs – there are numerous frogs around, which is great as they eat slugs, I believe, so they are a gardeners friend but I have a horror of digging away and then coming across half a deceased frog. So care was needed…a frog was ushered to safety and then the hard work could begin. Once started, it didn’t take long and the job was soon done. It did look a bit like a grave yard…(see picture!) But no-one was hurt in the making of this raspberry bed!
Phase 2, dig up the raspberries at home. They are right in front of the newly-constructed wood store and a real menace when trying to retrieve wood for the fire, so they had to go. There were more than I thought, about a dozen, so I’ve got a nice, fairly short but double row of raspberry canes on the allotment. It’s a bit early in the year to move them and I’ve not yet pruned them, just moved them as they are, with canes intact. It’s been raining quite a lot since their transplantation, so hopefully they will bed in well. Next job, put up some supporting posts and wires but that can wait till another day…
A grave situation...
Raspberries in their new home.
As well as belonging to Transition Ashtead I’m also the secretary of Green Mole Forum which aims to encourage and support sustainable development across all of Mole Valley. Green Mole Forum has decided to form a group to look at the possibilities for installing anaerobic digestion (AD) plants in Mole Valley.
AD is a well established process for handing sewage, farm wastes, food wastes or combinations of these feedstocks to produce biogas and a solid residue that is a valuable soil fertiliser. AD keeps organic waste out of landfill, and cuts greenhouse gas emissions. AD plants vary from the very large (one AD plant handles all Stockholm’s sewage and food wastes for example) to plants the size of a large table. There are still not many AD plants in the UK, despite government support for them. The introduction of feed-in tariffs will give a big boost to all renewable energy technologies in the UK including AD.
A small AD plant is already being seriously considered in Headley to run on a mixture of horse manure and sewage. Local famers recognise the benefits of having an AD plant on farm land. Our new group intends to build on this existing local support, gather information, seek advice from experts, and come up with the most promising AD projects. If you would like to be part of this group or find out more, please send us an email via the ‘Contact’ button on the GMF website http://www.greenmoleforum.org/ , or give me a ring on 01372-378914.
Derek Smith
On Saturday 5 December 2009, ahead of the crucial UN climate summit in Copenhagen, tens of thousands of people from all walks of life will flow through the streets of London to demonstrate their support for a safe climate future for all. ‘The Wave’ is organised by the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition.
Green Mole Forum is encouraging people in Mole Valley to go to this event and suggests we all go on the same train – see the poster below. The train stops at Leatherhead at 10:33 and Ashtead at 10:37 and we hope that plenty of people from Ashtead will be going.
Derek Smith
Irrigation Kit - new hose, John's hose and Hettie's hose!
Hoses galore!
Work on the allotment now is all about getting ready for next years growing season. In preparation for next summer’s watering requirements, I have now got my Irrigation Kit sorted out. It must be about 100metres from the tap up to the top of my plot, so a huge length of hose is needed. John on the next door plot suggested we share hoses – he has one that will reach up to the lower end of my plot, so I bought a 30m length to get to the top. I was then chatting to Hettie who lives over the road from me and she said if only I’d mentioned it before, as she has a surplus of hoses and could let me have some! I said I was sure they’d come in handy anyway, so now I am really well equipped! Hoses galore! I found a bag of hose pipe connectors in the garage, so I can join the pieces together. There is an old cast iron bath on the plot that will do as a reservoir, for dunking watering cans when only a little water is needed but it will need filling up by hose now and then - may be filled up by rain by the spring. It has a plank in it so any small animals that fall in have an escape route. Not sure how they could fall in, but a squirrel could fall in out of a tree. Or maybe a mountaineering mouse will abseil up for a drink…all accidental swimmers are safe anyway!
Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day October 15, 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. This year the issue is climate change and the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
So if you write a blog, for one day, on October 15th, write about climate change.
To help you start thinking, here are a few ideas from their site, about how you might connect climate change to things that you might already write about:
- A Technology or Business blog might write about emerging clean tech and how innovative companies might be able to help address the problem of climate change.
- A Health or Lifestyle blog might write about how climate change will affect our children’s health and daily living.
- A Nonprofit or Political blog might write about how climate change is deeply connected to many other issues – such as poverty and conflict.
- A Design blog might write about new trends in eco-friendly or sustainable design.
- A Travel blog might write about the places you want to see now before climate change makes them difficult to access or, well, under the sea.
Check out www.blogactionday.org for more information.
Kenn Jordan
Monday 5th October
The Source
The Transport
The Destination
A bit of the brown stuff…
The long-postponed Manure Epic has been achieved at last! Much high-quality horse manure has been collected from Margaret’s horse field (The Source – thank you Margaret!) and transported to the allotment and barrowed up to the freshly-dug manure-hungry soil. It was the digging that has held up progress on this little project – I didn’t want to bring the stuff in until the ground was clearded of weeds and ready to receive it. But the digging is now virtually complete (thank goodness…) and the soil is in dire need of livening up with a bit of The Brown Stuff! My husband Andy has been more than generous in providing The Transport, which we did by lining his car with an old tarpaulin and then shovelling in the manure. It really doesn’t smell at all…Trundling the full wheel barrows up from the car to the plot (The Destination) was hard work but I’m hoping that next years crops will be ample reward for our efforts. The third batch was delivered last night, in the nick of time before the rains eventually came. Messing about with manure after a drenching would have been an altogether more slippery business…
