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Give it a grow: Join us in the One Pot Pledge

Anna Guyer | 18.05.10

Everyone at Greenhouse is working to recruit 1,000 people to join us in the One Pot Pledge, a campaign to get 30,000 first-time gardeners to grow a pot of fruit or veg.

I love this project. It's good for the environment, and it's stuff you can eat :-)

Please join us in pledging to grow a pot of veg. Like you, we are just starting out.

The official web site is chock full of tips for first-timers, and they have expert advice from well-known gardeners like Alys Fowler. You can even submit your gardening questions and they will be answered.

It's all on the One Pot Pledge site, sponsored by Garden Organic, the leading organic growing charity.

We'll be posting our progress here and on our new Facebook page. Check it out and "like" us. We're mailing free veg seeds to new Facebook friends.

If you're already a gardener, there's a role for you in the One Pot Pledge to help get a friend or two growing too.

Let's grow a tastier world together!

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Teach your children well

Anna Guyer | 20.05.10

The greatest resource we have for creating a sustainable future isn't a law or a revolutionary new product. I believe it lies in our ability to, as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young so beautifully put it, teach our children well.

As parents of three, Matthew and I are keen for our children to develop an understanding of the importance of being good stewards for the planet. They are really into it -- and so are their friends, which I find both fascinating and heartening.



When Rosie’s school, St John’s in Wimborne, celebrated Environment Week, we spent a day there to help more than 160 children plant edible veg. This was part of our effort to support Garden Organic's One Pot Pledge, which I've talked about on the blog. It's all about getting first-time gardeners to plant a few seeds and grow something edible.

Our day at school was really great. It was also exhausting - a good exhaustion - which left me in complete awe and admiration for the stamina and commitment that teachers expend everyday.

For many of Rosie's schoolmates, planting something was a first. We gave the children a choice of seeds for French beans, courgettes, carrots and salad. Everyone had fun and they loved growing the veg.

The day before, I went to our local supermarket and bought the equivalent of what we were going to plant. We looked at food miles:

• French beans from Kenya, 4685 miles
• green beans from Morocco, 1500 miles
• lettuce from Perthshire, over 400 miles
• carrots and courgettes from Spain, 585 miles

What was inspiring was that the children were knowledgeable about food miles and the issues where are food comes from, and they have an awareness about the impact of food transportation on the environment and the benefits of growing your own. There's something to this exercise of reaching kids when they are seven and eight. These are such formative years. 

We weren't taught lessons of sustainability when I was a kid. What I saw at Rosie's school gives me hope. It makes me reach for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.



PS: I am going to keep asking you to take the One Pot Pledge. I have promised myself to recruit 1000 new growers! 

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Barbra Streisand, the One Pot Pledge and Me

Kenneth Hill | 26.05.10

I don't talk to my plants. No, sir. I'm not a crazy person.

I don't sing to them either, not when I have Barbra Streisand to do it for me - with proven results.

In the 1970 Vincente Minnelli film On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, Ms. Streisand gives a marvelous performance as Daisy Gamble, a nice woman living in New York, engaged to a guy so boring he could make weeds wilt.

Among her gifts, aside from channeling her past lives during psychotherapy, are two sorta cool "superpowers:" She hears phones ring before they ring, and she sings to make plants grow --and I mean grow REALLY FAST - with lyrics like:

"Hey buds below
Up is where to grow
Up with which below can't compare with.
Hurry, it's lovely up here…"

The supersonic plant growing is done to marvelous effect in the film thanks to the talents of John Nash Ott Jr., a time-lapse specialist who pioneered the medium working for Disney and others as early as the 1950s. Ott was also a horticulturist.

The scene below is a fantastic ride through Daisy Gamble's ability to get things to grow, something I'm thinking a lot about at the moment as I watch my little pot of basil inching, well, quarter-inching, it's way to become something I can harvest.

Oh Ms. Streisand, how my One Pot Pledge could use you now! 



 

PS: Do you talk or sing to your plants? C'mon, you can tell :-)

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Small container garden: Grow herbs in the kitchen

Greta Jonyniate | 22.08.11

By author: Amanda Kidd  Gardening Clan is a blogger who is a nature lover. She has her own rock garden and she is right now busy in growing herbs in it. She always keeps herself updated with new gardening tips to make sure that her garden is properly maintained. Here she shares her tips on growing herbs in your kitchen.

A visit to my friend’s house gave me an encouraging idea. She had smartly used and recycled many of the materials which normally reaches the trash without any second opinion. I was delighted to see a small area inside her kitchen brimming with life. There were small cute pots, which were actually designed out of used cans/containers, containing small herbs and plants. It seemed that she has put in all her biology lessons keenly into her kitchen garden. They were so appealing. And I was surprised to know that she had designed her ‘small container kitchen’ all alone with some inputs from the internet.

You can start working at your small container kitchen with some basic knowledge about plants and the ways to maintain them. Plants can be placed inside or outside your house. Outdoor garden enjoys the advantage of abundant sunlight and natural atmospheric climate, but certain climatic conditions can be harmful and you need to keep a check on them. Indoor garden enjoys the protection from unfavorable climatic conditions. You need to devote sometime exclusively for your garden to gain maximum benefit out of it.

Generally, an opening is made inside the pot to allow the excess water drain out. But if you choose to place the pots inside, you can either not make that outlet or select an area which allows draining while keeping the house tidy. Rainwater may play foul and damage your garden. After showers, plants need careful examination. Excessive water needs drainage and the lost soil, which gets flushed with rainwater, in the pot has to be restored. Plants gain nutrients mainly from the soil. Sometimes, a heavy downpour can potentially damage the plant, particularly the roots. Check it sometimes to determine whether it needs replacement.

You can select plants/vegetation which is easy to manage and grow. This can save troubling yourself and being comfortable with your garden. Many are happy to grow multiple plants/vegetation in single pot. This needs extra skills or else you may end up with not even one grown properly. Be careful while you select your plant.

The container garden allows you to experiment with many plants. The choice is varied. You can opt for some herbs which can add refreshing ingredient into your kitchen. Many people choose to grow vegetables which need less space and are easily manageable. Or you can prefer to nurture some of the beautiful flowering plants which are a delight to the viewers. At any point of time, you can choose to change the plant as per your need and desire. Being portable, you can keep them anywhere as per your requirement. The containers can be shaped beautifully that add interiors’ outlay to your house.

An environment oriented ingredient for your garden is the compost. It is made out of wastage and is really healthy for the plants. It is apt to provide micro and macro nutrients needed for the health and growth of the plants. The polluting content of artificial fertilizers is not found here. Besides, it is cheaper compared to the artificial fertilizer and easy vegetation. You may also need some pest-control tools to save your garden from pest infection.

By growing your own vegetation, you benefit your health as well. The extended use of synthetic fertilizers and other components have diluted the natural nutrition content of vegetation. This can be one of the prudent opportunities to gain healthy outcome with limited efforts. If you are new to the subject, restrict yourself to limited number of containers in your garden. Once you gain the tact, you can extend it according to desire. Regular trimming sessions can keep the plants in shape and avoid being clumsy. It is not only an option to spend your leisure time constructively, but also helps in saving money.
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Radical Gardening

Richard Lemmer | 20.04.12

Resistance is fertile, if you believe the radical gardener. Protest gardening is emerging as a new craze. Greenhouse PR visited radical bookstore Housmans to listen to Professor George McKay discuss his latest book, Radical Gardening. The book gives an overview of gardening as a part of political activity, discussing everything from the violence of the suffragettes firebombing Kew Gardens to the more serene peace garden movements. And if you like your puns academic and groan inducing, you’ll love slogans like Avant Gardening, Sod it!, and Horti-counter-culture.

  Whilst there is much in the book and McKay’s philosophy that is best left to common room discussions, radical gardening reveals interesting trends that go beyond the garden fence. Discussing his latest book, McKay pointed out that it his only book to have received a positive review in the Daily Telegraph. The Guardian highly recommends the book. McKay also pointed out that the guerrilla gardening movement and unused land reclaimed as gardens has received praise from the Daily Mail. Even the Duchess of Cornwall has done a spot of guerrilla gardening. Radical gardening must be doing something pretty special if it can get royalty and anarchists working together.

But McKay’s book doesn’t just deal with the practical and political activity of gardening. No academic worth their ivory tower could resist analysing the garden as a symbol. McKay uses a vague definition of gardens and gardening, but it highlights some interesting issues, such as why the red poppy appeal is so successful compared to the use of white poppies for pacifist causes. This moves the conversation into discussing how we perceive gardens - and this is where business begins to show an interest. It would be a costly mistake to be dismissive of flower power. In 2000, BP spent over £4.6m designing its new flower like-logo - a design that cost over £50m to implement on new and old stock. And whilst BP has clearly understood the positive connotations of the natural world, it needs to understand that its garden of logos is no safer from harm than the vandalised gardens of 19th century landed gentry. In an age of increasing IT acumen amongst the population, it wasn’t difficult to for Greenpeace to crowd source a subversion of the BP's new logo.

Radical Gardening contains lots of interesting actions and creations using gardening to draw attention to all sorts of issues. One example highlights the work of artist Paul Harfleet, who plants pansies at the sites of homophobic attacks.

So is it time more people - and businesses - joined McKay is saying "sod it" and joined the "horti-counter-culture"?

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