2 Jun 2008
A few days of warm, moist weather and the great slug armies are massing on my garden. Although the sizes of them have been increasing as these slug-friendly conditions continue, it is actually the smallest ones that seem to do the most damage. The tiny ones, that look more like something that comes out of your nose than something you’d find in the garden, do an astonishing amount of damage, rather like me chewing my way though a couple of limbs of an oak tree in a single night. Anyway, as you can tell, slugs are rather on my mind at the moment. Which gives me the opportunity to tell you my favourite slug story…
Read more»
29 May 2008
At a time when it is entirely self-evident to anyone who takes an interest in these things that the Age of Cheap Oil is over, that the world is about to enter an unprecedented energy transition and that we are led by people with no idea what to do about it, I was intrigued to be given a clipping from the Daily Star which somehow embodies the depths of denial at work out there in the world. Accompanied by a wonderful, Viz-like image of a spaceman taking a stroll outside a Premier Inn on the lunar surface with the Earth in the background (see left), the article runs as follows. You’re going to enjoy this…
Read more»
26 May 2008
I had the enormous misfortune on Saturday to visit a garden centre. You might think that an avid gardener like myself would feel as home in a garden centre as I do in a record shop. However, modern warehouse-like garden centres have as little to do with gardening as Virgin megastores have to do with music. They are crammed with the most pointless unnecessary clutter, very little of it of any use to anyone who actually wants to garden, to grow anything useful. They are temples to a lost generation so removed from the land and from seeing gardens as something essential and as something productive that it beggars belief.
Read more»
22 May 2008
Here is a brilliant piece published recently in Organic Gardening Magazine, which contains a brilliant idea that something like the Tax Credits system could be used to support localised food production. Thanks to John for permission to republish it here.
John Walker is spending two days a week growing his own food - and being paid to do it. It’s all part of the Home Growing Act. And, by the way, it’s 2027. Read on…
Read more»
19 May 2008
One of the most essential publications to which I subscribe and which I most look forward to the arrival of is Agroforestry News, produced by the Agroforestry Research Trust. It is scholarly, always illuminating and at the same time is brims with the possibilities of an entirely different way of looking at how we could feed, house and heal ourselves. The latest issue features a fascinating article which, as someone about to install a woodstove, caught my attention, and which I thought would be sure to generate some debate here at Transition Culture. Thanks to ART for permission to reproduce it here…
Read more»
