Easy green actions and articles.

Here are a few easy online actions and interesting articles to make the world a better, greener, happier, place, 

Sign Friends of the Earth's petition, asking the government to do all it can to stop climate change before it's too late.

'Nature is the ultimate carbon capture and storage machine. The fastest and cheapest way for Britain to suck carbon out the air would be to double tree cover, restore our peatlands and wetlands, restore fish populations in the North Sea to their historic levels, and end the chemical warfare in the countryside that has led to the catastrophic collapse of insect and bird populations'

Let's all plant some more trees, ok?

Do you have some old (gently worn) bras to get rid of?  Send them to Smalls for All so they can be given to women in Africa who would otherwise have to go without.

Check out Greenpeace's plastic league table to see where your favourite supermarket ranks.

Some great, not-scary articles from Positive News this month - like Britain's endangered wildlife has made a come back, European agriculture could go green and still feed the whole continent, and a UK wide plastic bread bag recycling scheme has been launched. 

'Most of all, I wish Marie Kondo would just say stop! Stop buying all this stuff. The only solution to our waste crisis is to halt the consumerism clogging our landfills, polluting our oceans and overcrowding our homes. Because what would really spark joy would be a world that isn’t overflowing with garbage.'

Do you know what would spark more joy?  Buying less crap. Indeed. 

On the same note, check out Lindsay's post - 6 places to declutter to that aren't the charity shop.

The EU has voted to ban all single use plastics by 2021!

Every Wednesday this amazing group of women stand in protest of the fracking taking place in Lancashire.  Earthquakes have been reported near fracking sites in the UK, so sign this petition to show your support for a fracking ban.  

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Diary of a permaculture (ish) garden, February and March 2019.

Hello!  The garden is waking up (and so am I, I always want to hibernate through the winter!).  There's some blossom already, beautiful pink almond blossom and white on the new cherry plum trees.

The crocus have been and gone.

In the front garden I've planted a couple of patches of zingy yellow daffodils.  Some by the new cherry tree just as you come onto the drive, a pretty little springy area with some snowdrops, muscari, daffs and a hellebore my mum bought me.  The other in the corner by the fence, there's a new rose (a David Austen rose called 'generous gardener' that was my lovely valentines present) and some daffodils at the front of the bed.  It's always surprising how a few cheap little bulbs can make a garden look pretty and well cared for in the spring.

The new raised beds have gone up in the front garden!!!  I'm soooo pleased with them!

Joe's filling them up with the soil he dug out of the drive when he was levelling it, and I'm adding layers of garden clippings and cardboard to try to create a lasagne bed effect.  The driveway soil is slightly clay-ish, so I'm wanting to break it up with some organic matter, and hoping it'll all rot down together into something nice.  When I get nearer the top of the beds I'll add some bagged compost (I went to get some from Homebase the other day and there was some on offer for £2 a bag - so I bought 8 bags!) and some biochar (which is my new experiment this year).

We've had to have all our gutters replaced this month and I had to move my hotbin composter out of the way.  So it seemed a good opportunity to empty it.  About a million worms were living in there!  My back garden raised beds have had a nice top dressing of compost ready for the new growing season.

I've started planting some seeds in the heated propagator (tomatoes and peppers), chitting some potatoes (Jazzy, Nicola, Kestrel and Swift, I have no idea what I'm doing with potatoes so I just bought a small packet of several varieties to try.  The tray I'm chitting them in is the innards of Joe's Lego advent calendar and it's perfect for the job!) and I have my onions and some supermarket organic garlic ready and waiting to get going. 

Here's the garden in full, for posterity! 

How's your garden?  Have you survived the winter?  Are you ready for spring?

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