Eat something you’ve grown every day.
This is the New Year’s Resolution of Audrey Miller…
“My New Year resolution is all about my desire to do something to reduce my carbon footprint. I hit on the idea of reducing food miles. Nothing could be more drastic than growing my own food. My logic being that from kitchen windowsill to plate is virtually zero distance and from my back garden to table just a few yards more. The challenge is to eat at least one item of food that I have grown every day.”
The full article has tempting close-ups of her fruit and veg – Audrey is already a seasoned allotmenteer. She also has a good shot of a cardboard mulch, which she describes thus:
“Outside last October (but you could join in the experiment if you start soon.) I have begun to prepare my no-dig vegetable space. I took off a narrow strip of lawn and laid cardboard on the bare soil then covered with a thick layer of lawn mowing then an even thicker layer of compost made from kitchen waste made during the year. The theory is that the earthworms will do the work and come spring I will be able to plant vegetables in my new growing space.”
And in practice, in my experience, this system can work very well on certain soil types for certain crops. You can even use thick layers of newspaper instead of cardboard. It has to be well overlapped, and you should avoid putting compost with weed seed on top. Don’t try to any small seeds direct: grow plants on the windowsill, then make holes in the cardboard and make a little planting hole underneath for each plant, with a mixture of soil and compost in it. Or you can make a planting row. The cardboard mulch can then stay in place for the whole season, suppressing weeds and gradually rotting into the soil.
It works brilliantly with larger plants like potatoes and courgettes. This isn’t a new-fangled idea: various forms of “minimum cultivation” and “zero cultivation” have been used by some mainstream farmers on a field scale for decades, particularly on light soils. Turning the soil over (with plough or spade) buries the most fertile layer, and reduces the amount of organic matter in the soil by exposing it to oxidation. – Chris Duggan
Thanks to The Stirrer for Audrey’s article, and the Transition Brum email network for bringing it to our attention.
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