Growing & Resources

Sunday lunchtime, May 25th

Bank Holiday weekends, especially unexpected ones, are brilliant. And yes, I know this particular Bank Holiday has come round every year that I can remember but I didn't have anything specific planned for this particular bank of 3 days off so I now find myself having a quiet Sunday and knowing I've got all of Monday to get stuff done too. Yippee!

That said, there's already been plenty going on. I hadn't realised quite how tired I'd got in the past week and it caught up with me yesterday - a very early night after a very "bimbling along in the clouds" day. But there is something strangely enjoyable about that kind of tiredness - the "I'm just going to curl up because anything else is just crazy" tiredness. It helped that I'd also been playing with Batala earlier in the day - so had some physical exhaustion to add into the mix. This was my second gig with them and felt infinitely better than the first! I've still a way to go (having only been in the band for a few months) but I'm getting much more confident with parading (drumming while moving) although yesterday I somehow managed to get myself some pretty sizeable bruises courtesy of not getting my drum straps in optimal position. Live and learn - and it's all good preparation for next Sunday's gig at the Manchester Day Parade. I've a feeling stamina will be the name of the game, time will tell!

Operation Grow the House Down is continuing well - 2013 seems to be the year for experimental planting, with the occasional bonus of eating produce which has worked out first try! This year I've primarily got annual plants growing from my various seeds but long term I'm hoping to have more perennials.

I've been musing on the investment of time and resources in my growings given, at least in the short term, buying the equivalent from shops wouldn't be hugely financially expensive. However, these days more than ever it's really not just about the money. I cannot fathom how food, especially fresh food, can be sold at the price it is - given the grower needs paying (and they'll need to pay for whatever they use in growing, from fertilisers to green house heating), the produce then usually ends up getting shipped around between various distribution points (fuel and storage cost) and almost invariably there's the packaging to factor in as well. The ubiquity of plastic is another story entirely, but even in brief, the amount of plastic packaging there is around and about is amazing. I produce relatively little waste each week (especially when I compare it to other inhabitants of my house, or the amount of waste produced by neighbours in homes I've lived in before) but most of it is plastic - the rest gets recycled or composted. And yesterday I spent about half an hour collecting rubbish that had blown into the outside area where I work - a bag or so of recyclables and three bags of non-recyclables, again, mainly plastic. But I'm getting distracted by waste (more another time, I'm sure!) - I may not be saving much money in growing my own food, but knowing this home grown produce is completely carbon neutral is brilliant. Knowing that I'm getting back in touch with how awesome plants are is great. And knowing that my experimenting is setting me up for future growing projects is probably the best outcome - knowledge through doing. Any other benefits (I've heard that fresh produce retains more vitamins and the like) are bonuses, but marvellous ones at that.

Another aspect of my growings which I'm finding incredibly exciting is that of finding new uses for "waste" resources. The three Rs of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle have really started coming into their own - plant pots are generally now being generated out of the bottoms of plastic bottles, drip trays are generally tetrapak cartons with one side removed, I'm viewing the winter trimmings from my folks' hedge in an entirely new light (leave them to dry out then use them for stakes, or weave them into fence panels, or, well, whatever else takes my fancy!) and cardboard is now a potential moisture store for larger planting containers (by burying it in the soil). Oooh! And I don't know if it'll work but the idea of creating plaster-board-type boards out of papier-mache for projects like adding internal wall insulation was an on-holiday idea but one which is still lurking for when I might try it out. I'm in the wonderful position of having access to loads of resources and I'm out to make the most of all of 'em!