On the face of it Bio-fuels seemed a good idea. Instead of using fossil fuels, which will eventually run out anyway, here was a fuel solution made from renewable sources. Already used in commercial trucks, soy bio-diesel is considered by many as environmentally friendly. Another bio-fuel, corn ethanol is also being added to gasoline, to give it some “Green” credentials.

The trouble is, to grow enough crops for both fuel and food, more arable land is needed. Already large areas or previously “natural” habitats, are going under the plough. Literally, extra thousands of acres of rain forest around the world are now been cleared and planted up with soy and corn crops, all in anticipation of the demand for their new uses.

This in turn means that the net carbon footprint of producing these fuels from renewable sources is actually far higher than that caused by using conventional fossil fuel. Instead of reducing the carbon footprint as everyone hoped, bio-fuels production is causing nearly four times as much carbon di-oxide pollution than the fossil fuels they hoped to replace.

A recent European report makes for some scary reading. While conventional diesel and gasoline have an indirect carbon footprint of 85kg of CO2 per Gigajoule, Soya-beans have a staggering Carbon Footprint of 340kg of CO2 per Gigajoule. European Rapeseed is slightly better, but still nearly double conventional fuels with a Carbon Footprint of 150kg of CO2 per Gigajoule.

Added to this, the amount of indirect resources used to grow these bio-diesel crops is high as well, when compared to the production of conventional fossil fuels. Especially, when land clearance and water use is taken into consideration. Then there is the hidden cost of vehicle maintenance. Not many people realise that when ethanol is added to gasoline, it can have a long term deteriorating effect on the engines they fuel. There is also an unwanted reduction of overall mileage efficiency. This can be nearly a 25% reduction with some vehicles.

As for the environment, as previously stated, we are loosing even more rain forest ,which cannot be a good thing. Around the world, especially in poorer nations, where land and labour is cheaper, native crops are being replaced by others, like rapeseed, that are being grown solely for fuel. This in a time of growing food and water shortages. In the long term, this will affect consumers in the West as well, in the form of ever increasing food prices. Again, this is at a time when many people are already feeling the financial pressures and strain of a collapsing economy.

So at the end of the day, sadly, the present range of Bio-fuels are not really going to prove to be of much benefit. Even fossil fuels at this stage seem to preferable but this really is the lesser of two environmentally damaging evils. Still, there is hope, as many emergent new fuel technologies are been developed.

The only danger is that financial institutions, that have tightened their belts when it comes to lending money for research, will settle for what they know and continue to support the now impaired “bio-fuel Venture” that now seems doomed to failure.

Then again we always use to have an efficent bio-fuel in straw and hay and the “engine” we all used had a low carbon footprint, low production costs, and produced a useful byproduct, instead of enviromentally damaging waste. Considering the short time that the combustion engine has been in use, compared to the thousands of years that came before it, perhaps we should consider going back to the horse and cart for transport.

Wild garlic (Ramsons) are blooming all over the bottom of my garden with its distinct smell drowning out the perfume of the other wild spring flowers.

Its Latin name Allium Ursinum or Bears Onion is because its bulbs are a fond favorite of the Brown Bear. So much so that the handlers of "Dancing Bears" would keep sacks full of the wild garlic bulbs at hand, to give as treats if they performed well.  A useful fact to know if you walk the wild woods where bears live. There is something else Bear's are extremely fond of and that is trout.

So here are some old traditional cottage garden recipes for you to try . Having said that though, do pop over to Selfsuffientish.com for an excellent take on a superb recipe for Wild Garlic Pesto.

Smoked Trout

This wild garlic pesto goes great with smoked trout, if you cook your trout over tea. Instead of the traditional way of using a rack (and if you have not got a “smoker”), you can line a roasting tin with foil, and then tear open half a dozen tea bags and pour them in with some brown sugar. Cover this with another layer of foil and heat it up on the stove.

When it begins to smoke, place your trout on the tin foil. Drip some olive oil on the fish, with salt and pepper. Cover with a final layer of foil and leave for about 15 minutes or until cooked. Then serve with the wild garlic pesto.

 Mixed Salad

Personally, I love the leaves in a salad, mixed with lettuce, radish and spring onions (scallions). This tastes great with a tangy and zesty lemon dressing, you can make by mixing mayonnaise with fresh lemon juice and a little cold vegetable stock and adding just a little bit of tarragon and lemon balm.

Still it is very versatile and if you do prefer it cooked you can add it to stews and soups, just treat it like spinach. When the flowers start to open, the flavour of the plant seems to transfer to the petals which you can then use just as you did the leaves earlier. Be careful though as these tend to have a much stronger flavour. You need to catch the flower heads just as the seed pods are forming.

If you want them to grow in your own garden or container you must dig up the bulbs in the summer when the flowers have died down, but quickly replant them to their new site. The old cottagers journals say that you should then leave them to rest for a whole year. They will then be ready to harvest in their second year.

The bulbs can be eaten from August till the Winter Solstice or Christmas but are a bit small, although you can grate them and make a wild garlic butter to soak into slices of warm toast.

If you have any other special recipes for Wild garlic of your own then please post them.

best wishes

Greenjackdavey

If you’re interested in gardening or green issues in general, you are probably aware by now that the honey bee population is in trouble, which because they pollinate so much of our food production could have disastrous consequences for us all.  Although not given as much publicity, (possibly because people’s livelihoods are not at stake?)  Bumblebees and solitary bees are also having their problems.

Honeybees all over the world are in trouble. Commercial producers are suffering terrible losses, as high percentages of their bees succumb to a mysterious disease, or simply disappear. Because so many fruits, nuts, and other crops rely on pollination by bees, this could be a serious problem for us all.

Sadly, most people are not aware that the humble bumblebee, and other solitary bees that visit and pollinate the flowers and vegetables in our Backyards and Gardens, are also having their problems. I f you ask people about bumblebees you will find that one of the main reasons for this, is simply that most gardeners are not even aware of the habits of these tireless pollinators, that do so much good, for our garden’s fruit and flowers.

Not many people realise that Bumble bees like to make their nests in holes in the ground, sometimes making use of old mouse nests. In fact a Bumblebee’s idea of a  “des res” is to find an old mousehole with the bedding still in it. Yes, Beatrix Potter was not making this up!

They tend seek out grassy clumps that have nectar and pollen giving flowers nearby, which are usually your flower beds.  This they collect and take back to the nest to feed their young. Unfortunately, some modern gardening trends are causing them problems.

The first of these is the widespread use of mulching. This actually is the best way to feed the soil, as it encourages earthworms and suppresses weeds. In the normal set of circumstances, the young female queens will overwinter in the nest, snugly underground. In the spring, they emerge to find new nest sites, and start the cycle over again. Unfortunately, because of the indiscriminate use of mulching on all the borders and just not where it is needed, these poor creatures find that they have been buried alive.

The next problem they face if they do get out, is the use of weed suppressing material that people are encouraged to use to save labour and time. This has some great uses, especially for laying under paths for example. unfortunately, the problems with the bumblebee arises, when it is used indiscriminately in the flower bed. The bumblebee finds a nice site for its nest, burrows a few inches into the soil and comes across the barrier. With single minded determination it continues to dig around, not wishing to give up the perfect site for its nest. Eventually the poor creature wears itself out and collapses from exhaustion.

All this pointless suffering can be avoided by the gardener, been a bit more aware and making sure that there are suitable sites left towards the back of the border that the bumblebees can use.

A successful garden should not just be of benefit to us, but also to the myriad of other creatures that call it home. The real problem is that we need to be more aware of our tiny neighbours, how they live and how we can help them. Bumblebees and other solitary bees are in serious decline, but by just providing places for them to nest and planting some old traditional flowers that will give them pollen and nectar, we can make this problem go away.

So stop waiting, you are the “Save the Bee Fairy”!

Do you realise how much food you waste and throw away? The latest research shows that the average household throws away approximately 1/3 of the food it buys!

BUT it is NOT your fault

Supermarkets pay thousands to Advertising and Marketing Psychologists to come up with new methods to trick you into spending money, often more than you can afford, and buying more than you need. Special Offers, Two for one, Buy One, Get One Free, “Economy packs”. Did you really think they were doing this for your benefit? How many times have you got home after a shopping trip to the supermarket and regretted how much you have spent? Supermarkets just want to sell you as much as possible so they can make more money for their owners.

Then there is worse to come, the food you buy and do not use is taken to land fill sites. So, you are paying twice, first when you give your hard earned money to the supermarket. Then again when you pay through local or central taxes to have it collected and taken away. Those taxes could be used for far more better things, housing, education, hospitals. Instead you are paying for someone to take away and dump something you have already paid for. Now, there is so much waste going to land fill sites that they are filling up. So, guess what? soon they are going to charge you more to dump your unwanted shopping.

What can you do?

First and this is the most difficult, you must try and buy only what you need. Try to buy local products from local shops and farmer’s markets. Always take your own shopping bag, look for minimum packaging and try to avoid buying disposable items. Support retailers that are friendly to the environment and think about buying both recycled and recyclable products. If you must go to the supermarket try and keep to a prepared shopping list, but be prepared to spend more than you want. Try taking only the amount you can afford in cash, leave your credit cards at home. Have the courage to hold up the queue, as you take things out at the till, if you cannot afford them.

Secondly, cut costs and stop paying for your waste to be taken away. Instead use it, if you have space build a compost. Most composting takes a little time and effort but if you use a worm farm, you will only need room for a box. It only takes a little time and it will take all your kitchen scraps and turn it into a very rich, crumbly compost (nicknamed by professional gardeners as “Black Gold”) and a liquid fertiliser. A wormery is ideal for small families with urban gardens, even balconies, roof gardens and at a pinch, your garage. A wormery can even be kept indoors, because as long as it is working properly, it does not give off any smells or attract any bugs or flies.

Thirdly, start growing some of your own food. You can use your Wormery compost to make your own “Grow Bags” for tomatoes or use it to grow vegetables and herbs in containers. Just watch your food bills go down! Remember even the best shop bought vegetables are at least a day old and in some cases were harvested several days earlier and has traveled half way around the world to the supermarket shelves.

Home grown means eating really fresh, crisp vegetables that are full of flavour. You will also have the opportunity to grow more unusual and otherwise expensive varieties, getting to choose with your palette, rather than what you can or cannot afford. A single packet of tomato seeds will give you over a hundred plants! What is the cost of a packet of seeds against half a dozen, tasteless supermarket tomatoes that are produced out of season, picked green, ripened artificially and then transported to your local branch over a vast distance. Then of course, if you grow it yourself you will know for sure it has not been sprayed with chemicals or adulterated in any other way.

The best way of getting your own back on those supermarkets for playing you like that, is to hit them where it hurts, in their profit margins, by producing your own food. How dare they think they can use mind control techniques to manipulate and con you out of your money while turning your planet into a trash can, with wasted food and packaging, and for what? making a few rich people richer?All this while children elsewhere in the world are starving.

The last thing that you can do, if you really want to make a difference, is to spread the word and to encourage and help others to make the change as well. Just tell your friends and family, tell people on your website and blog, twitter it, facebook it., or simply link to someone who has posted it. This is what the Internet was really for. Lead by example and help make the world a better place for all our children.

The Bumblebees have been in decline for a number of years. You can help them by providing for them this easy home in your garden.

Bumbleees are the fat, hairy bees, that are the tireless workers and pollinators, fertilizing the plants in your garden, enabling them to produce flowers, fruits, seeds and nuts, and the bumblebees are in trouble.

Here is something that you can personally do to help them. Apart from providing nectar rich traditional heritage & heirloom plants for them to feed on, you can also provide them with suitable habitats to live and more importantly, breed and increase their numbers.

Bumblebees live in holes in the ground and can be encouraged to make nests in your garden. Here they will lay their eggs and then stock them up with provisions. The baby bumblebees will over winter in their nest to emerge the following spring as young queens to find new nests and repeat the process.

It is during the process of gathering food for it young, the bee performs the invaluable task of pollinating the flowers it visits, as it searches for nectar. It is so important that we do everything that we can to help these essential pollinators of our flowers, fruits, herbs, and vegetables.

By placing bumblebee nesting homes around the gardens and spaces where we live, we can ensure that these bumblebees will have a dry space where they are safe and can thrive. If you have produce in your garden like vegetables or fruit trees, this will help attract bees and as a consequence improve the pollination of your crops.

Traditionally, old cottagers used to make homes for bumblebees with fairly large old clay pots. The gardeners really appreciated the good work the bumblebees did in their garden and did their utmost to encourage them. The idea is to dig a hole large enough to put in a 10” clay pot, upside down. You will need the sort with a central drainage hole in the center of the base.

Before you “plant” the pot in the ground, you will have to partly fill the pot with old moss or even better some bedding from an old mouse nest. Bumblebees are particularly attracted by this distinct smell. If you decide to go this route, try asking at your local pet shop or even better ask at one of your local schools. They sometimes keep mice as classroom pets. This will give you a great opportunity to explain what you are doing and encourage others to save the bumblebees.

In fact, do not be surprised if such a desirable property in your garden ends up with squatters. You might find that instead of bumblebees, a family of garden mice will move in. If this does happen, do not worry. Leave the nesting materials in place and there is an even greater chance that bees will make use of it the following year. No one has really been able to explain why bees find old mouse homes so attractive, they just do. That’s right, Beatrix Potter was not making it up, when she wrote about it!

Pack the moss or bedding fairly tightly into the pot but not all the way down. Leave a gap between the packing and the drainage hole at the bottom of the pot. Next, gently invert the pot and place it in your pre-dug hole. Fill up around it until the drainage hole is level with the surface but be careful not to drop any soil into the hole!

Now you will need to place four stones around the the entrance/drainage hole and then place a larger, fifth stone across the top of them. This will resemble a miniature megalithic monument and is to allow the bumblebee entry but dissuade larger visitors like predators or mice. It will also serve the important function of a roof and keep out the rain.

As to where to place the pot, bumblebee queens seem to prefer undisturbed areas where they can carry on their business unnoticed and undisturbed. So try and find an unkempt area of rough grass somewhere out of the way, that gets a bit of sun during the day, (but not to much!). If you are lucky enough to have a south facing bank, under a hedge, your chances of attracting bumblebees will definitely increase.

The next thing a bumblebee looks for, when choosing a nest site is the availability of food on its doorstep. Try placing the nest box in an area near a flower bed or a wall with a suitable plant growing up it.

Thomas Hill in his book “A profitable instruction of the perfect ordering of bees” which he wrote, way back in 1579, recommends to grow Rosemary, the red and white Damask Rose, the Madonna lilly, Violets, Iris (Flourdeluce), Thyme, Balm, Borage and Bugloss, with other sweet and wholesome flower

Please link to, or copy and  re-post this post.
Re-write it as an article with your own name, whatever……..
You have my full permission

We need as many people as possible to do this.

Thank you

Greenjackdavey

I am continually referring to the natural world around me for the starting point for my artwork. In my Garden I can watch the light as it plays across the leaves, caused by the sun's reflections in the pond or the swaying patterns of shadows they create on the path. Above my head are amazing intricate laceworks, caused by the interlaced crossing of slender branches with their delicate leaves. The tactile surface of the bark on the trees. The solitary fallen leaf. Any of it might form the basis for a composition.

Artists tend to see the world clearer. This does not mean they have great eyesight but that they tend to “see” the intensity with which the world appears, that others just seem not to notice in the hurly burly rush of their life. Most people just “look”, “glance” but rarely “see”. Artists by their very nature, learn to pay more attention to their surroundings. Granted they may not notice the scent of emerging flowers or even hear the love sick blackbird singing its heart out but, the mere gentle play of light and shadow will leave them entranced in deep thought.

There are also those artists, that see the garden with a photographer's eye. They look for the “Best Shot” and see it framed in their minds eye, there on the gallery wall, with it's price ticket. They do a few sketches, take photos, (but only for reference…) and scurry back to their “studio” to complete their painting under neon lights. Small wonder when you look at their painting, you can tell that they never really see.

You can teach yourself so much about the world you live in just by spending a little more time observing. Instead of sitting in front of a television or computer screen, just take the time to go outside and look around you. Breathe deep and slow, relax and just let your eyes gently settle on the scene around you. Look past the “things”, to the colour and forms, start to see how they inter-relate.

Then later go out to same place and do it again, you will be amazed to see it has changed. The scene will change with each passing moment of the day, never to be exactly the same, ever again. Nothing stays the same, everything is slowly changing. The scene will not only be affected by the time of day but also by the weather. Strong light or dark skies can both create wonderful contrasts.

Some people are born with an innate curiosity and interest in the natural world but anyone can cultivate this sense with practice. You just need to take the time to pay more attention to your surroundings. I promise you, that you will be amazed at the simple joy that you can experience when you stop just looking and really start seeing.

If you are lucky enough to have good soil where you live, then thank your good fortune, you have a head start on everybody else. My wife Netta and I inherited a patchy & weedy lawn garden at the back of our house, that had been planted on top of heavy clay, which is, if you do not know, probably the worst sort of soil to have to start with.

There were problems with the drainage and it held very little organic matter to feed the plants. This is probably ideal for those boggy wild-flowers that adhere to poor soil but not suitable for home grow vegetables and many dry loving Mediterranean herbs.

Over two decades later the Garden is flourishing. Now, there are not many plants that like their feet wet constantly, that do not live on the side of ponds. So, going with the flow so to speak, first we installed a small pond.

Actually, as anyone who has had a pond will tell you, ponds grow to fill the available space and over the years we to kept installing bigger and bigger ones! We had the bizarre experience of digging a hole and having to bale out the water it filled with, to put down a liner, and fill the hole with water again, but I digress…

For the rest of the garden we had to find a way of creating plant beds that would drain well and did not stay soggy under foot. First, as most modern gardening books will tell you to, we dug over the topsoil and added some organic matter, but that did not seem to work very well. Within a year the beds were soggy again.

The next attempt was to remove the beds to a spade's depth and fill the beds with bought in topsoil. Oooops! By digging down into the clay, we actually had made water proof troughs that we had then filled with (expensive) soil. After the next rainy day we had a bog again.

So, eventually the penny dropped, the light bulb went on above our heads, and we went for raised beds. Here, we built up the levels of the beds with home made compost mixed with topsoil. After the level of the beds reach about 10” above the clay, it started to work a treat. All the plants started to thrive.

From then on, as long as the soil was not compacted, we did not dig and tried not to disturb the soil's structure. Each year we just mulch the beds with more home grown compost and the worms have moved in to Rotavate and enrich the soil. Each year the beds get a little higher and the soil a little richer.

So, here is a very important point. In the beginning, do not waste all your gardening money on plants at the expense of the soil. If you concentrate on the soil first, on improving it, everything else will follow. Simply improving the soil and its structure will pay dividends further down the line.

There is an old gardening saying,”When you wake up in the morning, determine to live as if that day is your last day but garden as if you are going to live forever”.

It does not have to cost a lot of money either. If you get a good compost going for your garden waste and get or build a wormery for your kitchen waste, you can save a fortune in compost and fertiliser.

Remember, you probably have neighbours with cuttings and leaves to get rid of at certain times of year, so if you have a lot of beds to build up, use their waste as well, to make compost. They might even pay you to take it away!

With still so many people going hungry in the world everyday, it is painfully apparent that we need to agree upon a new sustainable Global food system for this new century.

The current system is obviously not working. We are still struggling with and propping up a system that was originally designed in the early 1950's. This was at a time twhen we were recovering from the collapse of food production in Europe following the devastating second world war, there was starvation in the Far East and the dust bowl in the United States Mid-West was still a recent memory. It finally dawned on our leaders that the 19^th century model of food production and distribution would no longer do.

Great minds, Food scientists and government policy-makers all concluded that the answer lay in increasing food production. This they believed would not only reduce the cost of food, making it more widely accessible to the poor but also reduce public health costs as improved diets increased people's well being. In a perfect world it would have been a perfect plan.

Unfortunately, even as early as the 1970's it was becoming apparent that this was not the case. Apart from operational failures in the methods of physical distribution and the problems of inherent debt in the way the free market monetary system worked, there were massive environmental costs from an over reliance on pesticides and fertilisers. Still, the world pressed on.

Now, added to the original problems we have dwindling natural reserves of energy and water, loss of agricultural land due to urbanisation and pressure on the whole system by over population.

The level of food growth per capita is actually dropping off at a worrying decline in production.

How did we get into a position where over half of the vegetables consumed in the UK each year are imported. Even more worrying is the fact that most of the countries that supply us with these vegetables are some of the most water-stressed countries in a world, where fresh drinkable water is already becoming scarce, as water tables drop to new all time lows.

Is it not madness to have our entire food production based wholly on an oil based economy, when we know the oil is running out? Most experts now agree that food production will have to double by the year 2050 to support the population that will then exist.

In a fair future and I mean fair for all the people on the planet, not just the rich nations, it is obvious we will need a more sustainable form food production and if we are going to stick with the “Free Market Economy” we must make sure that it does not result in ever increasing prices.

We need food production systems that do not degrade the land and feeds more people using less space. If these systems are to be really sustainable, they must take advantage of and be compatible with the planets natural systems and protect its bio-diversity.

One sign of hope is the “grow your own” movement in varied forms that is steadily growing in response to those same flawed market forces that are increasing the price of available food while degrading its quality. Suddenly, with the trend to grow heirloom and heritage plants and vegetables, we are getting some of that bio-diversity that we were loosing in commercial fields and urban encroached woodlands back, in our gardens, patio containers, window boxes and our stomachs.

This is also fulfilling another urgent need of society. This is the need for ordinary people, especially all our children, to understand where our food really comes from. It does not matter how small a space you have access to, you can and should grow something. Start re-discovering how your ancestors grew their own food and pass on the knowledge to your children.

Scientists and bee keepers around the world are still unsure why the bees are disappearing at such an alarming rate. Can we do anything to help?

Bee-keepers and scientists are still unsure what is causing the disappearance of so many bees, but the sad fact is that the bees are still disappearing at an alarming rate all over the world. Worldwide, approximately one third of what we eat is naturally pollinated by bees. Most of the fruits, including apples, pears, raspberry's, plums, cherries and strawberries are reliant on these tireless workers for their pollination. Did you realise that the small honey bee can visit up to 1000 flowers a day? Imagine if we had to do that job ourselves with little brushes.

However it's not just fruit and vegetables which we eat that is under threat, alfalfa, which is a major cattle feed crop, is 90% reliant on pollination by bees. Worldwide the bees play a crucial role in pollinating over 90 commercial crops. With food production already under pressure from rising populations, wars and natural disasters, this potential crisis that could threaten our crops, could not come at a worse time.

Commercial Bee colonies have always been vulnerable to disease because they are forced to live in hives that are densely placed next to others. This means that infections can spread rapidly through a hive and then infect its neighbours. One bacterial infection known as the foul brood has been causing damage to bees for more than a century.

In recent years, one of the biggest threats has being the varro mite. This tiny parasite feeds off the bodily liquids of the bee and has spread around much of the world. Although this is a serious problem, because the mite is proving more more resistance to chemicals, these problems pale into insignificance when compared to this new mystery.

Over the last several winters, more than 25% of the Western honey bee population has disappeared. One cause of these losses is an alarming phenomena has been dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) which occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers. The missing bees are never found, but are believed to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives. As yet no reason has been discovered.

What can be done? Most scientists agree that we should be taking pro-active steps to help try and stabilise the wild bee population, which includes bumblebees and solitary bees like leafcutters. We need to ask and encourage our farmers to adopt wildlife friendly farming methods. This should include the replanting of hedgerows and the re-creation of hay meadow and chalk grassland habitats to try replace those similar areas that have been lost over the last 20 years. This was the natural habitat of the bees before modern farming methods caused their destruction.

This also now makes economic sense for farmers as well. Recent scientific research proves that farming will actually benefit from such action. It will increase crop yields, while at the same time improving the fertility of the countryside beyond measure.

In our gardens, we need to make sure that we and our neighbours are planting traditional cottage garden plants and wildflowers. Gardeners should be encouraged to seek out and propagate heritage plants and seeds. Bumblebees and solitary bees, that visit the garden need flowers that produce pollen and nectar from early spring until late summer. Many exotic and modern hybrid blooms just do not produce enough of either.

Sometimes the problems in the world can seem, overwhelming and daunting. This time, there is no need to feel helpless. It does not matter if you have a garden, a container outside your door or even just a window box. If you make the effort to plant a bee friendly flower you can help save the world.

check out this link for more info