What books/films/talks/quotes or anything else sum up Determination.

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Spring Programme (More to follow)

“How to create a kitchen garden when space is limited?”

A beginners guide to growing food in your garden.

Alice Holden is one of Britain’s most pioneering female growers.She has been farming and growing organically on a variety of scales for the last ten years. Her practical experience, learning from commercial growers has given her a good grounding in how to use space to optimise the chances of a successful harvest.

What you will learn?

How do you make the most of a small space?
What are the tricks to make your patch really productive?
How to decide what to sow and when to grow?
How to successfully propagate seeds?
How to make the most of the resources you have?
How to care for your soil without doing very much?
How to keep a growing plan really simple?
How to grow herbs throughout the year?
How to choose the tools you will need from the ones you do not
How to keep things organised while allowing diversity
How small can a raised bed be and still be productive?
How to make your garden become an extension to your kitchen?
How to extend the growing season?
How to understand and make compost.

May 19^th - 10am-5pm.
£150

Includes garden lunch, tea, coffees, etc
Participants will also receive a mini plug plant garden to take away with them.

If you want to book a place, email: anna.thomas@thedolectures.co.uk

R. Pilcher

Look up to the mountain and think it was too steep to climb?

Did you ever wonder, even for the smallest second, if you had the talent to make it to the top?

Did you ever just watch a rival and think ‘I might as well as quit now.’

But you didn’t, did you?

You took the first step up that mountain.

You practiced. You practiced. You practiced.

You said nothing.

You just put one-foot in front of the other one.

And climbed.

Never looking up.

Never looking down.

And the journey wasn’t a quick one.

But overtime, people started to take notice of you.

Admiring the skill. The style. The simplicity.

But it wasn’t easy getting there, was it?

The sacrifices made along the way had a high price.

Then one day, out of the corner of your eye, you caught someone looking at you.

You knew that look. He was thinking ‘I might as well quit now’.

And you shot him a stern look straight back.

“Don’t you dare.”

Imagine a substance that had the ability to cycle old life into new life. A substance that any of us could create, almost anywhere with materials we already possessed. I am talking about Compost. It is hard to believe that something that looks so humble has such miraculous attributes. Perhaps this is why we neglect to give it the elevation it deserves. I don’t want to sound morbid but when I die I can’t think of a better end than being put in a cardboard box where my body can gradually decompose to the earth.

Compost offers a way of cycling fertility and important  minerals that are essential when it comes to growing our food.

On average 40 percent of what we throw in our bins can be made into compost

http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/composting/index.php.

Compost also helps soil retain moisture protecting another of our most valuable resources. Water.

Peter Seggar who is a British compost king at Blaencamel farm west Wales recently visited the SEKEM project in Egypt.

He described an area of desert he saw two years ago that is now full of soil and crops and how through the use of compost minimal water can be used to green even the desert. The more organic matter that is in the soil (compost) the better the structure of your soil- this means more air and more ability for retaining and preserving water when in times of drought.

This summer we have summer  drought looming  ahead of us after one of the driest autumns on record. Any ways of keeping moisture in our soils are hugely significant.

There are current taboo areas around cycling our waste to create our resources. Potentially cyclable sources of fertility and phosphourous lie in our human waste and even our bones. These things have to be composted  in a safe way using more monitored techniqiues than we individually have available in our homes. But it is all possible and in the light of our current absolute dependence on finite resources to produce our most basic necessities, it would make a lot of sense. There may be taboos we need to start talking about. We need our leaders to help us to create systems that allow us to do this. Council kitchen waste bins are a great start.

We all have organic matter that we can compost- here’s how.

Darina Allens ‘Forgotten skills’ has a good recipe for compost advising you to make ‘a feast’ for the microorganisms.

Recipe for Compost

Her ingredients are

Grass clippings, leaves, pruning’s, weeds ( but not roots of perennial weeds),  wood ash, straw, shredded newspaper, sawdust, hair, flowers, feathers, manures, vegetable peelings, other kitchen waste, tea bags, water and air.

Cooked food and meat may encourage rats but if you can safely contain it will biodgrade if mixed with other organic material from list. Some councils have the facilities to do this for you. If not ask why.

You need a mix of the carbon rich (things like woody material/ paper etc) and Nitrogen rich (things like grass and veg peelings). Essentially just mix it all up. The smaller the different additions and the more mixed up they are, the faster it will break down and become compost. Covering the heap will also speed things up but don’t let it dry out. Life- micro organisms need moisture and air to stay alive.

There are also things to be avoided-  non organic material like glass, plastic, metal, glossy or coloured paper, toxic chemicals.

Pet litter and solid human waste needs to be composted under stricter conditions to make sure any harmful pathogens are killed. For this reason it is not a good idea to put this kind of organic matter in your compost at home. By all means pee on your heap though as this is perfectly safe and will speed up the composting process. Don’t flash the neighbours and get me in trouble.

It may not look much but I am serious about COMPOST – get involved. Think about where you send your organic waste- try not to put it in the landfill bin! This is the only time it becomes waste.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/uk-households-water-restrictions

‘We walk on it, it has the potential to feed us, clothe us, house us. It’s the fragile membrane that goes right throughout the world and yet we ignore it, we abuse it, and we are rarely conscious of it’ -Peter Seggar, Blaencamel Farm.

The link to Peters talk on soil is below

http://thedolectures.co.uk/lectures/it’s-all-about-the-soil/

Photo Credit — Pete Prodoehl

Yes, we change things through this medium. We tell the world what we want to change, and why. We find people who want to help us, join us, fight against us. We tell the world our dreams, our frustrations, and our ideas for the future. Without our ability to tell a story, there would be no change.

The Do lectures – Wales.
April 25th-29th 2012.

Ideas+Energy=Change

Thanks for sharing.

Arcade Fire

Clapton

KT Tunstall

Jack Johnson

Hall & Oates

Gueta

Eminem

Linkin park

Top 40. (Something upbeat)

Swedish House Mafia

Tool

No music

My breath

The wind

The silence