Category: This and that


Garden resolutions for 2014

Filed under: Gardening equipment and tools, Gardening techniques, This and that — 2 Comments
31/12/2013

Do you have any gardening resolutions for 2014?

Mine are to:

  • grow less food (to eat as much but to waste less)

  • install a water feature (probably a half barrel)

  • stake my herbaceous plants earlier

  • thoroughly mulch my fruit bushes with well rotted manure

  • actively manage my compost bins, and

  • try to inspire some children and young people to get into gardening.

Old School Gardener

Brigid Jackson's avatararistonorganic

What are your resolutions?

May the year 2014 greet you with days as fragrant as roses, as colorful as rainbow, as bright as sunshine and as happy and cheerful as a lark.

 

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Out of sight, out of mind

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20/12/2013

hackneyplay's avatarLove Outdoor Play

Recent surveys have shown children’s independent mobility has declined and that opportunities to play are much more restricted than they were in previous generations. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. For most children there is a higher level of adult surveillance than we would have been used to when we were younger but many children still play out unaccompanied by adults. It’s just that we have stopped noticing, in part because we believe the evidence of the same statistics.

‘We have given up haunting the places where children play, we no longer have eyes for their games, and not noticing them suppose they have vanished’. Children’s Games in Street and Playground – Iona and Peter Opie.

When One False Move was originally published in 1990 it showed that in 1971, 80 per cent of children were allowed to travel to school without adult supervision but by 1990, this had…

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Africa’s Adaptation Gap

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canwefeedtheworld's avatarOne Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?

ID-10042579A recent technical report published by the UN Environment Programme, the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) and Climate Analytics investigates the impacts of climate change and the costs of adaptation in Africa. Africa’s Adaptation Gap report  is a warning to policymakers of both the implications for Africa should global mitigation activities fall short as well as the urgent need for scaling up adaptation activities and funding in this continent, a region the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report named a “vulnerability hot spot” for the impacts of climate change.

Africa is projected to experience severe climatic changes compared to historical conditions: more frequent extreme weather events; sea level rise of over one metre with global average temperature increases of 4°C by 2100; significant decreases in precipitation across many areas; a loss of biodiversity and potentially grazing area; and maize, millet and sorghum growing areas are likely to become unviable…

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10 Tips for Mindful Eating over Christmas

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19/12/2013

Sophie Hudson's avatarThe Forget-me-Not Cultivation Blog

It’s that time of year isn’t it.  The one where you look at your food cupboard and realise you’ve purchased enough food for your entire street and you haven’t even bought the turkey yet.

If you’re anything like us, you starting by buying a box of biscuits in November, because they were on offer, and have bought another two since because they are still on offer.  Same with the box/tin of chocolates, cranberry sauces and gravy packets (even after I promised I was going to make our own).  Everything is bought to excess even though every year you say you won’t do that again.

By the end of Boxing day we start to feel rather guilty from the over indulgences but think to ourselves, it’s okay because come 1st January we’ll right it all with a cut price subscription to the gym.

Sound familiar?

Well what if you could stop…

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Link
Filed under: Design, This and that — Leave a comment
17/12/2013

Chinese Carvery

It all started out with a simple tree trunk...

‘One tree, four years of work and an indescribable amount of talent: that’s what it took to create this incredible masterpiece. A famous Chinese wood carver chopped down a single tree and tirelessly worked on it for over four years to make this piece. Your jaw will hit the floor when you see what he created.’

Click on the picture for the full story…

Old School Gardener

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‘Empty chairs at Empty tables?’ by Ann-Marie Peckham

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shinealightproject's avatarShine A Light

chairs pic 1

Chairs are something that we have a lot of at the superstore, as you can see from the above photo (although there are actually much more than that!). You may not think they are a very exciting topic, but if you sit (preferably on a chair) and have a read of this blog hopefully I can change your mind (or at least show you some nice pictures).

Chairs have many different shapes, sizes and functions. While their form follows a fairly simple template of a seat, back, arms and legs, the particular design of a chair is what really makes them unique.

The specific design of a chair could simply be due to creative thought, or influenced by the materials that are available or the space in which it has to fit. It may also be dependent on the type of sitter it was designed for, or the location…

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Blogiversary!

Filed under: A musing: odd thoughts, Blogging, Dear Walter - letters/info from Old School Garden, This and that — Leave a comment

IMG_4966A year ago today I posted my first article on Old School Garden. Thank you to all those people who have taken the trouble to read that and the more than 1000 articles or other posts I’ve made since then. And a special thanks to those who are regular followers of Old School Garden.

So what have I achieved and what has been the experience?

First the ‘metrics’ for the last year:

  • 1018 posts or articles published (including re-blogs)

  • Over 40,000 ‘hits’ or ‘views’ from visitors in 129 countries with the highest dally total views being 429. The average daily views is now standing at well over 100.

  • Over 5,000 posts were shared by visitors via Facebook, Twitter and a wide range of other platforms

  • 1,653 ‘followers’ alerted to new posts via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and directly via email (the latter has grown in the year to 285 followers)

  • Over 900 comments, including 300 of my own in reply to others, with recycling projects and ‘Picposts’ generating most comments

  • Not surprisingly the United Kingdom, USA, Canada and Australia account for over 80% of the hits (the U.K. alone 46%)

  • Overall, the most viewed posts seem to be about recycling projects (interest in projects in the garden using pallets and other recycled materials seem to be really popular, as have posts dealing with design, gardening techniques and play)

  • 21% of the views have been generated by internet searches using a wide range of search terms, and a further 10% via Twitter and 6% each via Facebook and Pinterest

I’m not sure if these figures are impressive or not – my guess is that they’re probably ‘middling’ when compared to the full range of numbers achieved by different blogs.

Pallet furniture and other garden recycling projects seem to have been especially popular this last year
Pallet furniture and other garden recycling projects seem to have been especially popular this last year

What has been my blogging experience?

I’m pleased at the overall numbers of people who have viewed the blog and that many have ‘liked’ or commented on the articles and other material I’ve shared.

I’ve been surprised at how some posts have generated enormous interest, with views ‘spiking’ on recycling posts in particular.

I’m pleased that my efforts to inform about gardening using a range of post types seem to have been well received; examples include ‘GQT’; ‘A-Z of Perennials; ‘Plantax’; monthly ‘top tips’ and various series on design topics, climate change, school gardening etc.

I guess I’m feeling that I haven’t yet ‘found my audience’ with the blog and that I seem to have generated only a small (but nonetheless very valued) community of followers who are stimulated enough to contribute to developing ideas and knowledge via comments.This may be in part due to my eagerness to produce a relatively large number of posts only a few of which have been structured and styled to generate debate.

So, I think I need to revise my blogging strategy. Perhaps I need a combination of meatier items, more of which are focused on developing ideas and seeking opinions, but retaining a mix of other types of post (but maybe reducing the frequency of these?). To ‘educate, inform and entertain’ (a la BBC) but with ‘stimulate’ perhaps added?!

What do you think? I’d love to hear from you!

Old School Gardener

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Stonehenge transformed by new visitor centre

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Not culture, not history – physical change

Filed under: Play, This and that — Leave a comment
16/12/2013

aseasyasriding's avatarAs Easy As Riding A Bike

I was struck by two details from yesterday’s blogpost by Mark Wagenbuur, about early protests for child-friendly streets in Amsterdam in the 1970s – details that highlight the importance of the quality of the physical environment for enabling cycling, over and above any prevailing national culture or attitudes.

The first instance was the contentiousness of the changes being proposed to the streets in Mark’s post. One Dutchman, surrounded by children, argued that it was ‘impossible’ to create a street without motor traffic on it. You can see this in the video, about 2:30 in.

Screen shot 2013-12-12 at 14.37.04

These were residential streets, which now have motor traffic filtered out, as Mark describes in his post. This is an almost universal treatment across residential areas in the Netherlands now, but back then, the notion of doing this was evidently completely foreign to this gentleman. These streets were for driving. (These attitudes were reflected…

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Human innovation to feed the world

Filed under: Climate change and gardening, Community Gardening, Gardening techniques, Grow your own food, Local Food, This and that — Leave a comment
13/12/2013

I recently attended a lecture by Sir Gordon Conway, the gist of which I hope to reflect on and share soon- its all about ‘sustainable intensification’ of food growing as the way forward to tackle global hunger…fascinating projects and innovations from around the world point the way. Here’s an article that captures the approach.

canwefeedtheworld's avatarOne Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?

ID-10088298Professor Sir Gordon Conway and Katy Wilson highlight the need for innovative solutions to food insecurity

Article originally appeared on The Economist Insights

With global population expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 the world faces unprecedented demands on its resources – not least water, biodiversity and land. Add to this the likely impact of climate change, and the challenge of feeding a world where some 870 million people are already chronically hungry appears a difficult one.

Governments, NGOs, academia and the private sector are searching for long-term sustainable solutions to global food insecurity and future resource scarcity.  One solution, first proposed by Jules Pretty in the 1990s, and backed by the Montpellier Panel, a high-level group of European and African experts in the fields of agriculture, trade, policy, and global development, is sustainable intensification. At its heart sustainable intensification is about producing more food, more efficiently.

Achieving global…

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