The rubbish people give us

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 25 January 2011 in green | 12 comments

Colette from the Permaculture Cottage blog mentioned yesterday that she returned from a visit to see her mum with jam jars, newspaper and “other bits and bobs for recycling”.

We collect “rubbish” from friends and family too – we brought back a box full of trash from visiting my mum & dad in Southport in November, and over the last month or so, we’ve been given all sorts of things to reuse, such as:

• Screw top bottles from our party-hearty neighbour (he uses our glass recycling bin as overflow for his own smaller bin so he’s bringing them around one way or another) – John will use these for his homebrew wine when he finally bottles it up
• Some old (chip board) shelving units from the same neighbour – will become shelving in our garage-ette
• Glass jars from Strowger – he brings some nearly every week, the star – used for my marmalade and lemon curding antics over the weekend
• Egg boxes from John’s mum and John’s brother & sister-in-law
• Plastic food tubs from John’s mum
• Newspapers from John’s dad – old newspapers for starting our woodburner or lining the chicken coop to make it easier to clean
• Wood from John’s dad for burning (although I do save the best bits for making stuff with)
• An old wine rack from John’s dad – which will also be used when John bottles up his wine

I was also going to get a going-to-the-tip kitchen cabinet from our next-door-but-one neighbours (to turn into a cold smoking cabinet) but John’s dad got their first — you win some, you lose some ;)

Preparing for winter

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 27 July 2010 in growing | 1 comment

I claim to be rather disorganised (usually as a bluff for why I haven’t done something I don’t want to do…) but gardening – and more simple life in general – forces you to plan ahead. Despite it being the middle of the summer (in the calendar, if not observably from the weather), I spent most of my gardening time over the weekend thinking about the late autumn, winter and next spring.

I planted on leeks, tended to my many, many winter squash, sowed spring cabbages & attempted my third batch of kale (the first lot got too hot, the second lot got too wet…). I also fretted slightly about where I’m going to plant my garlic when the time comes later in the year – I was hoping to have a good chunk of a bed for it but I’m not sure there will be room. Lack of decent bed space is one of the biggest problems with our garden but I don’t have the time to tend to both our garden and an allotment (if I could get one…) so I’m going to have to keep working around that. I’ve also got mental calendar notes for starting autumn-sowing cauliflower and over-winter lettuce.