Weed of the Week - Creeping Buttercup

This is creeping buttercup. There aren't any flowers in the picture but the flowers look like familiar buttercups.

It's not such a problem in vegetable gardens because it isn't hard to dig out. You've got to dig it up - if you dig it in, it will just regrow. But if it gets in a perennial bed such as a flower bed, or in amongst your asparagus, it can be a nuisance. It spreads by long runners from the parent plant. New plants grow where the runner touches the ground. Each plant grows from one central growing point and I'm told that as long as you remove that, it won't regrow from any roots you leave behind. That's the crucial piece of knowledge that makes creeping buttercup much easier to deal with than other weeds with regenerative roots.

Wear gloves when you're dealing with it, as the sap can cause blisters if it gets on your skin. Apparently medieval beggars used it to raise sores on their feet to get sympathy. It's also poisonous. If it can make the skin of your feet blister, you can imagine that you really don't want it in your mouth, oesophagus, stomach etc. I've heard that it depletes potassium from the soil, and kills neighbouring plants.

Sounds pretty unpleasant doesn't it? But it's not really that tricky to deal with so it's not in the same category as ground elder, for example, or bindweed. As weeds go it's not that evil. But don't forget your gardening gloves.

Tesco and Local Shops

Tesco have bought a site in the village where I live, and I'm not happy about it. One reason is that I think our thriving local shops will be damaged when Tesco moves in.

The local shops and businesses certainly think so. There are "Poynton Against Tesco" posters in most of the local shops and petitions on the counters. And there was a well-attended protest in the village last weekend (I didn't know about it, so I didn't go. I'm on the mailing list now).

Our MP, Sir Nicholas Winterton, agrees. He said:

Another Tesco store will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the local community and, in particular, on the small retail sector. Whilst Tesco’s corporate affairs manager for the North West assures me that Tesco will help bring both jobs and customers back to Poynton, this will surely be at the expense of local independent retailers.

The 2006 all-party parliamentary report "High Street Britain 2015" also agrees. After a detailed examination of the pressures on independent shops, including competition from large supermarket chains, the report concludes that independent newsagents and petrol forecourts are very unlikely to survive and independent convenience stores/grocers are unlikely to survive until 2015.

And the 2005 New Economics Foundation report "Clone Town Britain" stated:

... we are reaching a critical juncture: We can choose to take action that will lead to thriving, diverse, resilient local economies across the UK; or, we can do nothing and condemn ourselves to bland identikit towns dominated by a few bloated retail behemoths.

What do you think? Do large supermarket chains damage local retailers, or is it all hot air?

Today's cartoon from Climate Cartoons.

Roots, Pots, Legs and Bras

We've had a few hard frosts at night and the allotment is transformed. Squash plants deflate like a popped balloon. Runner beans turn black and limp. It's time to tidy up.

Spent plants can be put on the compost heap or dug directly into the ground. Beans in particular do a lot of good because they capture nitrogen from the atmosphere and "fix" it in the ground. You can pay a lot of money in a garden centre for nitrogen-rich fertiliser. Or you can just plant some beans and wait a season.

I'm fuzzy on the science, but I know these curious nodules on the beans' roots are involved (see the photo). The bottom line is - plant beans, dig them into the ground when they're finished, and put brassicas in the same earth next time. Brassicas love the nitrogen.

If you can't remember the order of the 4-crop rotation, try this mnemonic "Roots [point to ground, where roots grow], pots [point to your boots, like plant pots for humans], legs [point to your legs], bras [you can invent your own gesture for this one]". That's the order - roots, pots, legs and bras. Root veg first (like carrots, parsnips etc.), then pots (potatoes), next legs (legumes i.e. beans and peas) and finally bras (brassicas, that's cabbage, sprouts etc). Then you're back to roots again.

Ginger Bread Men

When it comes to keeping kids happy for an afternoon, you can't beat baking. The secret is to let the kids do as much of the process as possible. The other secret is to be very relaxed about the mess, the appearance the finished product, and how long it's all taking. After all the object of the exercise is to have fun for an afternoon, not to produce picture-perfect cookies in a hurry.

We made gingerbread men. The kids did the weighing and measuring, stirring, rolling, cutting and decorating. The only thing they didn't do was putting the baking trays in and out of the oven. They helped me clean up whilst the gingerbread men were baking. And they also did the eating, of course.

Manchester Climate Change Meeting

There's a meeting in Manchester on Thursday 25th October which aims to demystify the science and politics of climate change. Professor Geraint Vaughan of the University of Manchester will be giving a presentation (he was my atmospheric physics lecturer at Aberystwyth back when he was plain old Dr Vaughan), and there will also be talks by Friends of the Earth, Camp for Climate Action, Campaign against Climate Change, Greenpeace, the Green Party and Action for Sustainable Living.

It starts at 7.30pm prompt, it's at the Friends Meeting House (behind the central library). I'll be there so if you're in the area come and say hello.

I Won The Herb Character Competition

One of my favourite blogs, Top Veg, ran a herb character competition for Herb Day, and I entered a rather silly picture of Einstein with green sage leaves for hair (see what I did there - Einstein/Sage?). It won the competition and now I've received my prize - a santolina rosemary.

Thanks Top Veg. It has survived the post just fine. I gave it a drink and primped it a bit and it's looking very perky on my windowsill. I shall overwinter it indoors and plant it out in the spring.

What's Sprouting?

My sister, Steph, dropped off her two kids, TJ and Rebecca, here yesterday and then swanned off to Vienna with her husband for a long weekend. It's not too bad today because my three kids are still at school, but it's going to be crazy on Monday and Tuesday with five kids in the house between ages three and nine.

Ed took our lot to school, and I cleared up the prodigious mess five children had made between getting up and leaving the house at 8:20 whilst TJ and Becca watched a Bagpuss DVD. Then the kids helped me feed Ginger and Fred ("OK Becca, you put the sugar in and then give Fred a stir", made me laugh. If you don't get it, try saying it out loud. And remember I have a slight Liverpool accent).

Then they sowed some cress seeds on kitchen paper, and made some bean sprouts. Becca chose a combination of fenugreek, black eyed peas and mung beans. TJ chose alfalfa, soya beans and green lentils. They spooned their beans into a glass and poured water over them. Then we put them on the windowsill to soak. Tomorrow we'll strain off the water and put them in the sprouter, and by the time their mummy and daddy return they should have a crop of bean sprouts.

Now they're eating yogurt for a mid-morning snack and I'm drinking reheated coffee I didn't have time to finish at breakfast and updating my blog. Expect my posting frequency to go down a little for the next few days. I've got my hands rather full.

Can I Eat Bean Sprouts During Pregnancy?

Someone found this blog by searching google for the phrase "Can I eat bean sprouts during pregnancy". Seems like a funny question, but I suspect it's related to a health scare in Toronto when a number of people were infected with salmonella from eating bean sprouts.

Most people who are infected with salmonella will get over it, although they'll have vomiting and diarrhoea and feel extremely rough. But the very young, the very old, immune compromised people and pregnant women may be more severely affected and can die, so it's not to be taken lightly. Good hygiene that we all know about helps prevent its spread - washing hands, cleaning work surfaces, keeping fresh food refrigerated, cooking meat, eggs and chilled or frozen foods thoroughly etc.

There seems to be no particular reason why bean sprouts would harbour salmonella more than any other food. This isolated case in Canada seems to be a freak, rather than a timely warning that we should all avoid those dangerous killer alfalfa sprouts. The usual advice on salmonella says "Cook foods thoroughly", but that's very confusing. Does it mean we shouldn't eat salad? How about fruit? It's this kind of thing that helps drive people to ready meals and hamburgers because they're scared of eating fresh healthy food like bean sprouts and eggs.

For example, a few years ago seven people in the UK died from legionnaire's disease traced to an arts centre. But of course that doesn't mean arts centres are dangerous. A badly-maintained air conditioning unit was the cause. Similarly, it doesn't seem justified to point the finger at bean sprouts in general just because they were linked to this outbreak in Toronto. Poor food hygeine at some stage must have been the cause. And if that happens again, next time it could strike spinach, or apricots, or watercress, or anything else. When you think about it like this, it seems crazy to avoid bean sprouts.

I'm not a doctor, I'm not a biologist and I'm not the FDA. But I'd say bean sprouts are one of the healthiest things you can eat. If you're pregnant or immune compromised and you'd really rather not risk it, then I respect that. But what are you going to eat instead? Are you going to ask the restaurant to serve your salad without bean sprouts? If the restaurant has poor kitchen hygiene, you could still get sick from the uncooked lettuce and tomatoes. If you are going to opt for a BLT from the sandwich place rather than a salad sandwich with beansprouts, aren't you worried about all the saturated fats, salt, nitrates and so on in the BLT, not to mention that uncooked lettuce and tomato again? I think the salad is the healthier option, even with the bean sprouts. What do you think?

Wild Mushroom Soup Recipe

Wild Mushroom Soup

I didn't collect enough shaggy ink cap mushrooms to make a whole batch of soup, so I stretched them with some shop-bought mushrooms. This recipe works well with bog-standard shop mushrooms, shop-bought exotic mushrooms, or wild mushrooms. But you do need plenty of them. Fry a finely chopped onion and one or two crushed garlic cloves in a little olive oil. Add plenty of chopped mushrooms. They shrink down a lot as they cook, so add more than you think you need. When they mushrooms have darkened and shrunk, cover with milk. Add a bay leaf and simmer for a while. Keep your eye on the pan so the milk doesn't boil over. I left it to simmer very gently whilst I made some soda bread.

When you are almost ready to serve the soup, liquidise about half of it and add the pureed soup back to the chunky soup. I don't like totally smooth mushroom soup, but it's a bit watery just as it is. This step thickens the soup without adding anything gloopy like cornflour. Now taste the soup and add a little sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Add a good slug of cream (or creme fraiche etc.) If you have any Madeira or port knocking about, a slosh of that wouldn't do any harm either. A garnish of finely chopped chives finishes the job. Serve with your soda bread which should be ready about now.

Seed Catalogues

It's that time of year of year again when allotment gardeners sit at home with a hot cup of tea and peruse piles of seed catalogues whilst dreaming happy dreams of all the things they want to grow next season. Seed catalogues are very curious in that they vary widely even though they all do basically the same job. So I thought I'd do a quick rundown of some of the catalogues I have this year, and give them each a "star rating", out of a possible maximum 4 stars.

I have compared the prices for a "standard shopping basket" of a packet each of Ailsa Craig tomato seeds, Enorma runner beans, Partenon courgettes, Little Gem Lettuce, and Early Nantes carrots (I chose the varieties because they are very common and available in almost all catalogues).

The bottom line is - I'm certainly going to be placing an order with the Real Seed Catalogue.

Dobies

*** Great Choice, Great Prices

Dobies is a well-established name in gardening, selling seeds and plants directly through their catalogues. I might have this wrong, but I don't think you can get Dobies seeds in garden centres and shops. Their catalogue is glossy with lots of photographs and detailed descriptions of each variety. Probably because they're so large their prices are very low.

Fruit and Veg Yes
Flowers and ornamentals Yes
Garden Equipment Yes
Plants and seedlings Yes
Online ordering Yes
Standard shopping basket price £7.75 inc. P&P

The Organic Gardening Catalogue

*** Reasonable Prices For Organic Seeds, Especially Good for Books and Equipment

The Organic Gardening Catalogue is a charity, and is the official catalogue of the Garden Organic (HDRA), Europe's leading organic gardening organisation. The catalogue is not glossy but is illustrated with colour photos and detailed descriptions of varieties. It sells organic seeds (and bulbs, sets etc.) and organic gardening equipment such as beneficial insect shelters, organic pest control and so on. It also sells an interesting range of books.

Fruit and Veg Yes
Flowers and ornamentals Yes
Plants and seedlings No
Online ordering Yes
Garden Equipment Yes
Standard shopping basket price £10.52 inc. P&P, but you get a 10% discount if you join Garden Organic which costs £28 for individual membership.

Mr Fothergills

*** Good Choice, Good Prices

Mr Fothergills is another long established name in gardening. Its glossy catalogue has flowers on one side and if you flip it upside down and back to front the veg is on the other side. Lots of colour photographs and descriptions of varieties. They're not cheap, as you'll see from the price of a standard shopping basket. But if you order 5 non-offer items you can order any packet of seeds valued at up to £1.69 for 10p, and if you order 15 items you can order another packet of seeds valued at up to £2 for just 10p.

Fruit and Veg Yes
Flowers and ornamentals Yes
Garden Equipment Yes
Plants and seedlings Yes
Online ordering Yes
Standard shopping basket price £10.44 inc. P&P (Mr Fothergills don't sell Partenon courgettes so I substituted Tosca)

Thompson & Morgan

** Confusing Catalogue, Confusing Offers, Most Expensive

Thompson & Morgan have been supplying seeds since 1855. Like all the other catalogues described so far it is glossy with full colour photos and full descriptions of varieties. The fruit and veg part of the catalogue is arranged unusually - all the patio vegetables are grouped together on a single page, there is a page for salad (except that patio tomatoes aren't on that page), all the tomatoes are together on a tomato page (except for the patio tomatoes which are on the Patio page, and Gardeners Delight tomatoes which are listen on the Salad page), and almost everything else is listed under Kitchen Garden Favourites. You might like this arrangement but I found it confusing and hard to find specific things I wanted. In fact, I couldn't find Enorma runner bean seeds, Ailsa Craig tomato seeds, or Partenon courgette seeds in the catalogue, which is surprising as those are pretty standard. But I did find them on the website. So a low "ease of use" score for T&M. They're quite pricey too, the most expensive "standard basket" of all the catalogues in this review, although they have a confusing array of offers - the catalogue says "2 free packets of seeds", for example, but when I went through the ordering process online I got one free packet. I don't follow it at all.

Fruit and Veg Yes
Flowers and ornamentals Yes
Garden Equipment Yes
Plants and seedlings Yes
Online ordering Yes
Standard shopping basket price £12.14 inc. P&P

Real Seed Catalogue

**** Rare and Heirloom Seeds at Very Good Prices

This is one of my favourites. The Real Seed Catalogue is printed entirely in black ink on non-glossy paper, even the orange cover which is nonetheless very attractive and based on classic 19th century typographical designs. The whole operation is run by Kate and Ben (who have a new baby Josephine) and represents a private collection of rare and heirloom seeds, all non-hybrids (no F1s here). All the expected types of veg are available (tomatoes, lettuces etc.) in interesting and unusual varieties. And they also sell strange and rare things, such as amaranth and mustard greens for the home gardener. They even encourage customers to save their own seeds instead of buying it each year, and provide instructions on how to do so. I think that's extremely cool. Instead of the standard shopping basket, I have picked a typical example of carrots, lettuce etc for the price comparison here, because they only sell unusual varieties. They're surprisingly cheap. So cheap in fact that my shopping basket didn't reach the minimum order of £8 before P&P. I'll just have to buy something else to make up the difference - hmm, what shall I choose...?

Fruit and Veg Yes
Flowers and ornamentals No
Garden Equipment No
Plants and seedlings No
Online ordering Yes
Standard shopping basket price £8.27 inc. P&P (all varieties were substituted as The Real Seed Catalogue only sells unusual and heirloom varieties)

Chiltern Seeds

*** Interesting Selection and Quirky Catalogue

Chiltern Seeds are another unusual seed company who eschew colour photos in their catalogues, in favour of careful descriptions and quirky cartoon illustrations. Like The Real Seed Catalogue, they specialise in rare and heirloom varieties, but unlike TRSC they also sell F1 hybrids. Their prices are comparable to Mr Fothergills and The Organic Gardening Catalogue, and significantly cheaper than Thompson & Morgan.

Fruit and Veg Yes
Flowers and ornamentals Yes
Garden Equipment No
Plants and seedlings No
Online ordering Yes
Standard shopping basket price £10.43 inc. P&P (I substituted Polestar for Enorma runner beans and Nero Di Milano for Partenon courgettes)

D.T.Brown & Co.

**** Cheapest for a Standard Basket of Seeds

D.T.Brown & Co. are approaching their centennial as a seed and bulb supplier. Their non-glossy colour catalogue has far more fruit and veg than flowers (which is what I like to see), and is full of photos and detailed descriptions of varieties. They have a small selection or organic seeds, but most of their seeds are conventionally grown. They are the cheapest catalogue in this review, and if you order 5 packets of seeds you can choose a Centennial Collection for 5p, after 12 items you can pick a free packet worth up to £1.50, and if you order 20 items you get another Centennial Collection for 5p, 25 items and that's another free packet worth up to £2.50. Not to be sniffed at.

Fruit and Veg Yes
Flowers and ornamentals Yes
Garden Equipment Yes
Plants and seedlings Yes
Online ordering Yes
Standard shopping basket price £7.50 inc. P&P (I substituted Defender for Partenon courgettes)

Video - Spoof Tesco Ad

I loved this video by Friends of the Earth. It's voiced by Alexei Sayle and it's spoofing Tesco's ads, but with a rather different message.

Planting Garlic

I planted five rows of garlic yesterday, thanks to the garlic fairy. The picture shows two rows of garlic laid out at the correct spacing, and waiting to be planted. (By the way, the correct terminology is that you sow seeds and you plant plants, but sometimes the two terms are used interchangeably).

Spacing is very important in vegetable and fruit gardening. If you plant (or sow) things too close together, plants crash into each other as they grow. Their leaves compete for light, their roots compete for water and nutrients, and instead of getting twice as many plants per row, you get less than half-size plants and your yield is poorer. On the other hand, if you space things too widely, not only will you get a lower yield per row than if you squeezed a few more plants in, but you leave lots of bare earth exposed between the plants, which will surely be exploited by weeds. Even if you can keep the weeds off the exposed areas, exposed bare soil gets eroded which you certainly don't want.

Remember, the soil is the key. If you attend to the soil and neglect the plants, you'll do OK. But if you attend the plants and neglect the soil, you'll have a disaster.

Garlic, apparently, should be grown in rows 12" apart (you can see how I've marked my rows with stakes and twine). Then you plant the garlic directly under the twine, 6" apart. Or if you want to be really space efficient you can plant the large outer cloves from each bulb 6" apart and plant the smaller inner cloves 4" apart. To be honest, I don't go along with a ruler measuring them, but I've a good idea what 6" or 4" looks like and I guesstimate. I also had three cloves of something called elephant garlic. The cloves were flipping huge, so I guess the bulbs must be downright enormous. The leaflet that came with them said to plant those 12" apart, so I did.

I'll weed these by hand for a while. I don't want a thick covering of weeds crowding out my lovely garlic. But if I use a hoe I might damage the garlic just underneath the soil. That's where the stakes and twine come in handy again - I can see where the plants should be, anything growing anywhere else is probably a weed (although plants do sometimes wander about a bit. I suppose rain and critters transport the seeds short distances). I'll leave the stakes and twine in place until the garlic starts coming up and I can see where the rows are, then I'll use them somewhere else in the garden. Another approach is to sow fast-growing seed, such as radishes, along the same line as the new plants. A green line of radishes quickly springs up showing you where to hoe and where to avoid. Within a few weeks you can take your crop of radishes and by then your emerging seedlings should be clearly visible.

Weed of the Week - Ground Elder

There are actually quite a few weeds in this photo - the eagle-eyed will be able to spot bindweed, creeping buttercup, couch grass and dock. But the most prominent weed here is ground elder.

Ground elder is a flipping nuisance due to two bad habits. The first is its habit of making a tangled mass of thick but brittle roots just below the soil surface. It is quite easy to remove huge quantities of these (unless it is growing amongst established plants, in which case it is an absolute bugger), but very difficult to remove every last piece. You will always leave bits of ground elder root behind. This leads us to its second bad habit - it can quickly and easily regenerate from even a tiny piece of root. In combination, these two habits make ground elder very hard to eradicate.

It seems to defy mulches, horticultural plastic, old carpet etc. It just pushes straight through, or find its way around the edges. I've never tried weedkiller on it but it has a reputation for shrugging herbicides off. The stuff does have the most astonishing will to live. I sometimes wish my crops showed such strength of character.

Ground elder was deliberately introduced to Britain as a food. I would dearly like to go back in time, find the person who did this (a Roman apparently), and beat him up. Apparently the young leaves can be boiled as spinach. I can't say I've ever tried it. In my opinion almost any leaves can be boiled as spinach, but whether it's worth the bother is another question. I must admit that there's a slight appeal in the thought of eating it as revenge. Ground elder has also been used as a remedy for gout, and in some places it is known as goutweed. It was introduced to Northern Europe in the middle ages by monks, who suffered from gout terribly. I'm not sure why mediaeval monks were particularly susceptible to gout, which is commonly associated with overindulgence in alcohol and rich foods, but there you are.

It doesn't spread as fast as some other weeds, such as bindweed, and so I am satisfied to dig it out of new beds and hoe it ruthlessly off established beds when I see it. I am especially ruthless near my carrots. It's a member of the same family and so can host carrot root fly. Of course, the flies don't do any harm to the flaming ground elder, but they make delicate lace doilies out of my carrots. This method is the same as advocated by Bob Flowerdew, who says you should go out every day and pull off every leaf of ground elder you see. Sooner or later you will exhaust the rootstock. Good luck.

My verdict of ground elder - it's a pest but there are worse things. Maybe I will try eating it. And whilst it flourishes on my allotment, at least I have nothing to fear from gout.

Visited by the Garlic Fairy

I've been visited by the garlic fairy - a box labelled "Garlic Lover's Growing Pack" arrived today containing 10 bulbs of 7 varieties of garlic for planting. It also contains instructions for planting and growing, and a recipe leaflet. It comes from The Garlic Farm, but I didn't order it. I suspect my dad. Own up now. Are you the garlic fairy? Thanks anyway, whoever it was.

I'm going to have to be more organised than usual and clearly label each variety as I plant them. I usually know what sort of veg I've planted where (although not always), but I don't always note which variety. All these types of garlic are supposed to have different characteristics, and I'd like to compare them to decide which grew best, which tastes best, and which I'd like to plant again in future.

'Shrooming

I picked some more shaggy ink cap mushrooms from the field at the end of the road. I also found three other types of mushroom, but I could only identify one.

The one I'm pretty sure of is a Little Japanese Umbrella (shown top left). It's supposed to be edible but they're so titchy it's hardly worth the bother. They're also really pretty (my blurry photo doesn't do it justice) so I'm happy just to admire them where they are.

I also saw lots of these little white mushrooms (centre right). They were perhaps a couple of inches across, pure white caps and gills, the gills running down the stem like a chanterelle. Again, my photo is poor - the gills are quite widely spaced and they fork. Some of the caps had a smooth round edge but some had a "toothed" appearance where the cap had begun to decay leaving the gills sticking out. Since I didn't know what they were I left them alone.

The last type of mushroom I saw (bottom left) might have been almost any type of large brown mushroom. They were so degraded it was hard to tell. They were the largest mushrooms I saw, about four inches across. There were a fair few of these, and they must have been pretty substantial before they started to rot away. So if they are edible they'd be very worthwhile to collect.

It's not very satisfactory standing in a field trying to flick through a large book comparing pictures without any clue how to narrow down the options. A few times I thought I had a candidate only to learn that the type of mushroom pictured only occurs in birch forests in the spring, not in fields in the autumn. Or a picture that looked very similar in the book turned out to be a super-magnified close-up of a mushroom that is millimetres across, not a few inches like the mushroom I am looking at.

So if any more knowledgeable readers can suggest what these mushrooms might be, if I spot them again I'll try to compare them to that suggestion. I know you can't identify mushrooms by a picture only, so I won't do anything stupid like eat them just on the basis of some stranger on the internet saying "They look like chicken-of-the-woods to me". But it would give me a point to start. At the moment I am floundering.

I've Got A Real Ginger Beer Plant

I think I mentioned that the ginger beer plant I made wasn't a real ginger beer plant after all. The real deal is a complex symbiotic organism made up of a yeast and a bacillus (and a bunch of other microorganisms) all living together in a culture. You can't make one, any more than you can make a radish from scratch. You have to get a radish seed from someone who grew radishes themselves. And you have to get a ginger beer plant from someone who already has one.

Well mine arrived in the post this morning, sent by a lovely man in Ulster who I contacted via the internet. When it arrived in a ziploc bag inside a jiffy bag, it looked like pale yellow beads of jelly. It smelled fresh and slightly gingery. I made it up according to his instructions, by mixing it with water, sugar and ginger in a loosely-capped coffee jar. Since my yeast culture ginger beer plant is called Ginger, I have named this one Fred.

I will let you know how Fred progresses. I can't wait to make him into ginger beer, and I'm keen to compare ginger beer made this way, with the yeast culture I already have.

Blog Action Day

When TV shows and movies want to refer to the environment and climate change, they use big global images - icebergs calving, pandas in china, rainforests, satellite shots of hurricanes, floods in Bangladesh, drought in Africa, and so on. It's easy, then, to feel that the environment is somewhere else. And that saving the planet is such a big task it's going to take big power and big money to do it. It's easy to feel helpless and overwhelmed.

But that's exactly the wrong response, because it's exactly the wrong way to think about the environment. Look outside your window. What you see is the environment. If it's a street filled with cars, it's the environment. If it's a rain-filled sky, it's the environment. Look back inside, at the room you are in. That's the environment. The environment isn't hills with wind farms on them. It's where you live.

What did you see? Was it a pleasant environment or an unpleasant one? If unpleasant, how could it be made nicer? If some trees were planted in the street and if 80% of the cars vanished, replaced by a smaller number of buses, trams, maybe some bicycles, would that be a better environment? Does your room contain healthy plants, attractive pictures, are the objects in the room made of mostly natural materials or mostly man-made, is there plenty of natural light or is it gloomy, or lit by electric lights? What can you do to make your own immediate environment better?

I'd like people to open their eyes and look at the environment they live in. I'd like them to open their minds and realise the effect their own choices have on that environment, for good and for bad. And I'd like them to use their imagination and find ways to make the environment better for themselves and everyone else. I'd like them to stop sleepwalking through their lives, blind to the possibilities and the power they have. Wake up! Look around you. Do one thing today to make your environment better.

Today is Blog Action Day, an international initiative of bloggers, with the aim of uniting thousands of blogging voices, talking about one issue for one day - the environment. This was my contribution.

Tesco in Poynton

Tesco is proposing to build a new supermarket right here in Poynton. We're lucky to be well served by a good range of local shops and businesses already. For example I get a lot of my fruit and veg from Norman, the greengrocer and fishmonger who also sells frozen game. There are a couple of other greengrocers in the village as well. And there is a wonderful butcher on Chester Road who does marvellous free range chickens, gorgeous bacon and delicious Lincolnshire sausages. Again, he's not the only butcher in the village. There is a large Co-Op convenience store, there's a small Somerfield, a Netto, a terrific health food store, several bakers, a charming little bookstore, a thriving post office, several newsagents, chemists, a great antique shop, and a really excellent hardware shop that stocks everything imaginable, even though it seems far to small to have what you need. There is nothing important you can get in Tesco that you can't already get in Poynton. But if a large chain supermarket comes to Poynton, all of those local shops may go.

As well as the threat to our local businesses, a new large supermarket will bring more traffic through Poynton. Sadly, Poynton is already traffic hell as anyone who has visited me will agree. The village is nothing but a giant crossroads, with branching side-streets that don't join up. All traffic in the village is funneled through the junction at the village centre. And the frequent roadworks we seem to have snarl everything up unimaginably. The last thing we need is to attract more vehicles here.

There are already 12 branches of Tescos within 7 miles of Poynton. It worries me that one in every eight pounds British people spend, they spend in Tesco. I am alarmed that Tesco are expanding their range of services to include selling houses, selling insurance, internet services, pharmacy services etc. What is next? Funerals, weddings, a range of cars from a Tesco Value family hatchback model to a Tesco Finest sportscar? Will we live in Tesco houses full of Tesco furniture, and get on a Tesco bus to go to work at Tesco and earn money that we can use to pay off our Tesco loan that we got to spend in Tesco. I exaggerate of course. But the flip side of this flippancy is that I value the diversity and real choice provided by small local businesses, and I fear the uniformity a Tesco monopoly is bringing.

It's not just Tesco. I object to all the big 4 supermarkets for a variety of inethical, unfair and environmentally-damaging business practices. I can see that this issue right here on my doorstep will preoccupy my thoughts, so I am sure I will blog more about just what's wrong with big supermarkets over the coming months. But for anyone impatient to find out more, there is lots of information on the following websites:

• Tescopoly
• Asdawatch
• Friends of the Earth

Many local shops here in Poynton have signs in the windows and petitions against the proposal. There has been a demonstration in the village against Tesco, although I didn't know about it so I didn't go. I've asked to be added to the mailing list so I can keep up to date about future events.

Climate Cartoon

I forgot to post a cartoon this morning so here it is. As usual it comes from the terribly talented Marc Hudson and Marc Roberts at Climate Cartoons. Thanks, chaps. Click on the image to enlarge.

Are 4x4s Evil?

I noticed a story over on Eco Street blog about a group who have deflated the tyres of thousands of 4x4s as a protest against climate change. Because everybody knows that 4x4 drivers are the bad guys. Why is that?

The argument goes that 4x4s consume more petrol than smaller cars and so release more carbon and contribute more to climate change. Is that true? Well, it depends on what you are comparing with what. Some modern 4x4s are actually more fuel efficient than some older smaller cars. So if the protesters were targeting fuel-inefficient cars they would probably attack N-reg Ford Escorts and leave the 2005/6/7 4x4s alone.

But, the anti-4x4 people argue, 4x4s are not necessary in cities, they're not needed for the school run, they're just conspicuous consumption. OK, fair point. But some people do really need to drive a 4x4. Fellow blogger Stonehead, for example, lives on a croft in the Scottish highlands. A Prius wouldn't make it up the lane, much less pull a trailer with a pig in it. But he occasionally gets stick for driving a 4x4. I also know people who have huge customised wheelchairs, and need a large car to fit the chair in. Some of them find a 4x4 fits the bill. A Golf simply wouldn't.

Conversely I know people who have little cars which would escape the wrath of the activists, but who could easily fulfil all their transport needs by walking, cycling and using public transport. And I also know paid-up eco hippies who drive around town in an ancient VW camper van. It certainly looks the part, but it's guzzling fuel as it goes. Funny sort of eco hippy if you ask me, who cares more about their image than about the environment.

So if the activists could really target people guilty of conspicuous consumption, why don't they attack Bentleys and Porsches, pimped Fiestas and those little 2-seater MGs that probably have a great mpg and inspire envy even in total non-petrol-heads like me?

It's just all too simplistic. If these activists could have their wish come true, maybe they would wish all 4x4s would vanish off the roads forever. But that would leave farmers, disabled people and maybe other groups I haven't thought of, in an impossible position, probably without having much impact at all on climate change. A better wish might be to wish that it would suddenly become very unfashionable to drive an over-specified car. It would be considered terribly crass to take your kids to school in a 4x4 unless you live on the side of a mountain. And everyone would be proud of their 2-seaters and their 2-doors and their hybrids, or even better if they could get rid of the car and cycle everywhere instead, that would be très chic. Stonehead would still have his Land Rover. He needs it after all and doesn't give a damn about what's fashionable anyway. But most of the Chelsea tractors would vanish when they no longer won cachet for their owners, replaced by little sports cars that are more fuel efficient and probably heaps more fun to drive anyway.

So if we could agree that's what we really want - for people to voluntarily choose to drive the lowest-impact vehicle they can - how can we bring it about? Well certainly not by deflating the tyres of thousands of 4x4s. We need to think this through. The future of the human race is at stake and we can't rely on sound bites and quick-and-dirty analysis to figure out what to do. What is actually causing the damage? Is it vehicles whose drivetrain sends power to all four wheels simultaneously? Or is it humans whose carbon footprint is outsize? I hope this post is not misunderstood. I am not trying to defend 4x4s in particular. I am trying to attack simplistic approaches to environmental activism. Because I care very deeply about environmental activism and it p*sses me off when we're made to look stupid by our own side.

Change Begins At Home Update

It's just over a week since I launched the Change Begins at Home award, and gave it to three bloggers who don't tell others what to do, they just get on and do it themselves.

I've been watching where it has spread since then, and I am surprised and delighted to see the big ripples made by this small pebble. Forty-four blogs have been nominated so far for the award, most of them I had never heard of before. As a result I have discovered some great gardening blogs I hadn't known about (such as the Green-Fingered Photographer), some sustainability blogs (including Simple Living in a Complex Society), and some frugal blogs (like A Frugal Living Blog by a Frugal Guy). But I didn't expect to see vegetarian and vegan cooking blogs feature, such as Vivacious Vegan). That was a nice surprise. The award also seems to be spreading in the Latter Day Saints community (amongst blogs like Dream A Little More), which would probably never have come to my attention otherwise.

I deliberately left the wording of the award open ended, in the hope that it would spread to places I would never normally go myself. I don't have to agree with all the beliefs of the people who get the award. I don't even agree with all the beliefs of the blogs I link to from this page. I treasure my friends at Lesbian Gardens, but I'm not one of their number. I enjoy reading about how Carlalynne's Christian faith has led her on a journey to simplify her life, because my own faith is central to my "greenness" as it is central to every other part of my life. But she and I differ in many of the ways we interpret and apply that same faith. It's groovy. I respect anyone who lives their life thoughtfully, even if that takes them to very different places than me. It's the sleepwalkers-through-life that I want to take by the shoulders and give them a good shaking.

Bean Bags

Hot water bottles are great for keeping your toes cosy in bed at night, but they're not ideal for cuddling, or applying heat to achey body parts, because they're rather stiff and hard. Bean bags are better because you can make them any shape and they mould to your body. I like long snakey ones that can wrap around your neck and shoulders, and squarish ones that you can hug to your belly or back. You heat them up in the microwave and they're blissful.

Eleanor made herself a bean bag whilst she's been off school. She decided she wanted to make a dog. We cut out a piece of dog-coloured fabric using a sheet of A4 paper as a template (just a plain rectangle - I decided making it dog-shaped was a bit too advanced, but we added features to make it look dog-ish). We folded it in half, and Ellie sewed up two sides with the sewing machine. We turned it inside out and added dog features using scraps of felt and fabric pens, then we filled it up with beans. We used aduki beans; I buy dried beans in bulk for cooking and sprouting so we had plenty. It took about half a pound of dried beans to fill a bag this size. I also added some dried lavender from Steph's garden. Ellie slip-stitched it closed (and I went over the seams to make sure there were no holes big enough for beans to escape through), and it was finished.

Thirty seconds in the microwave heats up the bag so it's cosily warm but not too hot to hold against your skin. It also releases the lavender scent. The bag keeps its temperature for half an hour to an hour, so it's not as good a bedwarmer as a hot water bottle, but it's a cosy cuddle for aches and pains, or poorly children at bedtime.

ZapRoot Episode 6

Online Videos by Veoh.com

A few weeks ago I commented on the launch of ZapRoot, a weekly short video of green news on the web, aimed at young people. It comes out every Wednesday and I don't know how it's going down with its target demographic, but I find it rather fluffy and content-free.

This weeks' edition is interesting though, with a focus on greenwashing. Apparently the Russians have built a new bomb which they claim is good for the environment. General Motors have built a hybrid Yukon (big 4x4-type van-thing) and are including discreet images of wind turbines in the publicity shots for it. And Starbucks have settled their legal action against the Ethiopian government. There's some bleeped-out profanity so if you really don't like that sort of thing, don't watch.

Each ZapRoot video is just about two minutes long so I'll keep my eye on it and see how it shakes down. But for my money, the Wiggly Wigglers podcasts are much more entertaining and useful.

A Rare Month for Boys

I collect first lines of books. It's not a physical collection you understand; I don't rip them out and keep them somewhere. But I can tell you my favourite opening lines of books. My favourite of all is the first line of The Crow Road by Iain Banks:

It was the day my grandmother exploded.

How cool is that? How could you not read on?

Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca also starts very well:

Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.

I like the rest of those books as well, not just their first lines, and have re-read them many times. Sometimes though a book fails to meet the promise of its first line. For example, I think Dickens' famous A Tale of Two Cities has a fantastic first line:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

and a wonderful last line:

It is a far, far better thing that I do...

but none of the lines in between are nearly as good. You may think me a philistine, but that's my opinion.

At the moment I am re-reading Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, as I do once a year without fail. Its opening line is:

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.

Which I think is a seriously yummy first line. No surprise, really, Ray Bradbury can truly write. Some science fiction authors rely on inventive story lines (few rely on in-depth characterisation) but Bradbury can write. In Something Wicked he has a Jack Kerouac-beat-thing going, but tamed and set to a definite purpose. His purpose is to explore the nature of age and aging, of youth and growing up and old age. It's a coming of age novel in which the young heroes come to terms with change, and so does the old hero. It's hard to say which of them finds the process more difficult. There's also a seriously creepy evil carnival, a humble town library which becomes increasingly important as the novel progresses, and provides some of the best protection and ammunition against the bad guys (Buffy the Vampire Slayer owes this book a major debt), a scary train, a terrifying hot-air balloon. It also has without a doubt the best chapter of any book ever. I reproduce it here in its entirety:

I hope I'm whetting your appetite. If you haven't read this book you really should.

And you should read it now, in October, when the leaves are falling and the nights close in early and it's not quite cold enough for gloves and hats but cold enough to make your bare fingers tingle and ears ache. And if there's a carnival that visits your area around this time of year, so much the better.

Beekeepers' Meeting

Last night I went to a Stockport Bee Keepers' Association meeting. Boy, am I hungover this morning. Those beekeepers really know how to party.

Not really.

But it was a very interesting meeting, with a presentation by the Regional Bee Inspector, and a chance to catch up with my beekeeping pals. I'm also signed up for the beginners' beekeeping course which starts next March. I tried to sign up for this last year, but I was too late, it was already full. I'm hoping it will be more detailed than the 2 day intensive course I attended in May.

So how are my bees doing? Not too bad. They're still alive and seem to be fine, but I can't really inspect them properly. If you remember they had been in a type of hive called a WBC, but these are difficult to move so when we fetched them from Wales to here we transferred them into a type of hive called a National. I was all set to transfer them back to their WBCs when they went berserk and attacked my neighbour (and his dog, and the postman, and another neighbour...) so I had to move them quickly to an out apiary. Not long after that we went on holiday for a fortnight and one thing and another, they're still in the National hives now.

The problem is that WBC hives have ten frames in a box, but National hives have 11. If I'd known they would be in the Nationals for so long, I would have put blanking frames in
(that's a frame with no wax foundation or comb or anything, it's solid wood and just fills the gap where a frame would go). But I didn't, so the frames weren't spaced to exactly the "bee space" - the magic space which is big enough for bees to move around but narrow enough that they won't build comb in it. And now the bees have build "wild comb" in the gaps. Instead of having neat rows of comb that I can easily remove to inspect the brood, extract the honey etc, all the frames are fused together and I can't do anything.

It can be fixed. I don't know exactly how but my bee gurus assure me it's fixable. But not until the spring when the weather warms up again and I can manipulate the bees without killing them by exposing them to cold. The task now is to make sure the bees can survive the winter, by figuring out how much honey stores they have (no easy task when you can't inspect the frames) and feeding them if necessary, and treating them for disease if necessary.

Recipe - Cheesey Number Sixes

... or sevens, threes, thirty-fives, or anything else.

This is the recipe I use to make cheese straws in the shape of numbers for birthday parties. Kids like them, the dough is easy to roll and cut with novelty cookie cutters, and being a wholefood recipe it's even moderately healthy, for party food.

Cheesey Number Sixes

Rub 2oz butter into 4oz self-raising wholemeal flour with some salt and a pinch of mustard powder. When it is the texture of breadcrumbs, add 3oz grated mature cheese, and a beaten egg. Bring it together with your hands into a lump of dough. Roll out and cut into numbers with shaped pastry cutters (we got a set of 99 pastry cutters from Lakeland and it's one of the best things we ever bought, I use them all the time), or make a paper template and cut around that with a pointed knife, or cut long strips with a knife and shape them into numbers. Place them on a greased baking tray and bake in a moderate oven until they're golden (about 10 minutes).

Party Preparations

I'm sure every family has its own traditions for celebrating birthdays and so on. One of ours is that the children decorate a cake for the birthday person, by covering a cheap bought cake with buttercream icing and then studding it with sweets. The result is usually inedibly sweet and gooey (and this year bordering on biological warfare since the decorator has chickenpox - but everyone in the family has now had it so we don't care). The tradition is more about the fun of decorating the cake than any pleasure which can be derived from eating it. I've never analysed it deeply before, but now I come to think of it, it serves a nice purpose in providing a special activity for the non-birthday children, so they don't feel jealous and left out. And it teaches them the joy of giving as well as receiving, something we sacrifice a great part of when cards, gifts, party food etc. are all bought instead of made.

Another of our birthday traditions is making cheese straws in the shape of a number. So Eleanor helped me make cheesey number sixes for Sam's party tea. The kids even insist we make these for adult birthdays so we have made cheesey thirty-mumbles for Ed and me, and cheesey mumblety-mumbles for nana and grandad in the past. I'll have to find the cutter in the shape of a zero next year, for the first time. And the year after. And the year after that. And the year after that, Oh God. Change the subject.

Ed will try to get home from work a bit earlier than usual this evening, and we'll all eat sanwiches, party ring biscuits, Pringles potato chips (Sam's choice) and cheesey sixes. Then we'll dim the lights and light the candles on Sam's birthday cake, and Sam will blow them all out whilst we sing Happy Birthday To You. I'll take some photos and share them with you later.

Sam is 6

Today is Sam's 6th birthday. It's a bit rough having a postal strike on your birthday when you're only 6, but he didn't seem to mind. Most of our relatives had already made arrangements so he wouldn't miss out on his cards and presents. Sam got what we wanted for his birthday (plastic tat basically, but it makes him happy), and we'll have a party tea when he gets home from school.

Ellie is still off school with chickenpox, so she and I are having a nice day preparing the party. We'll do some baking and cake decorating, and blow up some balloons.

The Swallows Are Gone

The swallows are gone. So are the housemartins. I didn't notice exactly when it happened, but I was standing at the end of the garden yesterday, looking over the field behind the house, when it occurred to me I hadn't seen any for a while.

They'll be back next summer. In the meantime I shall look out for the winter visitors, the ducks, geese, swans and redwings, and huge noisy flocks of starlings. But it is a significant moment. The swallows are gone. Summer is gone, as much as we had a summer this year. Winter is on its way. I wonder what it will bring.

Weed of the Week - Bindweed

Bindweed is evil. If ginger beer plants are proof of the existence of God, bindweed is proof of the devil. The roots can penetrate 15 feet (5 metres) underground. The stems can grow several inches in a day. The seeds can lie dormant in the soil for 30 years before germinating. And it binds around everything really tightly, choking your precious plants, and making it very tricky to unravel and remove. Evil, evil weed.

I'm trying the "keep chopping its head off and sooner or later it will give up" approach, but I have to admit I'm not winning. I'm tempted to go the Roundup route - but if I do, I won't spray it everywhere. I've heard that you should gather up as much of the bindweed as you can and stuff it into a thick plastic bag, like a builder's rubble bag or a large bucket with a lid, then spray the Roundup into the bag or bucket. That way, the weedkiller only goes on the plant you want to kill, not everywhere else. You also get enough weedkiller onto the plant to kill it if you do it this way. A single bindweed specimen can be quite large, and just because you zap one stem, you might not apply enough poison to kill the whole thing. Even so it may take more than one application. Anyway, I haven't used any weedkiller on the allotment at all, I'm just tempted to by the bindweed.

I've read that it has some medicinal uses. It certainly raises blood-pressure in gardeners, so if you're suffering from hypotension it could be useful I suppose. The long stems can be woven together and made into a ligature to throttle neighbouring gardeners who tolerate the damn stuff and allow it to invade your plot. You can put it in weed tea. You can put anything in weed tea, it all rots so it's perfectly safe. But don't put bindweed on your compost heap. It will just grow there, and mock you.

Bindweed - it's evil. Can anyone defend it?

Brilliant Jam Jars Idea

Kethry over at Urbania to Stoneheads came up with a brilliant idea for labelling jam jars - paint a square of blackboard paint on them and label them in chalk. How cool is that? It looks really smart but also home-made, and it's very practical and reusable. I bet I could beg some blackboard paint on Freecycle - there must be people who bought some for a project and then kept half a tin full of leftover paint in the shed.

A Step Too Far?

We each have our own line in the sand, green lifestyle changes we're not yet willing to make. Some people just aren't willing to give up their private jet, their mansion and their champagne. Others live in straw bale houses as part of a self-sufficient collective, and feel wracked with guilt because they just can't give up their South American coffee in exchange for home-grown roasted-dandelion-and-chicory-root-coffee-substitute (and who can blame them?)

Earlier in the week Beth left a comment on the Tetrapaks and the Environment post saying that she carries water everywhere in a canteen to avoid buying bottled water and drinks when she's out and about. It's a great idea, but my first reaction was "Oh, I couldn't be bothered doing that".

Why is that a step too far for me? It requires a degree of organisation, for a start. I'm still struggling to take reusable shopping bags with me when I go out, and sometimes forget. But I know from experience that it will become second nature eventually, I'm already much better at remembering than a month ago. Another reason against carrying water is that it's heavy! My handbag already weighs a ton (mostly because of all the rubbish in it). I don't fancy carrying a heavy canteen of water everywhere as well. But I think the main reason is that I really don't buy bottled drinks often at all. It's just once in a blue moon I realise I'm terribly thirsty when I'm out, and I'll buy a drink, maybe three or four times a year. Carrying a heavy canteen of water with me 365 days a year seems like quite a burden compared to the benefit.

But maybe I should drink more water. We're all told it's good for our health. If I carried water with me, perhaps I'd remember to drink more (if only to lighten the damn thing). I could also offer drinks to the kids. Maybe I rarely buy drinks for myself, but I buy them for the kids more often. Perhaps carrying water would result in a significant reduction in waste for our family overall.

What would make me start carrying water for sure? I suppose if someone bought me a nice canteen for Christmas (I'm not dropping hints by the way, just musing) I would make an effort to carry it for a while. If I found it worthwhile I would continue carrying it. I would also be motivated if someone in the family was diagnosed with a condition that made dehydration dangerous for them. And I'd be motivated if all the bottled drinks suddenly vanished from the shops, if they were banned for example, or if they became ten times more expensive.

So will I start carrying water everywhere with me? I don't know. What was more interesting to me was the process of analysing the first moment in which I was invited to take a step for the environment that felt like a step too far.

What is a step too far for you? Is there anything you've been asked to do for the planet that you just weren't willing to do? Is there anything you feel you should really do for the environment, and feel guilty that you don't? What would it take to make you change your mind?

Cartoon from Climate Cartoons. Click on the panel to make it bigger.

Allotment Dreams

I went to the allotment yesterday. I didn't do anything exciting, just weeding. I weeded the onions, garlic and broad bean beds. The crops aren't showing above the surface of the ground yet, but it's important whilst weeding to remember they're just under the surface, and not to disturb them. Ed cleared a new bed. I'll put some more beans in there soon.

It's seed catalogue time of year. I sat in bed last night and read the Chiltern Seeds veg catalogue and the Dobies catalogue cover to cover. Dobies has better pictures but Chiltern Seeds was funnier. The trouble is, I now want far more seeds than I have the space to raise (or the time to tend or the mouths to feed). Then I fell asleep and had weird dreams about an allotment that went from horizon to horizon and I was running round trying to keep it all watered and weeded like some demented Playstation game.

Blog Awards

I've been given two blog awards recently. Frankie at Veg Plot kindly awarded me the Egel Nest Blog Award. And Joanna at Joanna's Food awarded me the Nice Matters award.

It's great to get these awards. It feels good to know that other bloggers like what I do here, and it helps to build up the connections between the blogging community.

It inspired me to start an award of my own - the "Change begins at home" award. This is given to bloggers who live what they preach, who try to make the changes in their own lives that they would like to see in the world.

The award rules are:

1. Nominate three bloggers who epitomise "Change begins at home"

2. Link back to the person who nominated you, and link back to this post

3. When you receive the award, you may display the "Change begins at home" button on your blog. If you, like, you can use the following handy html. But if it terrifies you, just save the picture to your own hard drive and do what you usually do to put images on your blog:

<a href="http://bean-sprouts.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-awards.html"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117804424978225714" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDgdBm_BbGfvtKp9HOiX7NKNCd9BRrf9QDbNx5A2EZtKppIiWZ4nDhiel7cHDReGj4-j2ZZ_ccHOaojPVa5_yZ7BzErdF5ve-Wd0gyG73cCLGyn7lkzEIGFYcJ0lnVf3SSgffk/s200/leaf+and+text.jpg" border="0" /></a>

That's it! To get the ball rolling, I'd like to nominate the following bloggers as the very first recipients of this prestigious award:

• Veg Plot


• Joanna's Food, and


• Chile Chews

More Chickenpox

Now Ellie has chickenpox. When I saw the spots and told her she had it, she made a fist and said "Yes!"

Tom is very annoyed that he has no chance of getting chickenpox and having a week off school. He's already had it, a few summers ago, and he had to miss Cropredy because of it. He likes Cropredy, but he doesn't like school much. He thinks this is unfair.

Why Do Eco-Friendly Products Cost More?

In a conversation on the Facebook group for Everyday Trash blog, somebody asked "Why does the eco-friendly product always cost more than the regular version?"

It doesn't always cost more. The eco friendly alternative to disposable kitchen cleaning wipes, for example, costs less (a bottle of white vinegar and a washable cloth). A bicycle costs less than a car. But marketers don't have to put "Buy this! It's eco friendly!" on those things to sell them, because "Buy this! It's cheap!" trumps the eco-card.

But when the product is more expensive than the alternative, that's when marketers need to work at persuading the consumer to buy it. Why should I buy those expensive clothes rather than these cheaper ones? Ah, because they're organic. Why should I buy this expensive coffee? Ah, because it's fair trade.

The questioner asked why products touted as eco-friendly are often more expensive. Actually it's the other way around. Expensive products are often labelled as eco friendly.

Real Ginger Beer Plant

I've lost the cable that connects the camera to the computer again, so I can't show you the cute pictures of the kids drinking ginger beer. They loved it, and I had to ration them or they would have drunk the whole lot at once.

Whilst surfing the web looking for ginger beer links, I found something very surprising. Apparently I haven't made a ginger beer plant at all. What I've made is a ginger beer yeast culture. It's very nice, but it's not the real deal.

The authentic traditional ginger beer plant (pictured) is a gelatinous symbiotic organism consisting of a yeast and a bacillus. You can't just make one, you have to get it from someone who already has one. Where did the first one come from? And who figured out that you could use it to make ginger beer?

I find myself fascinated by this weird compound organism that can make delicious spicy drinks. It's like the bit in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy where someone says that the babel fish (which can translate any language if you drop it in your ear) is proof of God, because how could anything so fantastically useful have evolved by accident? Or the Eddie Izzard sketch where he expresses amazement that bees make honey. He says "Do earwigs make chutney? Do spiders make gravy?".

I'm trying to get my hands on an authentic ginger beer plant, so I can compare the ginger beer made that way with the yeast culture method.