Last chance to sow ?

Hi,
With storms looming I am taking a chance to sow green manure (tares, mustard, field beans) on the last of my bare ground. Hopefully the rain tomorrow will water it in nicely and the weather wont be too cold too soon to let it sprout!

Douglas Carswell

So Douglas Carswell (our MP) has gone public and made it clear that he is one of the dwindling band of ostriches who deny climate change. Its shocking that someone who we expected (hoped!) would be clear thinking and intelligent can subscribe to this kind of unscientific Ludditeism. 

Here in Essex we will suffer more than most as the land sinks and the sea level rises.  It would be nice to imagine that someone in the  corridors of power was fighting our corner against the other low lying areas competing for government money to improve their sea defences!.

Indian summer

Still incredibly warm for the time of year, in the last 10 days i have sown rocket and rape seed outside and they are both coming through.  Broad beans, carrot and feltham first peas also coming through.  The carots and peas will be covered by a cloche before the frosty nights arrive.  Heve planted some self-sown tomato plants in the greenhouse as an experiment.  Will start to experiment with ways to process the quinoa this week (a good crop!) 

lets get political

I guess blogs are a good place to sound off! so, I ill take advantage:  Firat about the issue of formal education for very young children.  The one word I havent heard mentioned is creativity!  The one most usefull skill/talent in life in my experience is the ability to aproach problems creatively and come up with unique solutions.  Play is essential to deceloping creativity and the school system as we have it is not great for developing that part of ourselves.  Forcing formal schooling on very young children will help to kill that developing ability (that children naturally have) at the start of their developement.

Green Fair in Colchester

Working hard to make the Colchester Green Fair a sucess (November 14th 10 till 4 ) we still have space for more stalls and lots to do on the day if you can help for a few minutes.  Our neww wwoofer David arived yesterday so we will be on the roof working on insulating the flat roofs and in the garden for the next few days.

Great meetings and great contacts

I have attended two local partnership meetings recently Essex County Council summit on Mitigating Climate Change and Tendring LSP conference on the Environment.  Both were great for networking (and commiting me to further work!) have started to contact the people I met and hope to be able to input useful stuff.  To date I am on the LSP environment commitee - an interface between the District council and voluntary bodies.  We shal see what turns out oto be useful.  Also have an offer of a display in the library and contacts for the new Tendring Eco Group sub group on community gardens and alotment projects I am part of.
Chris

A new start for a new season

My fist post on our new blog.  The first cold morning of the autumn - almost frosty (but not quite I think!) I hope the runner beans survived.  Lots of seeds planted in the polytunnel and green house to see us through the winter; Japanese salad, spinach, carrot, peas, beetroot, lambs letuice.  Outside have sown rocket, peas, onion seed and sets, carrot (under cloches).  Prepareing to plant trees in the few spaces left, apricot, apple and who knows what else.