Live Simply April
Grow your own Salads, Vegetables, Fruit and Herbs
Help the Poor
· Donate to the Parish Walk Against Hunger and Walk for Kiveton Food Bank in Lent
Sponsor Fr Andy https://walk.cafod.org.uk/fundraising/cafod-walk-for-hunger2023
· Buy Rainforest Alliance certified food with the logo including tea, coffee, palm oil, flowers, fruit, nuts, herbs and spices. The Rainforest Alliance is an international non-profit organization. They are an alliance whose aims are to protect forests, improve the livelihoods of farmers and forest communities, promote their human rights, and help them mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis.For more information https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/
Help the Environment
· Make a Bug hotel to attract insects to your garden.
· Don’t use pesticides or at least restrict their use.
· Use peat free compost - Peatlands store carbon more effectively than trees. Miracle Grow peat free compost is readily available.
· Report Fly Tipping. Use the Rotherham council online form to report fly tipping, remember if they don’t know about it they can’t remove it! https://www.rotherham.gov.uk/xfp/form/183
· Join an environment volunteer group eg The Conservation Volunteers who have a local group. Contact Hannah Darcel, phone 01302 388 883 mobile: 07825 342189
Grow your own Salads, Vegetables, Fruit and Herbs
Growing your own food is very satisfying, it is good for the environment as it saves on food miles, it is good for your physical and mental health and it’s much cheaper too.
· Guide to growing vegetables for beginners
Growing in a small space
Many things can be grown in pots, or in a small patch in the garden, or in between the plants in garden borders.
· Growing vegetables in a small space
· Vegetables can be grown in containers eg. sugar snap peas, french beans, tomatoes, rainbow chard, beetroot https://www.rhs.org.uk/vegetables/containers
· Many vegetables have beautiful leaves and flowers and can be grown in flower borders eg purple kale, emerald kale(use the leaves in autumn and the side shoots in spring), swiss chard, runner beans, french beans, lettuce eg. red salad bowl, green salad bowl.
· Fruit bushes, small fruit trees and rhubarb can be grown in flower borders too
No need to dig
The traditional way of growing vegetables involves lots of digging; however modern thinking is that this is not necessary.
No time
· Eat your weeds; many weeds are edible, so turn weeding into harvesting!!
Eg. chickweed, dandelion, hairy bittercress, goosegrass, and nettles are all edible https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2020/04/edible-garden-weeds/
· Many garden flowers are edible eg. pansies, English and French marigolds (not African) and fuchsias https://www.ruralsprout.com/edible-flowers/ https://gardenerspath.com/plants/flowers/fuchsias-edible/
· Turn a walk into a foraging trip for food. (Wild garlic is growing now and it is delicious)
No Patience
Sprout lentils, beans and seeds on the window sill in 1 – 4 days, they are extremely nutritious and packed with vitamins, minerals and fibre.
Compost Making
Turn grass clippings, hedge trimming, prunings and annual weeds into compost. Compost is a wonderful soil improver and a natural fertiliser; spread a 1-2in layer over the soil in the garden.
Cold composting
There are many ways of making compost, some are very complicated and need a lot of work but the simplest method is cold composting. Take a compost bin, place it on the soil and add garden waste, remember to keep the ratio of green to brown 1:3. The brown consists of dead dry leaves, twigs, paper, saw dust from untreated lumber and straw. The green consists of garden trimmings, manure, grass clippings etc. The most frequently asked question is whether you should turn the compost regularly or not. The answer is that it does not matter; it just takes longer if you don’t turn it.
Buy a compost bin at https://getcomposting.com/en-gb/composters/
Worm composting
Worm composting makes use of kitchen scraps; it can be made in a special two compartment bin with a tap or in a single bin with holes in the bottom. Place the bin in a semi shaded area out of direct sunshine. https://theurbanworm.co.uk/wormup/