Faced with plastic engulfing the planet and my feeble question at the garden centre as to why plants can't be put in small cardboard, decay-gradually-into-the-Earth type pots being met with a shrug and a 'people won't pay for an alternative to plastic' response, I was reduced to near tears of wonder at the sight of this...
A small maize plant - two actually, in a recycled cardboard pot as sold by our local bio store. All the plants in the shop were happily growing in their snug little pots, and yes, they were probably more expensive than yr average plastic 'godet' but I reckon most people might be willing to pay an extra few pennies to know they weren't adding to the local 'let's pretend we're going to recycle your plastic' landfill/burning operation, and that they might be supporting a company interested in protecting what environment we have left...
After watching many permaculture/food forest Youtubes I've taken to building 'Buttes' or mounds of compost, hay, leaves, grass cuttings, etc as an experiment to see what likes being encased in a mulch rather than exposed to climatic ravages in bare earth - and it is bare here currently, far too little rain. Our neighbour farmers are busy ploughing with vast tractors, watering in wind and sun at the hottest part of the day and perhaps wondering why everything dries out so much - could be to do with the fact that there are virtually no hedges left... in fact, I was reading about an environmental activist living in a shed on a remote Scottish island who recalls his first stirrings of nature-demise incredulity were as a kid when he heard that farmers were paid to dig out hedges.
There is the sight of small (very small) movement here - the local councils awarding grants to farmers to put hedges back in... we live and learn, possibly.
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