The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Gardens => Topic started by: Fleecewife on May 06, 2019, 05:57:59 pm
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Every gardening programme seems to have an investigation into the use and recycling/re-use of plastic in the garden. They talk of flower pots which are not recyclable but should be. A larger concern to me is the use of netting and weed control fabrics, their disposal and the reality of re-using them.
I find that ground cover black polythene, the mypex type woven material and spun weed control/ground cover fabric (which conveniently doesn't say what it's spun from) do not realistically last more than a season outdoors. Fleece either gets ripped to shreds or covered in pests. I have tried putting it through the washing machine but it didn't come out very clean.
I am certainly guilty of using plastic pots, modules and seed trays. I scrub them for re-use of they are unbroken, and that's a chore and a half, usually done in the winter with frozen fingers. Any unusable pots just go into the bin, which in effect means landfill. Ripped netting and other stuff that comes in rolls, also has to go in the bin if it's beyond re-use, as there is no alternative for disposal. netting is of special concern as it is likely to enmesh birds' legs or get into the ocean even.
So what do you do?
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Plastic, in what-ever form, is such an amazing invention/product. Oil-derived plastics are going to be produced and remain in use for yonks yet: we are (aren't we ?) totally plastic dependent already.
Strip the plastics out of one's car and what do you have ? - a Land Rover Defender :D . Actually even a LR D would be a skeleton vehicle without plastic.
So what do I do?
I consider the options and, if I can't find a practical alternative, I go for the plastic option without mental turmoil. Where possible, I try to use recycled/recyclable plastic, but that option is not always available.
The trick will be the on-going development and adoption of plastics that can be more readily recycled.
Why so much packaged food still comes in black trays (which are rejected here for recycling) is beyond my ken though!
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Pots and trays can be terracotta or wood. Most of mine are plastic and where I have use wooden trays and troughs I normally add a layer of plastic for water retention.
It's been brought home to me over the weekend: I made a new veg bed out of cardboard, bits of old wood and previous occupants compost... it dates back over 40 years and had a trail of plastic excavated through its layers. I'm the beginning there was terrecotta pots and the only plastic was ruminants of a few toys. Later there were polystyrene and plastic pot reminants and plant tags. I'm sure it was added accidentally but over the decades concntrated down. I'd like to get rid of it from my garden, not sure of practicallities. Using card board and wood chips for mulch. My husband won't have landscaping mulch on the fields after growing strawberries 20 odd years ago and there's still reminants around.
Packaging of fruit and veg in shops every week makes me so sad. I'd BAN it tomorrow.
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As it goes i was also thinking about this the other day. If gov wasn't so useless then they could/should just ban all non-recyclable packaging with 1 yr notice and all non-biodegradebale packaging (except for ally and glass) within 3-4 yrs. There are already alternatives from simply cardboard, waxed paper, cellophane and the like. Aluminium is very recyclable. But then you need the courage to say the same for all the other fibres like polyester, nylon etc and go back to jute, cotton, hessian, silk, linen, bamboo and wool.
The political will isn't there to upset trade partners and big business back-handers.
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As it goes i was also thinking about this the other day. If gov wasn't so useless then they could/should just ban all non-recyclable packaging with 1 yr notice and all non-biodegradebale packaging (except for ally and glass) within 3-4 yrs. There are already alternatives from simply cardboard, waxed paper, cellophane and the like. Aluminium is very recyclable. But then you need the courage to say the same for all the other fibres like polyester, nylon etc and go back to jute, cotton, hessian, silk, linen, bamboo and wool.
The political will isn't there to upset trade partners and big business back-handers.
Actually cotton is pretty evil stuff, in spite of being natural. Huge amounts of water are needed to grow and process cotton (I believe it's the most water-heavy crop grown), large quantities of artificial fertilisers are used to grow it, it has to be bleached before dyeing, and so on.
I think there is a HUGE potential for the use of wool. Wool grows on sheep whether you intend it to or not, and has to be shorn anyway, wool is self regenerating as long as we continue to eat sheep meat, and it comes mainly in natural white so no bleaching. In spite of what the naysayers propound, sheep are easy on the environment, at least when they are grazed extensively and not kept indoors and grain fed. Wool can be worn in cool and hot climates, in fine suiting materials and other lightweight clothing, as well as cosier fabric needed for colder areas.
We certainly used to cope with shopping with nothing more that paper bags and Mum's string bag which she carried in her handbag, then dangled from her bicycle handlebars when full. No need for single use plastic trays, bags etc.
I think one of the big difficulties with simply proclaiming that all non-recyclable plastics are banned from sale with a year's notice (which would be great), is how lazy we have become as a nation. I don't think that applies to all countries, but in Britain it is the case. Remembering to take your own bags to the shops with you, when for a few pennies you can buy plastic bags. Having to wash your vegetables and prepare your salads before you eat, when you can just buy food all prepared and sold in plastic - grated cheese ??? for heaven's sake :poo: how lazy is that?
There was a time when we were all told we had to use public transport and not own cars, because we were about to reach 'peak oil', so the internal combustion engine was not sustainable. But no-one would do that, we have to have our cars as we have become so used to driving everywhere, and travelling large distances, so now we run them on biofuel, grown at the expense of crops, when we can't feed the world.
It's all part of the bigger picture, which has culminated in Climate Change, and making our Earth filthy and polluted. :rant: :furious: :rant: :furious: :rant: Don't let me get started on the huge ring of junk left encircling our planet from our use of Space.
Back to the garden, I do use terracotta pots for flowers etc, but I don't find them easy to use for veg growing, nor using wooden trays, unless as you say Steph Hen you use plastic to line them. Also I can no longer carry a pile of heavy terracotta pots, whereas plastic pots are lightweight. Although I use plastic pots, I haven't actually bought any for at least 20 years, when I stocked up with a bulk buy, still there to refresh the washed pots when some are broken.
What did gardeners of the past use to keep weeds down? Just hard work presumably, but now when plastic sheeting is available for peanuts, we take the easy way, not surprisingly.
The garden is as good a place to begin as any :garden: (I hope that's a metal watering can emoji man is using ;D )
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I have a feeling all non essential should be massively taxed/banned/phased out.
For example: the drinks industry. Just drink water (like . If there were public fountains/stand pipes and anything else is a real luxury/treat; read Christmas/birthday or save up for a bottle of pop or wine for a treat. How much packaging, landfill, obesity, land and chemicals and C for growing the corn, soil erosion, sugar, fruit, transport, refrigeration, rotten kids teeth, etc, would this do away with? Or keep it because fruit shoots and cans of relentless taste nice..?
See the cut flower industry - I'd draw a line through, or at least aim to phase out International trade in cut flowers - the land, resources, chemicals, machines, refrigeration, transportation, packaging and cellophane, to look absolutely beautiful for a week and then go in the compost... We do not need this. Seem harsh? Unrealistic? Socialist?
Get this, if we keep going, we're f$#~%d, there is no harsher than that. Change will not be: "so now we refrigerate to 5'C instead of 3'C" Or using corn based cellophane to wrap the flowers - These are resources we do not have.
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I'm totally with you Steph Hen. When I see targets such as 'carbon emissions will be reduced to 50% by 2050, or whatever, I do despair. The damage by then will be irreversible. We have seen how those in charge drag their feet until they reach the deadline and beyond, and that will happen with climate change too. With a certain major political leader denying that climate change is real, and plenty of folk actually believe him, we are dragging that large proportion of the population behind us like a huge drag net.
I have noticed that it is older folk like me, and younger folk like my grandchildren who are for vast changes to be made, and quickly, whereas my childrens' generation don't seem to have the time or inclination to take notice. Or maybe that's my family.
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I have noticed that it is older folk like me, and younger folk like my grandchildren who are for vast changes to be made, and quickly, whereas my childrens' generation don't seem to have the time or inclination to take notice. Or maybe that's my family.
I reckon you aren't far wrong Fleecewife. Of course there are so many folk between the youngest generation and older folk who are obviously worried about climate warming/environmental issues also and doing things and making a noise about it, but ... there are so many folk in the tweeny generations who have no conception of a life without private transport or fridges for example (just 2 things many now take for granted). I have a personal memory of the time when most folk in the UK did not own a car (much-less two or three!) and managed without a fridge. Goodness me, how was life possible !??
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I have tried moving away from plastics by using a soil blocker to start seeds and recently i am using wooden raised beds.
Some things are unavoidable because i use hard plastics for my hydroponic systems. Hard plastics do last a long time but when they are broken i don't think they can be recycled. I hope this is off set by the water cycling and reuse used by the hydro systems and the bio nutrients i use from manure, worm castings, comfrey and nettle.
In the past i used plastic planters to grow strawberries because terracotta is more expensive.
Maybe more research should be done into this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pestalotiopsis_microspora
The problem i have found with public transport is it is too expensive. It costs £4 to go across town so it is cheaper to use my car. I live in a commuting town and to go to London by train costs £5k and up a year to commute.
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A lot is to do with the way gov and others compartmentalise money and taxes without any correlated thinking and the rampant consumerism promoted for 'globalisation' and the nonsense of believing that GDP must go up. It only has to due to gov borrowing on vanity projects and because of their above failures to reduce the value of the outstanding loans. We owe nearly £30K per head of population in national debt. It costs the price of HS2 per year to service. Or to put it another way to feather the nests of 'their' friends.
We outsource expensive projects because it's cheaper to have made abroad - with no consideration for the costs of supporting our unemployed because of it, the increase in borrowing to pay for it or the loss of technical skills by not doing it. Oh, and because eu rules state we have to.
We encourage a culture of 'busy lives' so folk have to rush everywhere getting little done in the process and stressing themselves as well as modern ideas of 'just in time' sourcing so we have fleets of logistics HGV's clogging roads. A bit more laid back, slower speed is cheaper to power, more use of goods trains, heck even use the canals...
Folk wonder about the death of the high street.. simply why pay high fuel charges and high parking charges and battle through traffic and then shop or only one or two days. Most of us remember the Saturday shopping and market and making sure you had the basics 'cos sunday and wednesday afternoons were closed.
I was in Prague a few years back. They made a decision after the velvet revolution not to knock Prague about to make car-parks so if you do find a parking spot then ya don't move it unless you really have to. the trams are cheap and frequent as are the trains...so folk use them. Heck it'd probably be worth gov making all public transport free (well fee in the sense you pay via taxes instead) and a simple frequent service (assuming they have a brain to organise it when there's a risk of falling leaves). Then folk don'lt bother to use cars because we stop making bypasses and widening roads and anyway all cars have a 60mph speed limiter.
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Pgkevet how do we fix it?
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Pgkevet how do we fix it?
Two choices
a) vote me in as dictator
or
b) ban take-away coffee and smart phones, half the number of MP's , reduce the house of Lords to 100 peers and make all politicians financially responsible for their decisions.
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Great, so you have a plan. I’ll vote for you. Please would you mind standing?
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Interesting series of programmes on radio 4 some time ago. CEO of Riverford Organics would prefer to use plastic boxes for distribution as they last longer and are cheaper and less politics than cardboard! Also the three of the programme was that all plastic is recyclable it's just that the money men can't see the market. Btw I'm not advocating the use of plastic. Just worry sometimes when these things become trendy, we lose sight of the real facts
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Some of the big recycling ideas end with micro plastic beads, which are then turned into something else. Then we see that one of the big dangers is....micro plastics which are getting into birds and animals guts, via the oceans. These micro plastics are often found on beaches. I can't help wandering how much of the recycled beads cut out the middle man and just goes straight into the oceans, following accidental spills etc. One of the experimental uses for micro plastics is road surfaces - the least bit of erosion of the road and the micro plastics would reach the ocean by way of the drainage system.
Am I imagining things here or is that a possibility?
It's more the single use then toss plastics which are the worst offenders, D&C. If the veg boxes are being washed and reused many times, then finally recycled, like my flower pots once someone invents a way to make the black ones visible to the recycling robots, that is a good option, as you say. It is often mentioned that the method of recycling of plastics should be built into the manufacturing process, so articles are produced which can be recycled readily, even if that means relevant R&D to develop both sides of the equation; manufacture and recycling.
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Recycling sounds nice and cozy and even when it is far better than making a new batch of that product there are often environmental considerations that are conveniently overlooked (or could have been avoided).
Glass recycling apparently often gets sent abroad since the manual labour of sorting glass is cheaper there - if we ignore the impact of transport.
Paper recycling means getting rid of the inks and binders and huge water usage - part solvable by avoiding glossy multipage brochures and vibrant colour printing.
Plastics aren't always as inert as folk think and can adsorb substances and leach substances.
The real answer is to reduce the usage of all these things and just stop buying stuff we really don't need and make what we do need last.
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We've just about finished tidying our vegetable garden and have been surprised by the amount of plastic bits in the soil. Essentially these are string, cling film and plant labels. The compost heap contained the same, plus three kitchen knives. We've also discovered a 'dump' behind the barn, which dates back to the 80's, so was the product of the pre-rennovation French owners. That has bottle tops, water bottles, tablet blister packs, bags and all manner of other plastic stuff- the cans have rusted away but not the stainless razor blades. Going to take a long time to clear it out as at some time it was buried in soil.
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I’ve kinda believed what I’ve been fed: small changes everyone can make will add up, recycling and technology will do the rest. But I think problems are more fundamental; we’re used to having so much stuff and food and things and services.
I would grow our own veg, but am mostly limited by time and our expectation of availability.
I read that Scottish widows was set up to ensure church ministers wives would have a reasonable life should their husbands pass away before them. This is what insurance should be about: providing a safety net. But now it’s an industry and customers who shout the loudest get the best deal and companies entice you with offers. Those who don’t shout or switch feel fleeced. Couldn’t a computer program work out the statically necessary quote and do away with all the rest? Get these people doing something useful instead?
Shops with rafts of mostly plastic kids toys, others full pet gimmicks. It all seems so useless and futile.
I have hundreds of trees to plant, but no time to do it without taking time off work which I can’t afford either.
Garden centres full plants: is it wrong to suggest we go back to the ‘Dug for Victory’ (or no dig if preferred?)
All these sad obese people, every day knowing they should try to eat less and better but tempted beyond control and using more resources, spending their money. The poor soil, mental health, the oceans...
...I’m feeling so despondent about it now. I overheard to two women talking yesterday, they felt the same. Story after story, both gone vegan; pollution from feedlots in America, Teflon, the oceans, plastic, whales, overpopulation... One was almost crying and I knew there was nothing I could add.
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Even sadder are silly situations such as here. I usually have a vast excess of apples and some other fruits but nowhere local to give it away 'cos everyone else has enough and no central collection point because no-one would trust the donors not to have boobytrapped the fruit. I managed to give away most of my tomato and cucumber surplus last year to workers at the local gym but must have dumped several cwt of apples and stopped growing my usual excesses of veggies. It'd be no sweat to stick in an extra 50 or 100 runnerbeans fr'instance but I'd just be throwing it away.This winter i severely pruned all my orchard apple trees (as opposed to my espaliers) to open up the orchard and frankly to reduce the chuck-away. They were too tall for easy picking and even if I could give them away modern folk are too fussy about fallers. We've become spoilt and self-centred and greedy.
The sheer fact that soemone came up with the idea of monetising water in bottles really says it all. When we were kids there were fountains and troughs everywhere, the corona lorry delivered to viallges and we got a few pennis back on the empties - washed and reused was recycling - not crushing and melting.
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The Green Gym movement is so obvious but people still prefer to fork out thousands to join the latest and most fashionable indoor gym. It's THE place to be seen ::) , ostentatious exercise, bulging muscles, a total waste of food-turned-to-energy, then whooshed out to the atmosphere via the power hungry air conditioning unit. Our Green Gym is our own smallholding, where all the work and exercise we do is to achieve an end, to produce something, including nearly all the food we eat, which in turn gives us the energy to do the work. That's not wasteful. We plant and grow-on loads of trees which help to suck up our stray carbon output, our sheep eat grass so don't emit so much methane as indoor artificially fed ruminants. Other people's green gyms might be allotments, looking after woodlands, clearing up litter by roadsides and on beaches - all using that energy to do work. The Green Gym doesn't seem to have been promoted much, and it's often older folk with spare time on their hands who take up the opportunity.
Don't be despondent Steph Hen - the situation is desperate but I am putting my faith in doing the small things we can, and in the rising power and influence of the young folk today. Gaia is doing her best to give us all a good shake-up with storms and flooding, earthquakes and mudslides, surely we must all take notice - not everyone in the world can be so stupid as to deny what's happening.
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There is a new type of plastic made from cornstarch it is genuinely bio degradable but is not suitable for all plastic replacement because of that very reason
You can make your own pots but I don't know how long they will last, .see the link
https://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-Biodegradable-Plastic/ (https://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-Biodegradable-Plastic/)
I'm using my bottomless seed growing tubes , most are now in their ninth or tenth year , in winter I wash & sterilise them & th holding trays for the next seasons sowings .
All the are made from solvent weldable 40 mm waste pipe carefully cut to 54 mm lenghts with a roundel of old 10 mm thick gym mat pushed down in to the bottom which has been punched with a 3 mm hole for drainage. I have also cut some 74 mm x 50 dia tubes for bigger plants .
Being small and parallel round tube it's a doddle to push the plant upwards with a bit of broom stick or a dedicated pusher to get the plug of plant & root out the smooth bore tube and slip it in a simple pre -made hole .
They also use far less seed compost that any other plant pots . I think I've got the optimal size too as the seeds stay in the same pot from being sown till planted out .
They will be good for the next 30 or so years if they are kept out of sunlight when not being used .
The roundels being made of a genuine rubber foam will crumble & decay & can be replaced with a bio degradable PLA plastic printed on my 3D printer when needed ..
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I am scared of the corn starch plastic because my son is allergic to corn, even traces and after its been processed into other things.
A question I like to ask people when we're on the topic is "as a percetage how much of what we do now do you think needs to change?" The answers are around 70-90%.
Cloddopper, your pipes sound good. I remembered yesterday that in the past I've used loo rolls and also dcardboard boxes for seeds and they do alright.
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There is a simple tool that the you can use to make plant pots out of newspapers.
My mate Paul made one out of wood .
It consists of a dumpy roller and a cup that you push the loaded roller into , it folds the bottom up nicely …
So long as you ensure that the top edge is below the surface of the soil when planting everything will be Ok …… leave it above the ground and it will act like a wick and dry out the soil & the plant in short order .
There might be one or two on the likes of eBay .
Don't worry about British news paper the inks do not have heavy metals contents these days and they are not toxic either .