“We like what you’ve done with the place,” say the frogs and toads
One of the things we’ve done over the past year is develop, by necessity as much as for any other reason, a woodpile at the bottom of the back garden. The hedging we inherited was rampantly overgrown, and there was only so much shredding we could do. The branches and sticks that remained after the blitzing of the hedges were piled up high, tucked away, and left to rot down as they surely will, albeit over a period of years. Our neighbour has since remarked that she used to get a lot of frogs and toads in her garden, but this year hasn’t seen any. The reason why, we think, is because they’ve all moved next door, to us!
tags: composting, frogs, gardening, nature, toad, woodpilesToo much meat, too much nitrogen
The human race is responsible for too much nitrogen being produced, which threatens the environment in a number of different ways, all potentially devastating. The primary causes, according to this very interesting BBC article, are the overconsumption of meat and chemical fertilisers used in intensive farming.
Policies to reduce nitrates in water have banned wintertime spreading of farm manures across much of Europe’s farmland. The focus on springtime manure spreading has intensified peak ammonia emissions, giving a new threat to biodiversity and air quality. Most organic gardeners in the West, as yet unrestrained by this governmental stupidity, continue to be well aware that manure is best applied from October through to December. By doing so, its breakdown is much slower and emissions from its decay dramatically reduced when compared to applications from March onwards.
tags: carbon, composting, emissions, environment, global warming, intensive farming, manure, nitrogen, toxicity
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