What is the Greenest Christmas Tree Option?

This is a dilemma faced by so many of us coming up to Christmas. Is it best to have an artificial tree that can be pulled out year after year, or a real tree? In the UK 8 million Christmas trees are sold during the Christmas season and the number of real trees is growing year on year. Can this be good?

Christmas trees are grown in the UK as a sustainable crop. Approximately 40 million trees are grown in the UK absorbing 50,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Provided you are able to buy from a local grower this has to be good news.

Another alternative is a pot grown tree. We have one of these at Muddy Carrot HQ. We bought it 10 years ago and had it in the house over Christmas, it was small but perfectly formed. After Christmas time we all took turns in digging a hole and planted it within view of our window so we still enjoy it now.

It is now large and gorgeous. It has withstood the harsh storms that so many trees have struggled to establish themselves against, and we still love it and light it up every year. It somehow connects our Christmases. OK this is not practical solution for all, and we could not bring it in year on year. We do often have an indoor tree as well, but we love our live Christmas tree.

How green the solution you choose depends not just on the care with which you source but equally on the care with which you dispose of the tree after Christmas. 

Official figures show that most trees go into landfill at the end of the festive season and yet they can so easily be recycled. They are ideally suited to composting and wood chipping that could provide nutrients for depleted soil.

Most councils offer a tree recycling service and have the capability of turning your lovely tree into valuable compost. So this Christmas when you are thinking what tree to get think also about how you intend to dispose of it. It would be a great way to start 2013 on a green note…

Well Done Rosewood Farm on #SBS win!

Theo Paphitis of Dragon's Den has recently selected Rosewood Farm  as a winner of his 'Small Business Sunday', a weekly initiative on Twitter to support small businesses.  We feel this is very well deserved.  They produce an excellent range of meat and strive to do this in as environmentally friendly a way as possible for which they were awarded the Think Green Business of the Year award in 2011.

Green Roofs and Heavy Rain

Did you notice the green roof on the shipping container garden office on George Clarke's Amazing Spaces? (great up-cycling, by the way...)

Some of you may have noticed the sedum roof on our house here at Muddy Carrot HQ. Looks good, I think you'll agree, but is there any more to it than that? A lot of effort to go to perhaps, so there must be more logic to it than mere aesthetics?

It's made up of an absorbent substrate which we planted with 4,000 assorted sedum and alpine plug plants that we grew in the polytunnels here. Now, four years on, the plugs are getting knitted together to create a living carpet which changes colour with the seasons and will ultimately help the building blend in with its surroundings.

But the recent heavy rainfall has brought home another benefit of green roofs - recognised in Germany where something like one in ten new builds in built-up areas includes a green roof. That benefit is rainwater runoff attenuation. Underneath the planting substrate is an egg-box like structure that provides thousands of little rainwater reservoirs to sustain the plants through dry periods. Above that is a membrane followed by the planting material which itself is absorbent (it's made of little pellets of aerated brick material) plus of course the plants' roots also absorb a certain amount of moisture. So from a dry state there are three ways in which rainwater is held before it finds its way to the gutters and downpipes.

Although this house is surrounded by fields so flooding isn't a problem, where green roofs really come into their own is in heavily built up areas. The abundance of non-absorbent surfaces such as concrete, tiles and tarmac exacerbate the effects of heavy rain, but this can be slowed down by absorbing the water of an initial downpour so it can trickle away slowly over time. Where better to do this than above our heads on rooftops, making good use of otherwise inaccessible areas?

November Snow in Dorset

Saturday was a pleasant enough day; it had been dry for a while so I was able to give the lawn at Muddy Carrot HQ its last mow before winter.  That evening we went to watch the fireworks over Lyme Bay and enjoy a bonfire on Lyme Regis beach, appreciating the clear night sky with just a gentle breeze - not too cold.



Then Sunday dawned.  It had rained quite heavily overnight, and as the grey light dawned the noisy spatter of rain softened yet the drops were getting bigger and falling more slowly. Yuk - sleet.  But within minutes the sleet got whiter and thicker and started to settle.  It was hard to believe yet within less than an hour there were over two inches of snow, and still it came!
 

Wasting no time, the children donned hats, gloves and waterproofs and were straight out there making snow angels and rolling big snowballs to make lumpy people and animals.  The sun even came out for a couple of hours - it was like being in a ski chalet!  Our Angora goats came outside to explore, seeming a little nonplussed by this turn of events.

 Then it was all over as quickly as it started.  By tea time we'd had rain, and all that was left was a few patches of slush in the shady corners.  To quote the cook from Nanny McPhee, "there'll be snow in August next!"

Mud, Mud, glorious Mud!

We've had some great entries to our this months mud competition.  Here are a few of the highlights of the October Competition...

Pigs being part of the local soil

Pigs have proved popular with their muddy antics, let's face it you can't have a muddy photo competition without featuring some pigs.  Peter Bryant sent us a cracking image of his pigs enjoying a bit of mud and Carole Williams sent a  spectacular photo of her Pedigree Tamworth Pig, Spartacus, smiling happily as he enjoys a lovely mud bath!  You could meet this wonderful character by attending one of The Husbandry School's fantastic courses in Devon.

Pumpkin Season

Being Halloween we could hardly miss out on these knobbly (though not so muddy) pumpkins sent in by Paul Woodmin.  Lovely photo, I hope they got put to some good use!

The Big Dig

Thank you Hester Jones for this picture taken at Vale Farm north London as part of The Big Dig -  of this lovely white dog  who volunteered to help dig; getting just the tips of his paws mucky.  We love his total involvement helping to push the fork in!!  A really good effort and in aid of a really good cause, bringing clean water to thousands in rural Malawi.

Festive Fun

Mud and festivals seem to go together. Sarah shared this picture of her legs when she got back from Download festival this year and removed her socks - that was one muddy festival!

You may need longer wellies next year.

Why are Ash Trees being imported to UK anyway?

TV news is now reporting that, due to the discovery of Chalara Fraxinea virus (commonly known as ash dieback) in the UK, imports of Ash trees will be prohibited from Monday.  The fungal disease was first found in trees imported from Holland in November last year.  Why the long wait?  Shouldn't this discovery have led to an immediate lock down on imports of any vulnerable tree species?  Australia seems to manage to protect its borders pretty effectively so I'd have thought a small island nation like ours shouldn't find it difficult to do the same in these circumstances.

This disease could be a serious concern to our 80 million ash trees.   This king of firewoods is such an established native of this country that readily self-seeds and grows away so rapidly it's hard to understand why we need to import saplings started in a different country and climate.  It's accepted wisdom that plants will establish better if they're germinated and start their life in the same environment and climate as that in which they'll spend the rest of their lives, and it makes environmental sense.

When we planted 5 acres of mixed native woodland at Muddy Carrot HQ in February 2011 the trees came as bare root stock from a supplier barely 20 miles away.  Of the 2,000 or so trees we planted about 40% were Ash, intended to be coppiced for firewood in the fullness of time so our lives could be lower impact.  They've spent the last two growing seasons getting their roots down, and from next year we expect to see some decent top growth.  I just hope and pray that as a nation so affected by Dutch elm disease in the latter part of last century, we'll act quickly and decisively in the face of this new threat.

If you are concerned about any tree near you you can check the symptoms against http://www.forestry.gov.uk/chalara .

Man Made Shed

We love Kevin McCloud at Muddy Carrot!

Kevin McCloud carries off the combination of design, style and up-cycling with such aplomb.  His new series,  Man Made Home sums up so much of what Muddy Carrot stands for, too.  Low impact living does not have to be without beauty, or comfort for that matter.   His eye for detail allows him to build his very own Grand Design “shed” based on simple, low impact but elegant principles.

His new hideaway is based, like Muddy Carrot HQ, in the South West, tucked away in an idyllic woodland with its own stream.  With our love of all things eco-friendly, and having built our own eco home just 4 years ago, this series has been a must-view in our home.  We've marveled at his glass making, his use of local green wood  (in his case - within walking distance) and adore his amazing tractor chair (could it go into production?)  And well done to the ladies of the Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers and the wonderful work they did in converting the raw Alpaca fibre into a luxurious bath robe.  

But boy we see a real future for his poo-powered cooking & heating.  Doesn't that make so much sense?  It makes you realise how wasteful we are as a society when we pay a fortune to have gas extracted and pumped to our houses at high environmental impact, at the same time as paying more to have our poo removed (bonkers).  There are already some fantastic projects using anaerobic digestion like Owen Yeatman based on a farm in Dorset.  This farm can produce enough electricity to supply 450 homes.  Enough said!