Eco Worrier - Times Online - WBLG

22 Reasons To Grow Your Own Rocket

1/ It’s an aphrodisiac. During Roman times, when it grew in Mediterranean regions, it was considered the perfect ingredient to give your sex life a boost.

2/ You don’t need a garden. A window box, or even something smaller, like the plastic packaging container that you get strawberries in, will do. Throw some stones or old wine corks in the bottom and add some compost.

3/ It doesn’t need much attention. You sprinkle seeds on wet compost, then sprinkle some more compost over the top. Water again, and you’re off. Once well established you can abandon it for weeks on end and it will manage fine. For more detailed instructions, see this guide in Gardener’s World.

4/ You don’t need to worry about soil type. Rocket grows well in most soils, so you can avoid all the effort of pH testing kits and working out whether you’re dealing with a clay or sandy patch.

5/ It grows like a weed. And it self seeds so if you plant it in your garden, you’ll find patches of it cropping up all over the place.

6/ You won’t be bound by a rigorous watering schedule. Only when the seedlings first appear, you should water every day or so, unless it rains. Later on, rocket won't need excessive watering; it is used to Mediterranean climes. Although in the height of summer, watering helps to stop it running to seed (this is when seed or flower heads form, so the plant no longer concentrates on producing leaves - it has reached the end of its growing life)

7/ It’s good for you. Especially if you minimize the time between picking it and eating it, which is easy if it’s growing metres from your kitchen. Fresh rocket leaves contain iron and vitamin C.

8/ You don’t have to be limited to salads. You can cook it, treating it the same as spinach.

9/ It’s hardy and keeps on growing all winter. Especially wild rocket, which is tougher than salad rocket. Mine is taking over a patch in my front garden, where I sowed some seeds, over a year ago.

10/ Slugs and snails don’t seem to like it. Not as much as other salad crops anyway. To anyone who has witnessed the destruction of tender seedlings or suffered the loss of their favourite plant, this is a big attraction.

11/ It doesn’t need space. It’s not fussy about being crowded in a bed like asparagus, or likely to take up too much room like courgette plants.

12/ Bagged rocket from the supermarket is a rip-off. Say you bought a £2 bag of rocket once a week from May until September, that would cost you £46. One packet of organic rocket seeds costs £1.49.

13/ You can make your own pesto. Either in a food blender, or do what I do and bash up some pine kernals, then add garlic, salt and roughly chopped rocket and grind it in a large pestle and mortar, or in a mixing bowl with a rolling pin. Add olive oil and lots of grated parmesan. It’ll keep for a few weeks, sealed in a jam jar in the fridge. For a more accurate recipe, see here.

14/ It makes you feel green fingered. Sticking with something that is easy to grow does wonders for your gardening self-esteem. A thriving bed of greens promises of success with future venture.

15/ It’ll impress friends. When you come in from the garden with a handful of freshly plucked leaves, they will gasp at your green and earthy ways, even if you only have enough to sprinkle on top of a salad made mainly from supermarket iceberg. With its peppery flavour, a little goes a long way.

16/ You can sow almost anytime. From early spring to late autumn, with the exception perhaps of the height of summer when it might run to seed

17/ It goes brilliantly with salami. Or, if you're posh about your pig products, prosciutto.

18/ It grows quickly. None of this wait-two-years-before-you-eat-it-palava that you have with rhubarb and raspberry canes.

19/ Seeds are easy to find in garden centres. Unlike obscure varieties of rainbow chard, most garden centres, however small, will stock a packet or two of rocket seeds.

20/ The more you eat the more it seems to grow. This is because most types of rocket are ‘cut and come again’

21/ If your rocket is attacked by a pest, the leaves won’t be inedible. The holes you might see in the leaves are caused by a tiny pest called the flea beetle, so called because it leaps like a flea when disturbed. There is no problem with eating the leaves, although you may wish to wash them first to remove any traces of flea.

22/ If you still want to cheat... you can order in young plants from Rocket Gardens, see here.

Why Lakeland loses the green vote

Today Sarah Vine writes about the peculiar pleasures of the new Lakeland catalogue, with its insulated butter dishes and Thermos snack jars.

It is, she says, the promises of order that fascinates the working mum, “the fantasy of perfection.”

I must admit to have been oddly compelled by it myself. The other night, I took it to bed - the magazine, that is. A guilty pleasure that prompted considerable mocking from my boyfriend. I doubt he would have been any more scornful if it was a bundle of porn on my bedside table. Anyway, as I browsed and yawned, there were moments when I convinced myself that here were some genuinely eco-friendly solutions. Tupperware boxes of every imaginable size and easy-seal freezer bags to make leftovers easy.

In the morning, I saw sense. You don’t need to buy special Tupperware boxes; they accumulate on their own. Friends leave them behind and takeaway containers become them, as do yoghurt pots and deli pots and a host of plastic packaging that you get for free from the shops. It’s the same story with freezer bags. The ones you use for fruit and veg in the supermarket do the job just as well. I’d rather use what I already have in my home than bring more stuff into the equation. It's not just cheaper and greener to be inventive, it's more fun. It's satisfying.

Few of Lakeland's plastic wares are genuinely vital to the running of a home. What I've noticed is that it offers solutions to problems we didn’t even realize we had. Take its mini icepacks for example. Remember, says the catalogue: "Packed lunches in an office drawer...can become a health risk." Since when has your cheese and pickle sarnie being warmed to room temperature bothered you? What about the mini salt and pepper mills for picnics. Good idea, until you realize that up until now, you’ve been perfectly happy with a tiny silver foil wrap containing a grind of each. Then there’s the ice crusher for "sunny day smoothies". Convenient, yes, but a good bash up between a rolling pin and a tea-towel containing ice works just as well.

And there’s something else. Make domestic life problem-free and doesn’t it ruin the fun? With hands-free wine glass holders and little coloured clips for each glass, so no one knocks any wine over and everyone knows whose glass is whose, picnics might become a little dull.

Five Myths About Plastic Bags

When I posted about my disappointment with Alastair Darling’s plans for a plastic bag tax, all sorts of responses came in arguing that this was an excuse to introduce a tax; that plastic bags should be celebrated for their lightweight durability and that they are a necessary part of modern life. I’m afraid I don’t agree.

It’s easy to recycle them
That’s rubbish. Rarely collected by local authority kerbside collections (tell me if yours does, I’d love to know what it does with them), your best chance is to find a supermarket with a recycling bank for bags. But this is far from ideal. The UK lacks its own developed plastic recycling facilities so, like most of Europe, sends the majority of its plastics to China to be recycled over there, an arrangement which lead to a BBC Real Story scandal two years ago. It uncovered our plastic being piled into Chinese landfill rather than being recycled. The problem with the plastic used in bags is that it is low quality: cheap to make from new, but tricky and energy intensive to recycle. Look at most plastic items and you’ll see a triangle containing a number; the higher that number the harder the product is to recycle. PET, numbered one, is the best sort for recycling. Decent carrier bags are numbered four. The more lightweight variety can be as high as seven. For more info on these codes, see here.

They only take up a tiny proportion of landfill
Taking up landfill space has never been one of the main accusations levelled at plastic bags. That they are made from a non-renewable resource, yes. That each of us in the UK uses an average of 290 of them every year, definitely. Not to mention the impact they are having on the natural world - see here. But taking up landfill space is only a small concern. In fact, it is worrying itself that only an estimated third of the bags we use end up in landfill when we are getting through so many - 145 billion last time I looked here. Where are they if they’re not in landfill? As they can’t all be in your special plastic bag holder. Many seem to find their way to the sea. There has been debate recently about the extent to which plastic bags cause marine deaths. The plastic industry points out that many of the numbers quoted are based on estimates with little scientific support. What has clearly emerged from this debate is that plastic bags are only one kind of plastic that threatens animals, and probably not the worst. Damage done by solid lumps of plastic is even more serious.  Reports suggest that many birds can die because they ingest enough small lumps of plastic that their stomachs are filled with nothing else and they starve to death.

They don’t take long to breakdown
The fact is that no one knows precisely how long a plastic bag takes to disappear without digging one up every decade to see how it’s getting on. Few scientists have given a figure of less than 100 years; most estimate between 200 and 1,000 years, depending on whether the bag finds itself buried in a light and air deprived landfill site or up a tree, where sunlight will help to break it down. A few weeks ago, the Association of Plastic Manufacturers at the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry, claimed that:
"They decompose within one and a half to two years because of ultraviolet
sunlight." I would love to know where that figure came from.

They require less energy to manufacture than paper bags
In part this is true, but paper bags are not the only alternative to plastic bags, and while they require more energy, they also come from a renewable resource. Paper bags made from fibres from sustainably managed forests, or even better, recycled paper are environmentally superior to an oil based product. It takes 430,000 gallons of oil to produce 100 million plastic bags, according to Worldwatch Institute. In short, paper may consume more resources to produce, but it is more recyclable than plastic, breaks down more easily and does not come from oil, a resource that we should be decreasing our reliance upon.

They are durable and reusable
True, it has been claimed by the plastic industry that a bag can be used 15 times to carry shopping before it falls apart. This is the theory, but how many of us do this? They have become a one-use disposable item because we know the shop will hand out more for free, next time we go. The ten billion bags handed out to British shoppers are used for an average of 12 minutes before they are discarded. A material bag that you paid for is more likely to accompany you to the shops countless times. In the wake of I’m Not a Plastic Bag fever, scores of bags have followed, made from every imaginable material – from jute, hemp and bamboo to corn starch, string, recycled paper and even banana leaves.

Yes, there is an energy cost in the production of these, but the idea is that this is negated if you use them enough times. And of course, the habit of using something time and time again - whether this is a bag, a cloth in the kitchen or an item of clothing - is simply good environmental practice.

10 great ways to give things away for free

1/ The daddy of reuse websites is Freecycle, a free version of eBay where you can pass on unwanted items and giggle at the curious possessions of others. In the past year, I’ve managed to rid myself of a broken Hoover, a load of old flowerpots, some fairy lights and a dozen heavy patio slabs that were taking up a corner of the garden. Easy. I hardly had to move from the sofa. The best thing is the collector comes to you, so you can sit tight and wait for your unwanted gear to be carried out.

2/ As a personal favourite, I reckon the ‘put it on the pavement’ method also deserves a mention. It works like this. You leave unwanted belongings outside your house with a sign saying “Please take me”. Obviously if no one does, you have to haul them inside and think again, but I’m always surprised what goes.

3/ Gumtree is a huge online noticeboard which started in Australia and now has sites in more than 40 cities across the UK and Ireland - find your nearest here. With a section devoted to free stuff, you can advertise your unwanted clutter.

4/ Another Freecycle wannabe, VSkips is free and works by offering each member a virtual skip to put their unwanted belongings into. Once uploaded other members can search skips in their area. Find your local group here.

5/ It still counts as free-giving, but with swap shops, you get something back. SwapZ is a good place to start with its 75, 000 members and 50,000 listings.

6/ Another thriving swap shops is iswap - particularly popular for consumer electronics, video games and mobile phones. There was even a Blackberry going when I looked this morning. Members place an advert for the item that they want to exchange and then wait for other members to suggest what they would swap for it.

7/ Here is another swap shop, which has been going since 2006. It operates a point system, where you swap for points rather than an actual item, then you use your points to get your mits on whatever item you’d like. Although it's free to sign up and swap, you can also buy extra points.

8/ For anyone who lives in North East London or Essex, it’s worth trying Give or Take, which will advertise unwanted items and try to find them future uses. It grew out of the successful Forest Recycling Project.

9/ To donate furniture to people in need, visit the Furniture Reuse Network and contact your local branch here. If you’ve got stuff it wants, it’ll collect from your door.

10/ A music, film and games exchange website, called Swap And Play, allows you to pass on stuff you’re bored of, while getting fresh material from people in your area.