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Welcome to the May Newsletter from The Green Store..
As a community we stand tall!
Following on from our April Newsletter which brought news of allotment schemes being created around the country, we were interested to read the words of John-Paul Flintoff in the following article;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/real_food/article6098277.ece
John-Paul addresses the growing amount of ‘Transition Towns’ within the UK
Transition Towns (aka Transition Network, aka Transition Movement) is a movement that was created by Louise Rooney[1] and popularized by Rob Hopkins. It was founded in Kinsale, Ireland and was then spread to Totnes, England by environmentalist Rob Hopkins during 2005 and 2006.[2] The aim of the project is to equip communities for the dual challenges of climate change and peak oil. The movement currently has member communities in a number of countries worldwide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns
Central to the Transition Town movement is the idea that a life without oil could in fact be far more enjoyable and fulfilling than the present and embrace the community.
Many towns are now signed up to becoming ‘Transition Towns’ following on from Totnes and Lewes. Some towns are well on their way to becoming Transition Towns whilst some others have done further research and have found that they might not be able to be completely self sufficient, but they are making every effort where possible.
According to the article about 40% of the food we eat is imported along with an astounding 95% of our fruit and most of the wheat in our bread!
So whether you are growing lettuce in your window boxes or have cultivated your acres of garden to allotments then surely every little helps to keeping some food miles down?
Within our own team we are growing carrots, sweetcorn, melons, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, courgettes, beetroot, etc and will be sharing them around so we all have a good crop and harvest!
According to John-Paul we should be encouraged to share our seedlings with our neighbours to promote further growing & Transition Towns to develop………although we personally think this really rather depends on your neighbours!
Housekeeping Notes.
As you can probably gather from our last couple of newsletters, here at The Green Store we are enthusiastic gardeners and vegetable growers. Next week (3rd – 9th May) is Compost Awareness Week and, as any gardener knows, good compost is essential for success. To try and help promote more composting & less food waste going to landfill we have added a new article to our Eco Info pages all about the art of compost making. We have also just taken delivery of the new compact Compo Viz 80L compost bin. This funky compost bin comes flat-packed, is made from recycled plastic and has a leaf design on it so that it isn’t a blot on the landscape.
Competition.
This month instead of a readers offer we are having a competition to win one of our new Compo Viz compost bins.
To enter the competition simply send an email to competition@thegreenstoreonline.co.uk with the subject line Compo Viz and answer the following question:-
What are the 2 recommended types of worm for use in a wormery? (Tip: have a read of our Compost article in the Eco Info section)
Small Print: - This competition is only open to The Green Store newsletter subscribers in the UK. Any responses from entrants not on our mailing list will be excluded. Only one entry per person. All entries will be entered into a draw which will be drawn after the closing date.
Competition closes on Friday 29th May, after which the winner will be contact by email.
We hope you all have a good month & good luck with the competition.
Best regards from us all!
The Green Store Team
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