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Should We Stop Trying to Keep Britain Green All Summer?

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  Should We Stop Trying to Keep Britain Green All Summer? Perhaps a brown lawn in August isn't a gardening failure. Perhaps watering it is. For generations, the picture of the perfect British garden has included one almost compulsory feature: a neat, rich, green lawn. Green in April. Green in June. Green in August. But perhaps that expectation belongs to a different climate. During a hot, dry British summer, grass begins to lose its lush colour. It fades through pale green, then yellow, then eventually turns the rather alarming straw-brown that makes us think something has gone terribly wrong. The instinctive response is obvious. Get the hosepipe out. Yet an established lawn turning brown during drought has not necessarily died. In many cases, the visible leaves have died back while the roots and growing points remain alive. The grass has effectively reduced its activity until better conditions return. The Royal Horticultural Society specifically advises gardeners to resist...
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Don’t Pour Drinking Water on Your Garden: Use It Twice

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  Don’t Pour Drinking Water on Your Garden: Use It Twice Before water disappears down the plughole, ask whether you’ve really finished with it. We have become rather accustomed to using perfectly good drinking-quality water once. We turn on the shower and let several litres run away while waiting for it to become warm. We rinse vegetables under the tap and send the water straight down the drain. Half-finished glasses of water are tipped into the sink. An aquarium is cleaned and a bucketful of nutrient-containing water disappears down a waste pipe. Then, a few hours later, we go outside, turn on another tap and use fresh drinking water to water the garden. There is something slightly absurd about that. I am already a great believer in collecting rainwater. I have a 250-litre water butt, yet during prolonged hot weather even that apparently large quantity can disappear remarkably quickly. Rainwater harvesting is certainly part of the answer, but perhaps there is another reservo...
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Your Fridge and Freezer Are Working Harder This Summer — Help Them

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  Your Fridge and Freezer Are Working Harder This Summer — Help Them One appliance in your kitchen is running 24 hours a day — and hot weather makes its job even harder. When people think about reducing household energy use, they usually look at the obvious things: heating, hot water, washing machines, tumble dryers and perhaps air conditioning. The refrigerator is rather different. You never switch it off. It sits quietly in the corner of the kitchen, hour after hour, day after day, attempting to maintain a little artificial winter while the rest of the house gets hotter. And during a hot summer, that becomes increasingly difficult. If the kitchen reaches 28°C or 30°C, the refrigerator is still trying to keep milk, cheese and vegetables at perhaps 4°C, while the freezer next door may be trying to maintain -18°C. That means moving heat across a temperature difference of nearly 50°C. So perhaps, before worrying about buying another energy-saving gadget, it is worth spending...
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