Clay plant pots versus plastic pots

Clay pots or plastic pots? 

Plant in plastic pot (Photo: Public Domain)

We all know well that there is too much waste plastic polluting the environment, filling the oceans, and killing wildlife, so anything which can help cut down our use of the material has got to be good news.  I have been thinking about how many plastic pots and containers for growing plants in get sold every day and how many of these containers are in use. It must be a a mind-boggling number when you consider how many of these pots are on sale in supermarkets, hardware stores and gardening centres.  Nearly all of that plastic is eventually going to end up in landfill sites or in the environment somewhere!

Clay pots (Photo: Public Domain)

I remember the days when there were only clay or terracotta pots. I prefer them too. The clay pots breathe and don't allow water-logging to occur, which can easily happen with plastic containers. Admittedly the clay pots can crack and break but broken pieces of pot make great drainage material to be put in the bottom of another pot you are getting ready to plant something in. It used to be standard practice to use up broken pots this way.

Clay pots showing mineral deposits (Photo: Public Domain)

The only other minor disadvantage of clay pots is that because they are porous they can absorb minerals that leach out of the compost and the water used for plants growing in them. This can create whitish powdery deposits on the outside of the clay pot.  It can be washed off, however.

Clay pots for tropical fish

I remember using clay pots when breeding tropical fish species. A clay pot makes a great spawning site for many types of fish, including cichlids such as the Kribensis cichlid (Pelvicachromis pulcher), which is a very popular and easily bred species.

Kribensis (Photo: Aquakeeper 14)

Many types of fish will accept a clay pot as an artificial cave and hiding place. many will make these containers their homes and will defend them from other fish. 

Buying clay pots

Unfortunately it has become a lot more difficult to find places that sell clay pots. I am lucky where I live in Portugal because the clay pots are on sale alongside the plastic ones, even at major supermarkets. I know the type of pot I choose to buy.

If enough people refused to buy the plastic containers and asked for old-fashioned clay ones then the manufacturers would be forced to supply us with clay pots not plastic pots.

Watering cans  (Photo: Public Domain)

Plastic is not just used for our plant pots because even watering cans are now made of the material.  Seems crazy how a can can be made of plastic not metal, don't you think?

Petition to Save Butterfly World Project in St Albans

Butterfly World to close 

Swallowtail Butterfly on Lantana (Photo: Public Domain)

I couldn't believe it when I read the news that Butterfly World was to close permanently. The Butterfly World Project in Chiswell Green, St Albans has reluctantly announced that they will not be reopening next year.  As usual it appears that money is at the root of the problem.  Butterfly World has been failing to make the profit it needs.

Phase IV of the Butterfly World Project was going to be the construction of a 100-metre-wide rainforest bio dome. It was intended to house hundreds of tropical butterflies, hummingbirds, insects, spiders and tropical plants. Sadly it has not attracted the funding it needs to go ahead, and John Breheny, who is the chairman of the engineering project for the centre, has put the blame on a "succession of trading losses."

Clive Farrell

Butterfly World was founded by lepidopterist and author Clive Farrell in 2009, and has attracted over 500, 000 visitors. 

 Farrell, by the way, co-authored The Butterfly Gardener with the late Miriam Rothschild.  I personally recommend this book, which looks in detail at how butterflies can be attracted to our gardens throughout the year, and what the insects really need to thrive. The Butterfly Gardener is an excellent book to get if you want to find out how we can help butterfly conservation.

Clive Farrell at the launch of Butterfly World

Celebrity Support for Butterfly World

As well as attracting thousands of visitors and the support of countless members of the public, Butterfly World has been supported by a number of well-known celebrities, including Sir David Attenborough, Professor David Bellamy. broadcaster Alan Titchmarsh and actress Emilia Fox. 

David Bellamy talks about Butterfly World

Petition to Save Butterfly World from closure

With butterflies disappearing in the UK and throughout the world in alarming numbers, we need more places like Butterfly World not less. Many people still think that we can turn things around and save Butterfly World, and so a petition has been launched.

Small Blue Cupido minimus (Photo: Valerius Geng)

Please sign Petition To Save Butterfly World and help by circulating this news! Blog about it, Tweet about it, share on Facebook and let us help Butterfly World to make a comeback, just like the many species, species such as the Small Blue, it was helping to do so!

And sign this petition too:

Fly Agaric Magic Mushroom linked with Father Christmas

Fly Agarics. Photo in Public Domain

The Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) is a brightly coloured hallucinogenic mushroom that is often used in illustrations for fairy stories, and perhaps with very good reason. The substances muscimol and ibotenic acid it contains produce intoxication and altered reality and consumption of this toadstool has been used to produce visionary states. Because of this it is included in my book Herbs of the Northern Shaman.

Because of this, and its known use by shamans of Lapland, Siberia and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, the fungus has been linked with the myth of Santa Claus. The Fly Agaric is coloured red and white just like the traditional costume that Father Christmas wears.

The Fly Agaric is sometimes eaten by reindeer and Santa Claus travels in a sleigh drawn by these animals. They fly through the sky and it has been suggested that hallucinations brought about by the ingestion of this fungus might have something to do with this fanciful idea.

The author and ethnobotanist R. Gordon Wasson suggested that the Fly Agaric was the mystical soma mentioned in the Rig Veda, sacred book of the Hindus. John Marco Allegro in his 1970 book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross went as far as suggesting that the Christian religion was founded by practitioners of an ancient fertility cult who were ritual users of this fungus and Biblical texts were inspired by visions they experienced. 

It has been suggested that part of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland was inspired by the Fly Agaric because it is known to cause hallucinations in which size becomes distorted. 

Hookah Smoking Caterpillar and Alice - Illustration by Sir John Tenniel (Public Domain)

Fly Agarics grow in groups under pine and birch, as well as under other trees.  They can be found in autumn and are common in some places. They grow in the UK, many parts of Europe, and across Asia, as well as in Canada and North America. 

Fly Agarics are reported to be edible after parboiling and the fungus has been eaten in some places. Recreational drug users and modern neo-shamans use the fungus as an entheogen, especially after the psilocybin magic mushrooms became an illegal drug in many countries such as the UK. 

The Fly Agaric is a fungus we all know about, if only from having seen it in fairy tales and in artwork.

Fly agarics in Rubezahl by Moritz von Schwind (Public Domain)

Concert for Ocean Aid is an idea

Plastic rubbish on a beach

An idea based on Live Aid and Band Aid

I don't know about you but the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the appalling way the clean-up and stopping of the leak was handled really depressed me. I still cannot stop thinking about all the billions of sea birds, turtles, dolphins, fish and other marine creatures that will have lost their lives because of this tragedy, and the damage to the coast and marshland, as well as to the livelihoods of people who live in the States affected, is immeasurable.

Besides the ongoing ecological disaster, there is the very serious danger being caused by marine pollution by plastic. David de Rothschild sailed across the Pacific Ocean on 2009 on a catamaran made entirely from used plastic bottles and called the Plastiki. One of the main purposes of his expedition was to raise awareness of the pollution of the oceans by plastic waste.

All over the world people who are disgusted by what has happened to our seas are saying something must be done. I have been thinking deeply about it all and have come up with an idea based around the success in the past of the Band Aid charity single and the more recent Live Aid rock and pop concerts.

Ocean Aid the concert

The original idea for Band Aid had been hatched by Sir Bob Geldof, who with the help of Midge Ure, had assembled a collection of pop and rock singers to lend their talents to a charity single entitled Do They Know It's Christmas? It was recorded and released under the collective name of Band Aid.

Bob Geldof

It swiftly became a number one single. Singers involved included Bono from U2, Boy George, George Michael, Bananarama and Paul Young.

From this in 1985, Live Aid followed on and in 2005 there was Live 8. These massive charity concerts featured appearances by a host of internationally famous pop and rock stars and were screened worldwide so were seen by billions of people.

If such events could be organised to help benefit the starving and poor people of the world then why not a similar effort being made to raise awareness about the dangers to our oceans and to raise funds for their protection?

As to where the money raised would go that would have to be worked out. There are activist groups like Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd that work on marine environmental campaigns but there are many more organisations that are concerned with keeping the oceans as they should be. Perhaps a new one could be set up inspired by the growing need for something to be done to protect the oceans and their ecosystems?

It is not just plastic pollution and the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is killing marine life. Overfishing, bottom trawling and over-acidification of the seas are all wreaking havoc too. Because the water is becoming too acid coral reefs are disappearing and along with them go the complicated and very beautiful ecosystems of life that depend on them.

Anyway, having come up with the idea I did a bit of "Googling" to see if the term Ocean Aid was already being used. I was very pleased to find that a team of people have thought like me and that Ocean Aid 2010 had already been organised.

That doesn't stop a much bigger global event or series of concerts at stadium-sized venues to also happen though. An Ocean Aid single could be written, recorded and released and possibly to be followed by an album of songs written specially for it. The concert or concert series could all be recorded both as sound recordings and as visual footage that could be broadcast on worldwide TV and sold later as DVD releases.

Then there would be Ocean Aid merchandising. The possibilities are endless.

I am sure very many stars from the world of pop and rock music would be only too glad to be involved in this. Film stars and other celebrities could appear on stage at the concerts too as special guests.

It would of course be a lot of work organising all this that I have outlined here, but it has all been done before and to great success. I am presenting here the seed of the idea.

What is needed now is Sir Bob or someone else with the celebrity status and power to make this happen! Now are we going to make this happen? Who can help?

Ocean Aid links

·        Marine pollution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

·        David de Rothschild's supporters and fans on Facebook
Facebook site for David de Rothschild's supporters and fans

·        The Plastiki Expedition
The Plastiki, a boat made from 12,500 Plastic bottles, sailing from San Francisco to Sydney on a mission to showcase waste as a resource and highlight plastic pollution.