Fuel use in garden

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Is anyone trying to cut down fuel use in the garden or do you regard it as too trivial to bother? @nanthewiser, what are you doing about heating for cacti?

Yes - I still use an electric hedge trimmer because we have so much pruning to do. But we don't use a strimmer or a lawn mower (we only have a couple of areas of grass left and these are scythed now) which means 95% of the gardening doesn't require fuel/power of any sort

We don't have heating in the poly tunnel. We do start seedlings off inside but thats using heating in the house that would be on anyway and it doesn't get turned on extra for the seedlings and I no longer use heat mats.

@MereDintofPandiculation , my greenhouses will continue to be heated, far too many rare and precious plants to risk without heat. And I can’t insulate - the greenhouses are too large and high to do (getting too old for that!) I might drop the thermostats a degree or so, (heated to about 5 or 6° atm) and suck up the cost. Fortunately I can afford it, very reluctantly.

Ouch, @NanTheWiser ! I stopped heating mine routinely many years ago when I realised it accounted for a third of my electricity use. Just switched it on if temperatures forecast to drop more than 2deg below freezing, which happens less frequently nowadays. But I’m running down my collection

I do still insulate. Bubblewrap sheets draped over longitudinal canes fixed permanently to ceiling.

@Owlsinmybedroom I don’t use a hedgetrimmer, but that’s because hawthorn prunings are so horrible to pick up. Still use a lawnmower to cut paths in the longer grass. Like you, use a scythe on the grass left to grow long.

our petrol chainsaw is used when trees come down in storms. Couldn’t be without it.

One thing no one talks about is buying plants - you end up with an unwanted plastic pot. I've been gardening long enough that I have enough pots now.
I think you should be able to take a few pots of differing sizes to the garden centre and transfer the new bought plant to your pot when you buy it and leave the other there to be reused (I'm pretty sure they chuck them at the moment because of the risk of disease but this should change).

Pots are particularly troublesome because they’re non-recyclable, definitely the black ones but also the terracotta ones. I remember seeing one on-line plant supplier who uses alternatives, eg hessian. Buying online means you’re more likely to be able to buy bare root.

trouble is, pot requirements change over time - I have a big box of half pots from my cactus growing time.

Sally Nex (?) has been writing in the Garden magazine for some time now on gardening plastic-free, and has written a book on the topic, giving viable alternatives to all our plastic uses (actually, that’s not quite true, lawnmowers for example are largely plastic and I don’t think she’s advocating moving to scythes or pet sheep).

of course if you already have the plastic, the best thing to do is get as much use out of it as possible.

Unfortunately if we don't cut our hawthorn, it's a scratty mess and this includes across the pavement outside the house. I pick it up. Gradually.

Hedge cutter, strimmer, mower, pole pruner and leaf blower at home are all electric, Stihl with interchangeable battery. I can confirm that this is very much preferable on weight and noise as well compared to the petrol counterparts at work.

No greenhouse yet. But it won't be heated when it arrives next year