Come rain or shine, agreenhouse can provide youwith a glorious gardenescape where you can enjoygrowing your own plants

A If you are new to the green-house game, they can be anescape into a world of grow-ing wonder. It’s not justabout using it as a tool, but

as a place to escape as well. Your green-house becomes a room in which youcan produce new growth, like anartist’s studio. It can be set up for qui-et reflection or provide the perfectspace for production.

Why build a greenhouse Greenhouses can be made in all shapesand sizes and are a sure-fire way foryou to elevate your gardening to thenext level. As a protected growing site,it also enables you to extend the grow-ing season, giving you access to thejoys of gardening for more months outof the year. Moreover as it is shieldedfrom the seasons, you have the oppor-tunity to grow seedlings, tender plantsand vegetables, or even exotics, whereyou may not have before.

How to set up a GREENHOUSE

“What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?” Henry David Thoreau 02 ENVIRONMENT

RECYCLE YOUR CLOTHES TO SAVE THE

ENVIRONMENT:1. Look for a nearby recy-cling station: You can do asimple Google search tolocate a place or a shopthat accepts old clothes forrecycling purposes.Sometimes, even high-streetlabels organise recyclingdrives to help you get rid ofunwanted clothes.

2. Donate yourclothes: There are two

advantagesof recyclingyour clothes.

One, you’ll behelpingsomeonein need

bydonat-

ing yourclothes tothem. Two,it’s a more

sustainable wayof recyclingthem. It means

that the clothesyou bought will begiven up only afterthey have been fully

utilised.

NEWS

Mexicans have created more than a hundred urban gardens,most of them in the capital Mexico City, in an attempt toattract hummingbirds that have seen their natural habitatgradually destroyed as cities sprawl. The country is hometo 58 different species but half of its 13 endemic speciesare now at the risk of extinction as suitable habitats areshrinking because of human settlements and even climatechange. The ‘Urban Gardens’ project has led to the cre-ation of 149 gardens.

MEXICO FIGHTS HUMMINGBIRDS’ EXTINCTION

Two cheetah cubs have been born through in-vitro fertili-sation and embryo transfer to a surrogate mother for thefirst time at an Ohio (US) zoo. The male and female cubswere born to three-year-old Izzy at the Columbus Zoo andAquarium. A team observed the births through a remotecamera and are continuing to monitor Izzy and the cubs.The biological mother of the cubs is six-year old Kibibiwho has never reproduced and is too old to easily becomepregnant naturally.

WORLD’S FIRST IVF CHEETAHCUBS BORN AT US ZOO

THE TYRANNY OF MICROPLASTICS

This photo from the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration (NOAA) shows a piece of microplastic foamdebris found along the coast of Alaska, on a person's finger.Scientists are finding ‘microplastics’ — incredibly tiny bitsof broken-down plastic smaller than a fraction of a grain ofrice — everywhere in the environment, from ocean water toinside the guts of fish and even mixed in with the poop ofsea otters and giant killer whales. TNN

Pop Quiz

ANSWERS

IDENTIFY THESESPECIES

1 2

4 5

3

1. Red panda2. Squirrel monkey3. African Land Snail 4. Partula snail5. Red-ruffed lemur

Built to protect the world’s food supplies, the global seed vault in Svalbard(Norway) now contains 1.05 million samples A vault in the Arctic built

to preserve seeds for rice,wheat and other food sta-ples contains one millionvarieties with the addi-

tion of specimens grown by Chero-kee Indians and the es-tate of Britain’s PrinceCharles.

The SvalbardGlobal Seed Vault,built on a mountain-side in 2008, was de-signed as a storage fa-cility to protect vitalcrop seeds against theworst cataclysms ofnuclear war or dis-ease and safeguardglobal food supplies.

Dubbed the ‘dooms-day vault,’ the facility lies on the is-land of Spitsbergen in the archi-pelago of Svalbard, halfway betweenNorway and the North Pole, and isonly opened a few times a year inorder to preserve the seeds inside.

Last week, 30 gene banks, in-cluding offerings from India, Maliand Peru, deposited seeds.

The Royal Botanical Gardens atKew in Britain banked seeds har-

vested from the meadows of PrinceCharles’ private residence, High-grove. The vault also serves as abackup for plant breeders to devel-op new varieties of crops.

The world used to cultivatearound 7,000 differentplants but experts saywe now get about 60%of our calories fromthree main crops –maize, wheat and rice– making food sup-plies vulnerable if cli-mate change causesharvests to fail.

“The seed vault isthe backup in theglobal system of con-servation to securefood security on

Earth,” Stefan Schmitz, executivedirector of the Crop Trust, theBonn-based organisation that man-ages the vault.

“We need to preserve this bio-diversity, crop diversity, to providehealthy diets and nutritious foods,and to give farmers, especially small-holders, with sustainable livelihoodsso that they can adapt to new con-ditions.” AFP

ARCTIC DOOMSDAYfood vault welcomesmillionth seed variety

According to the United Nations’ World FoodProgramme, one in nine people go to bedhungry globally. And unfortunately, scien-tists have predicted that erratic weather patterns could reduce both the quality andquantity of food available. In 2015, researchers made a firstwithdrawal from the vault after Syria's civil war damaged aseed bank near the city of Aleppo. The seeds were grownand re-deposited at the Svalbard vault in 2017.

SOMEONE GOES TO BED HUNGRY EVERY DAY

DONATE, RESTYLE, REUSE

R oses don’t seem likesuch a kind gesturewhen you think about

them getting shipped to thecity on cargo planes fromEcuador, or decomposing inlandfills and converting tomethane gas.

In the US, the sharingeconomy has trickled downto the flower industry, withmore companies committedto either extending the tem-porary joy flowers bring orto reusing or compostingthem more responsibly.

A typical wedding orgala can produce up to 100

bags of flowers. So LizaLubell created Garbage God-dess, which provides eco-cleanup services for events.Often, the company will do-nate event flowers to textiledesigners, who use the flow-ers to make natural dyes.

Jennifer Grove’s RepeatRoses will pick up flowers af-ter an event, restyle them,and transport them to awomen’s homeless shelter.When the flowers wilt, it willdeliver them to a compost-ing facility.

But people love flowers,so to cancel them is unreal-istic, said Jenny Flax, an event planner. “Peoplewant to use flowers, but you can help them see howthe amount of waste isalarming and what they cando to help.”

NYT NEWS SERVICE

Flower firms are takingthe recycle route

Why let flowers go towaste after the party’sover? When you chooseto re-purpose flowers,as many firms are doing,you can ensure theydon’t wind up in landfills

Sweden creates $1m prizes forsustainable food solutions

According toJ o h a nRockstrom,

director of the Potsdam Insti-tute for Climate Research inGermany and co-chair of theprize jury, humanity needs afood system revolution or riskdestabilising the planet. Hesaid that the new Food PlanetPrize is designed to contributeto this goal. The two Food Plan-et Prizes will be awarded an-nually. They categories are:

1. AMPLIFY & ACCELERATE: For ‘an existingscalable solution for sustainable foods’2. RETHINK & RESHAPE: For ‘innovative ini-tiatives that could transform the global foodsector.’

WHY SUSTAINABLEFOOD SOLUTIONSThe world’s population, cur-rently at 7.8 billion, is ex-pected to grow to close to 10billion by 2050. Feeding apopulation of that size willbe possible only throughtransforming eating habits,improving food productionand reducing food waste, ex-perts say.

HOW TO PARTICIPATEAre you interested in solving the world’sfood problem? Log on to www.foodplanet-prize.org and click on ‘submit a nomina-tion.’ Fill the details as specified and ensure all the details you submit are correct. AFP

Climate change threat-ens the world’s food sup-ply and a growing popu-lation requires sustain-able food systems. To

counter this, Sweden hascreated two $1 millionprizes for solutions tofeed billions of people

GARDENING CLUB

Think about the locationWhere you build your greenhouse is impor-tant, but deciding where to site it will be de-termined by what you want to grow. Everygarden is different – only you will knowwhich parts of your plot receive full,morning or evening sun, andwhich are lacking them. Don’tforget that the sun’s position willchange throughout the year too.

Avoid placing it under trees:Not only is there shade, but alsothe risk of falling branches andbird waste. Go for the sun: Ideally, you shouldhave the greenhouse’s longest side facingsouth for optimal sun. This will maximise ac-cess to sunlight when plants need it most. Accessibility: It is important to make surethat your greenhouse is located near to yourhome, or school. After all, what good is a per-fectly-sited greenhouse you never visit becauseit's too far down the garden path.

Glassy is classyThe glass panes in greenhouse helpwith growing through the diffusionof light and trapping the warmth ofthe sun, so keep them clean.

Clean off any green algae and mossand disinfect the glass as you go. Thisis best done in winter before the grow-ing season starts.

Double-glazing will give you aboutthree times the protectionfrom heat loss as singlepanes, but you can alsodo this yourself in thewinter by followinggardening tutorialsavailable online.

Greenhouse staging1. Capillary mats (a mat made of an absorbent

fabric) will help make sure pots don’t dryout and will keep a humid atmosphere around leaves.2. Your potting station – a workbench used for smallgardening tasks such as transplanting seedlings –should come with sides fitted specially to hold thecompost in. Your workbench should be positionedat waist height; and shelving will maximise thespace for your specific needs. All this makes pot-ting easy and enjoyable. DAILY MIRROR

Accessories, as you please With any outdoor structure, you need to consider vary-ing temperature and ventilation needs throughout theyear. For this, larger hard-standing greenhouses are easier to con-

trol with openings for ventilation and heating. You can buyautomatic window openers to vent your greenhouse on

hot days. You can also set up partitions for sectioningoff growing needs, and you can be quite clever withthe internal fit to get an organised set up.

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DAILY LIFE

The vault wasbuilt in Svalbard

(Norway) becausethe Arctic’s coldclimate meant itscontents would

stay cool even ifthe power fails