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25000 Trees in Banjar Ngis
In the lush Bali highlands, the village of Banjar Ngis is resting at the end of a winding road. Rice fields, gardens and forests surround the hamlet and the stream that gushes down from the mountain. Now in the rain season, the scenery is glowing green in every direction. Since we came here, we have […]
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Permaculture Pioneers
Xiao Zhu and Thomas are leading the way in the sustainable farming practice called “Permaculture” in China. Three hours south of Shanghai, in the beautiful village Xiatushan is the mountainside where they are establishing the Hangzhou Institute of Permaculture. Permaculture is an ecological farming/gardening philosophy originating from Australia (by Mollison and Holmgren) based on the […]
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Wrap it!
Pack those Flowers? With transportation being a challenge for us (we mostly use a taxi or bike to go around in Shanghai), we love the possibility of buying things we need on Taobao, a very popular online shopping website in China. Delivered to our house, almost everything comes in perfect condition, not in the […]
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Tree Planting in North China
Goran went with some colleagues in the end of April to plant trees in the North-East province of Liaoning, not far from the border to North Korea. SKF has a factory in Dalian, and it was a three hour drive to the tree planting site. The tree-planting project is part of the SKF Environment Care […]
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Bee Hotel
Most of our plants need pollinators to set seed and give fruit. Bees are the best. The more bees we have in the garden, the more tomatos and cucumbers and plums we get. One way of getting more bees in the gardens is of course to set down a bee-hive and bring in the Honey […]
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Garden Tree Planting
In the new built areas around where we live in Shanghai, there is a lot of tree planting. It is done in a way that is quite peculiar. Large trees are cut out of the ground in one place, and then moved to the target location by truck. The trees are then lifted into place […]
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How Muchrooms can Help Save the World
Paul Stamets is a mushroom evangelist, scientist and entrepreneur. He is also a gifted writer, I realized when I started reading his masterpiece “Mycelium Running”. The book is a celebration to all living mushrooms and mycelia, describing the multitude of useful functions that the mycelia perform in our soils. Little did I know about the […]
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Sourdough Bread
Sourdough bread is the original food upon which the Western civilization was built. The granaries of Southern Europe and North Africa supplied Phoenicians, Greek and Romans with wheat and barley that was transformed into delicious loaves of bread for the masses， to go with the games. Today, “sourdough bread” has a healthy connotation and makes […]
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Trees from Twigs
Grow your own trees! Probably the easiest way to grow your own trees is to copy a tree that you already have. Cut a nice twig, 5-10mm thick, and put it in a pot with soil. Keep moist and after ten weeks or so, your tree is growing by itself! Here is one way of […]
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Wood into Food
Eat a tree? Forests are fantastic for capturing sunlight and carbon dioxide, much better than any traditional agricultural cropland. Rain is absorbed and sunshine is intercepted at various levels, from the canopy down to the leaf litter on the ground. From a food point of view, it may seem scarce for us, since lumber makes […]
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Kick-off of the project: Tree Planting Day
What better way to kick off our Trees for Peace activities than to plant some trees… Each year on the 12th of March the Chinese show that they value trees by planting trees all over the country. Most Chinese have memories of doing this as school children. Also Chinese companies organize tree planting activities for […]
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Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture
Permaculture is a way of farming or gardening, where diversity is the driver to improve the soils and create sustainable symbioses, where pesticides and synthetic fertilizers are unnecessary. In many ways it is a step back to the pre-industrialized agriculture that dominated worldwide until the introduction of the tractor. Sepp Holzer is a remarkable farmer […]
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One Straw Revolution
Masanobu Fukuoka (1913-2008) wrote a beautiful book about natural farming in the late 1970’s. It is a hymn to living and breathing with Nature’s rhythms. Part poetry, part philosophy, part farming. The book is full of practical advice on how to think to develop a natural garden by trial and patient observation. Even though the […]
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Soil
The soil is the mother of the earth. Soil is where food comes from.Today we are destroying soils at a scale never seen before. Soil is damaged by synthetic fertilizers and insecticides, which kills the life forms in the soil, and by mechanical tilling/plowing. In the last forty years, we have been able to use […]
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Vegetarian
There are many good reasons to eat more plants and less animals: Ethical – care for the animals we (do not) eat. Today there is a lot of suffering in the industrial agriculture. Little of the meat we can get in supermarkets and in restaurants comes from animals raised in a suitable environment. Environment – […]
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Start where you stand
We can make a difference in the world. We believe that it is important to get started. Even a long journey starts with a step in your front yard. It is the same with trees. If you can, plant a tree yourself this year. Ask the local municipality, province or country to take better care […]
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Biodiversity
Biodiversity is true wealth. In a more profound way than money can ever be. How can we learn to value life? We need to give habitat back to monkeys, like the Gibbon mother we saw in Khao Yai, Thailand. But also to the fungi and insects that live in the soils. We must learn to […]
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Water
Water is life. We need to take better care of the water we have. Especially sweet water. Many of the conflicts in the world today are due to water scarcity. There is a certain logic in the fact that “rival” originally meant “living along the same river” or “using the same water for irrigation”, something […]
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Starting the Trees for Peace initiative
Our goal is to create a website with information, links to related initiatives and tools for opinion making. We want to explain why soil quality is important, why meat eating should be avoided and how trees play an important role in Life.