If you need some help with the cost of home insulation and heating improvements, Warm Front should be your first port of call. It’s a government-funded scheme managed by Eaga, offering grants of either £3,500 or (or £6,000 where oil, low carbon or renewable technologies are recommended) to pay for the upgrades. A Warm Front refurb will cut your carbon and make your home warmer and cheaper to run.

You can apply for a Warm Front grant through the website, although you’ll need to fit the qualifying criteria to be in the running.

Warm front qualifying criteria

1. Householders aged 60 or over in receipt of one or more of the following benefits:

• Income Support
• Council Tax Benefit
• Housing Benefit
• Job Seekers Allowance (income-based)
• Pension Credit
• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance

2. Householders with a child under 16, or pregnant women with maternity certificate MAT-B1, in receipt of one or more of the following benefits:

• Income Support
• Council Tax Benefit
• Housing Benefit
• Job Seekers Allowance (income-based)
• Pension Credit
• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance

3. Householders in receipt of one or more of the following benefits:

• Working Tax Credit (with an income of less than £16,040, which must include a disability element)
• Disability Living Allowance
• Child Tax Credit (with an income of less than £16,040)
• Housing Benefit (which must include a disability premium)
• Income Support (which must include a disability premium)
• Council Tax Benefit (which must include a disability premium)
• War Disablement Pension (which must include a mobility supplement or Constant Attendance Allowance)
• Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit (which must include Constant Attendance Allowance)
• Attendance Allowance

Find out more

All we ask in return is a few shots of you getting your hands dirty. We want to see pictures or videos of your 10:10 planting adventures; whether in digging, composting, pruning, planting or that final quiet cup of tea on the bench at the end of the day.

Send them over to planting@1010uk.org along with your address. Tickets will wing their way to the best five!

Find out more about the Gala Evening

Plant asparagus in March and April. Photo: Esteban Cavrico

Asparagus

Plant
March–April. Plant ten one-year old crowns 15–20cm deep, 30cm apart in a single well-prepared row

Harvest
May–June

Likes
Very well-drained and slightly alkaline soil, clear of weeds, seaweed fertilizer

Dislikes
Cold and wet conditions, slugs

Varieties
Connover’s Colossal, Backlim, Gijnlim

Tips
Although slow to start, once established these perennial plants are trouble-free and last for up to twenty years. Parsley can be grown between crowns.

Broccoli

Sow
March–May (under cover for first month). Plant in 2–3 batches of 10–20 small plants, about 20–40cm apart (depends on variety) in rows

Harvest
June–October (Calabrese); January–April (purple sprouting)

Likes
Nitrogen-rich soil, sheltered site, lots of space (purple sprouting)

Dislikes
Slugs, snails, white fly – might need protecting from pests with netting

Varieties
Early Purple Sprouting Improved, Belstar (Calabrese)

Tips
Can suffer from disease “clubfoot”, which remains in soil for up to twenty years

Leeks

Sow
Grow small (15cm) plants from seed indoors, ready for planting out into deep, narrow holes in June; sow seeds outside in May with 10cm between plants.

Harvest
September–May

Likes
Sun, water

Varieties
Musselburgh (very hardy, dates back to 1834), Apollo

Tips
“Earth up” the emerging leek with soil to increase amount of white stem. Closer spacing of plants produces smaller leeks

Lettuce

Sow
Germinate seeds indoors for planting out February–September

Harvest
All year

Likes
Very rich soils with lots of nitrogen

Varieties
Cos: Corsair, Little Gem (takes over two months to develop a heart). Loose-leaved: Lollo Rosso, Lamb’s lettuce (small rounded green leaves), Catalogna (serrated leaves), Salad Bowl (green and dark red oak leaves)

Potatoes

Sow
Earlies March–May; maincrop mid to late April. Plant chitted potatoes 40cm apart into a 25cm deep, 30cm wide trench with dug-in manure at its base

Harvest
When flowers die down, the potatoes are ready to pick. Earlies: June–July. Maincrop: September (store over winter in a cool, dry environment)

Likes
Rich soil and potash (wood ash from stove or potash-rich comfrey); regular watering while flowering

Dislikes
Shade, frost, blight fungus

Varieties
First earlies: International Kidney (aka Jersey Royals). Second earlies: Kestrel or Wilja (high yield and good disease resistance); Charlotte (classic French salad potato). Maincrop: Belle de Fontenay (old French early main crop); Santé (excellent for organic growers as very resistant to pests and disease)

Tips
“Earthing up” the plants stops the tubers being ruined by sunlight and turning green. To do this, cover the plants with soil until only 10cm or so of foliage is visible. Expect to do this a few times each growing season

More on planting early potatoes

Rocket

Sow
All year round indoors; in summer outside

Harvest
All year, 3–4 weeks after sowing

Dislikes
Bolts (flowers) in hot weather

Varieties
Avanti

Tips
Very easy to grow; minimal pest problems

More on growing rocket

Spinach

Sow
Regular small sowings every three weeks from March–September

Harvest
April–November

Likes
Cool conditions

Varieties
Galaxy, Bloomsdale

Tips
Can bolt (flower) in hot weather. If you’re having problems try chard (also known as “perpetual spinach”) instead.

Tomatoes

Sow
Seeds (March–April) for planting out as small hardened-off plants (May/June)

Harvest
July–October

Likes
Fertile, well-drained soil, plant food and sun (a south-facing wall is perfect), regular light watering (to prevent splitting of skin)

Dislikes
Shade, white fly (plant marigolds to deter them)

Varieties
Alicante, Green Zebra (green/yellow stripes). Cherry: Cherry Belle, Sungold (yellow), Gardener’s Delight. Hanging baskets: Tumbler or Pearl; mix historic varieties

Tips
Keep plants focused on fruit (not leaf ) production: pinch off non-flowering sideshoots and the top of plant when fruiting. Green tomatoes make excellent chutney

Further reading

The ten easiest fruit and veg to grow

Expert advice on fruit and veg growing

March garden to-do list

Adapted from The Rough Guide to Green Living by 10:10′s resident carbon expert Duncan Clark.

Allotments in Edinburgh. Photo: embra

What you can grow mostly depends on two things: the amount of time and effort you’re prepared to put in; and the kind of space you have available, including how much sun it gets and what the soil is like.

Allotments

British law requires local authorities to provide residents with low-rent plots – allotments – for growing fruit, vegetables and flowers. In the first half of the twentieth century, more than a million active allotments provided a significant slice of the UK’s fresh produce. After World War II, numbers fell rapidly right through to the turn of the millennium, since when they’ve made an impressive comeback.

Today, some councils have waiting lists running to many years, but in other places you might be able to secure an allotment in a matter of weeks or months. Even if you have to wait more than a year, it can be well worth it, as an allotment will give you enough space to grow a large proportion of your fruit and vegetables in return for a rent as low as £20 per year. Contact your local council for info on allotments in your area.

allotments-uk.com has lots of advice and a discussion forum for those just getting started.

Gardens

If you have a bit of outside space, a decent kitchen garden can be even better than an allotment. Having your plants just outside the home makes it much easier to look after them and helps reduce your car use. Even in smaller gardens, you can get a surprising amount from a  mini vegetable patch or a couple of raised beds.

When deciding which bit of your garden to dedicate to vegetables, the first thing to think about is sun. The more sunlight your plants get, the better they’re likely to turn out. The best plots get sun for most of the day, though you can achieve a lot with a few hours of uninterrupted sun in the growing season. West-facing plots are better than east-facing plots, since plants receiving limited light tend to prefer it in the warm afternoon rather than the cool morning.

The next consideration is the soil. If your garden already has rich, fertile, moist but well-drained earth then you have a huge head start. If the ground is sandy or rocky, dry or waterlogged, then it might be worth building a couple of raised beds and filling them with fresh compost. If you’re buying compost rather than making it yourself, stay climate friendly by choosing a variety that’s peat free.

Small gardens, patios, balconies and windowsills

Tomatoes growing on a patio. Photo: Bashed

If you’re limited to a patio, balcony or even a windowsill, you can still grow some fruit and vegetables. Even a humble windowbox can provide an impressive crop of herbs and cherry tomatoes.

If you have a patio with space for larger pots then you may get good results with peppers, chillies, aubergines, courgettes, beetroot, carrots and potatoes. Salads are well suited to containers of all sizes – particularly the “cut and come again” varieties that allow you to harvest just a few leaves at a time. As for fruit, strawberries can thrive in pots, and so can some fruit trees, including peaches, apricots and nectarines. Most of these plants will do perfectly well with peat-free compost, though it’s a good idea to add water-retaining crystals. If you’re using terracotta pots, water retention can be further improved by lining each pot with polythene, though don’t forget to make some holes at the bottom for proper drainage.

Adapted from The Rough Guide to Green Living by 10:10′s resident carbon expert Duncan Clark.

Guerrilla gardening has sprung up in cities around the world over the last decade, and has turned out to be one of the few things that anarchists and Sunday Telegraph readers can agree on. Sounds good to us.

To get started all you need is a patch disused land, some seeds or bulbs and a fertile imagination. But if you need a bit of advice or even some experienced guerrilla gardeners for your first dig, help is at hand. Guerrillagardening.org is a favourite resource and one of the original catalysts for the trend in the UK. On it you’ll find plenty of community advice on what to grow, where to grow it with and invitations to join existing digs that are planned for the coming months. They even have instructions on how to make your own seed bombs, a must-have in any guerrilla gardener’s arsenal. We interviewed founder Richard Reynolds on Twitter this afternoon, you can see the transcript below.

Pictures tell the story of Guerrilla Gardening better than we possibly could so here’s a selection from the Pimp Your Pavement Flickr group.

Guerrilla Sunflower

Guerrilla garden by ubrayj02

If you’re an experience guerrilla or are planning a first time dig in the near future we’d love to hear from you and even better, see some of your handywork, so do get in touch.

Here’s the transcript of our Twitter interview with Guerrillagardening.org founder Richard Reynolds.

The UK's first complete PassivHaus in Powys, Wales (image: passivhaus.org.uk)

10:10 Councils are already doing great work on insulation. Manchester and Camden have retrofitted Victorian houses with energy efficiency measures to create low carbon exemplars and show residents what can be done. As you might remember from the last councils email, Sheffield, Leicester and Kirklees are offering free cavity wall and roof insulation for residents in both social and private housing. Camden has come up with a cunning plan for installing cavity insulation in tower blocks using abseilers!

However the best thing councils can do to further the energy efficiency agenda is to introduce the PassivHaus standard for new buildings and refurbishments. The PassivHaus standard has been used for the last twenty years in Europe (particularly in Germany), and makes buildings so energy efficient that they don’t need central heating or air conditioning. This cuts their energy requirement by around 85% compared to a typical house. We simply cannot reach zero carbon homes by 2016 as the government has mandated without building on the work that has been done by the PassivHaus Institute in Germany and the architects around Europe who have created the PassivHaus buildings that exist today.

PassivHaus isn’t just about new build – it can be used to scope retrofit work as well. That’s lucky, because more than 80% of our buildings will still be standing in 2050. Passivhaus is now an aspiration in Camden Council’s draft Local Development Framework (LDF) which means our planners will be asking developers and architects who plan to work on sites in Camden to think about using the PassivHaus standard from mid-2010 when the LDF becomes policy.

So ask your property services people to use the PassivHaus standard if they’re building new buildings or refurbishing old ones. It will save money in the long run in terms of dramatically reduced energy bills.

Visit the PassivHaus UK website

February's theme was insulation

With everyone from plumbers to politicians signed up, there’s no doubt that we’ll all take a slightly different route to our 10% target. But 10:10 really comes into its own when we work together to make it happen.

That’s where our monthly themes come in. The idea is to get everyone pulling in the same direction – if we all focus on one thing each month it’ll be easier to help each other out. At this end, we’ll make sure the website is overflowing with tips and case studies to help you on your way.

The last couple of months have been a bit of a trial run as we’ve dabbled in lighting and insulation; now we’re ready to give you the full run-down for the year. Drum roll please…

January – Lighting
Everyone talks about changing lightbulbs, but here’s the detailed advice on everything from dimmer switches to halogens.

February – Insulating
Draughtbusting to double glazing, and a new use for incense sticks.

March – Planting
Spring has sprung – get planting!

April – Travelling
Plan your summer holiday to maximise fun and minimise airport misery.

May – Shopping
Carbon-conscious consuming.

June – Saving
Hunting down wasted energy around the house.

July - Eating
Taking carbon off the menu with local, seasonal deliciousness.

August – Playing
Get outdoors for a climate-friendly summer.

September – Driving
Back to the commute and the school run – liberate yourself from the car.

October – Fixing
All will be revealed. For now, fix 10/10/2010 in your diary and watch this space.

November – Heating
It’s getting cold again, so get your heating system into shape.

December – Giving
Dreaming of a green Christmas.

As always, we need your help to bring these topics to life. If you’ve already cracked one or two of these and think others could learn from your experiences, contact press@1010uk.org. If you’ve spotted a brilliant resource that could fit into one of these themes, email hello@1010uk.org.

It started, as these things often do, with a flash of inspiration. Company climate champion Derek McCreadie was casting around for a way to frame the company’s planned 2010 energy-saving challenge, having been briefed to “keep it fun, keep it simple, and look for the engagement factor”. Although he’d heard about 10:10 in a staff meeting, it wasn’t until a quiet moment a few days later that it really hit him. “I was just at home late one night and I had one of those light bulb moments that we just need to do this!”, he recalls.

After a flurry of emails debating the business merits of signing up, First Direct finally took the plunge in in early January, bringing their two sites in Leeds and Glasgow under the 10:10 umbrella. Since then, they’ve put together one of the smartest and most successful 10:10 staff engagement campaigns we’ve come across.

Incentives

The first step was to put the 10:10 signup widget on the first direct intranet. This allowed employees to join 10:10 directly, and let the company track how many had signed up.

For first direct, incentives were key to getting staff on board. Everyone signing up was given a free copy of the Rough Guide to Green Living by 10:10′s resident carbon expert Duncan Clark. New 10:10ers were also entered into a draw to win a £1,000 eco holiday, an OWL energy monitor or a solar-charged MP3 player. A bit of healthy competition was introduced by offering a second holiday to a randomly-picked member of staff at the site which generated the most signups.

In this area, a bit of joined up thinking can go a long way. The company have fitted solar panels at their Leeds HQ and installed a clever auto-shutdown programme on all office computers. The £30-40k saving from these changes will be ploughed back into staff incentives for low-carbon behaviour, helping to make the company’s carbon reduction activities self-funding.

Measuring success

Thanks to the code built into the widget, first direct were able to measure the success of their initiative by tracking the signups that came through their site. But McCreadie only realised how strong the take-up had been when he was browsing the Who’s already in? page and found that he recognised most of the names. In just two weeks, more than 500 employees had joined the campaign, with more signing  up every day. Moving foward, first direct are keeping up the momentum by tying their employee engagement in with our monthly themes. These focus on different areas of  personal emissions using themed guides, giveaways and case studies to help individuals on their way to 10%.

This kind of outreach work is where 10:10 really comes into its own – encouraging everyone to cooperate and bringing new people on board. As McCreadie puts it, “there’s a lot more to 10:10 than just reducing emissions – it’s about celebrating success.”

What they said: first direct employees’ thoughts on 10:10

“The 10:10 site has prompted me to check whether I need cavity wall insulation and am arranging this for my house in the next few weeks.”
- Kate Sandham

“I think that the 10:10 campaign makes reducing our impact on the environment feel achievable. It gives sensible suggestions on ways to reduce our carbon footprint easily. This means that less people will be put off by what could seem to be an impossible task. Personally I am concentrating on insulating my house more, starting with the loft and reducing the amount I use my car by 5 miles a week. I have been walking to the supermarket when we only require a few items and not taking the car.”
- Carolyn Stuart

“10:10 makes me think of my family and future generations, and what I can do to help them.”
- Amy Garbett

“At home I have installed compost bins, reduced the speed I drive my car and now only buy seasonal food from local markets.”
- Cameron Thompson

Last night’s high-profile report launch by the Women’s Environmental Network coincided with 10:10 partner Mumsnet’s 10th birthday bash (more on that later). A great opportunity to accompany 10:10′s Campaign Director, Eugenie Harvey, on a whistle-stop tour of progressive women’s movements here in the capital.

If you’ve been wondering how gender relates to climate change, look no further. The Women’s Environmental Network (WEN) offer enlightenment. The House of Commons hosted the launch of ‘Gender and the Climate Change Agenda’, which underpins the quest for environmental justice through feminist principles. A panel of one lucky man and many prominent women, including Eugenie, was on hand to share their visions of a greener, fairer world with women at the core.

Bernadette Vallely, founder and chair of WEN, outlined the disproportionate burden of suffering shouldered by women worldwide as a result of poverty and gendered social roles. One staggering statistic shows that 20 million of the 26 million people currently estimated to be displaced by climate change are female. However, far from a prophecy of doom, the report highlights the potential of empowered womanhood to deliver a gender-sensitive response to our planetary predicament.

Accepting assurances from the chair that his inclusion was more than tokenistic, Peter Ainsworth MP bravely broached the topic of population growth. The subject sparked further debate when the floor was opened to questions. A cautious consensus formed around the necessity of sexual education, available contraception and improved healthcare. There was also mention of meat and dairy consumption and the impacts associated with dietary choices. We were reminded of women’s position globally as the predominant providers within the context of food hierarchies.

Tamsin Omond, a driving force behind 10:10′s work with faith groups, praised the report as an invaluable resource in the continuing struggle for social justice. With a nod to the Suffragettes, Eugenie recognised the “responsibility to do for women in poor countries what women in the developed world have had done for them” and emphasised the importance of small steps to start people on a journey of engagement.

The WEN report is available to download for free here.