Selfsufficientish.com

Not the sense of smell, tough, if you are collecting fresh muck! Here's a tip: collect horse muck. The "pellets" are bigger..... :shock: My father always used to have a bag or two on his bicycle when he went about in the countryside, and generally came back with either horse muck, or mushr...

If you are not planning on planting all of your land this year (it's a bit late for that, anyway...), cover it with black plastic and leave it ideally for a year. That kills most weeds, at least as well as roundup does, and without any potential side effects! By the way, did you know that round-up i...

But i can imagine it must get very confusing at times when talking about season issues we face around the globe. Hi Shelle, and welcome to the site! ...yes, and when people say things like "we had a really hot day"! Up here in Scotland that means, anything even only slightly above 20 degr...

Hi Nigel If some of the concrete in your jungle is upright, try growing upwards! I've had runner beans growing up the walls of my flat on a balcony (yep, in pots), and tomatoes, or sugar snap peas. Looks attractive, too, when they are flowering. And I've just discovered a squash in a gardening catal...

Hi Sue Whereabouts in France are you? I spent some time in the south west, years ago. The soil there was limey rather than sandy; we had lovely produce from the garden. Old tomato varieties - honestly, I once made tomato salad for four from ONE tomato!!! :shock: They were huge, and tasted phantastic...

I hope he killed the slugs humanely before burning them, or else he'd have been in trouble with animal rights activists! :? When I worked in France I had to clear mouse droppings out of my bed every night before I crept in. Mind you, I was so tired after work that I sometimes couldn't be bothered. W...

While I was farm sitting for a friend, two tabby kittens turned up at her front door. Now I knew that she always wanted a tabby, but I hadn't heard about any additions to her livestock - they really just turned up when the family was away, and now they are there almost every day. Neighbours don't kn...

I suppose you all live a bit too far away to pop by and pick up a bag of sheep muck - but just in case you should be touring around Scotland in the near future, I have a few bags of perfectly dry (oven dry!) sheep pellets to give away... Hardly any smell, clean to handle, but too fresh to put on gro...

BUT NOT IN MY KITCHEN!!! Anyway, I didn't kill that one (I think it was one of those meat-eating ones), I just chucked her out onto the grass.

Ina

I'm going to make my own scrubby soap for filthy hands (which I quite often have, although is less grease, more muck etc); I've had the ingredients sitting on my kitchen table for a couple of weeks now and still not started on it! :oops: I intend to use olive oil and bees wax, plus a bit of fine san...

And healthier, too. After all, we are supposed to improve our diets...

Guess where I found a nice long slug this morning? About as long as my hand. She (or he?) was slowly making it's way across my kitchen floor. Now how the heck did that beast get in there, I have no idea!!!

Ina

My niece has just spent all summer wwoofing about Ireland, and she liked it so much that after a short stop at home (Germany) she is returning for September. Not all farms were equally good, of course, but you can always leave if you can't get on at all! You might even find a farm or two near where ...

Sounds good to me - and if my tomatoes keep refusing to turn red I'll definitly be trying that out! I remember a visit to (the old) Yugoslavia, about 30 years ago, where we were served a very yummy gateaux that was made with green tomato jam. My tomato plants look like they are developing some weird...

Hi SUPEwoman I've been thinking a lot about your signature - maybe it's your experience with cats, but mine is different! At least my cat treats me like any daughter would a mother: only sometimes she behaves like a toddler, sometimes like a teenager... :mrgreen: To explain that: She's like a toddle...

Yes, they are elderberries - get them before the birds do! But don't eat them raw, they can make you quite sick. I think there's elderberry recipes somewhere on the site - wine is nice, I like jelly best, but you can also mix them in with other fruit (plum and apple, for example) in jam. And next ye...