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More toms and... BLACKBERRIES!!! May get around to making my first batch of wine this year.

There's lots you can plant at the moment, Yvette. Mostly leafy veg from what I can tell, but if you can hold of some first early varieties of carrots and peas they're good too. I'm not sure how they'll do, but I am kind of hoping for a late summer, it's got to stop raining at some point, yes? http:/...

Tomatoes!!! And slugs. That is all.

We do workbooks for fun every now and again during the holidays, but most of their learning during school hols comes from stuff like trying to guess the fastest and slowest animals and seeing whether we were right, and then going off on a tangent to talk about the local peregrine falcon and what it ...

Coffee grounds - useless. It needs to be a really high caffeine concentrate to actually have an effect apparently. My coffee attempt did beggar all. God, the courgettes! I too expected them to be far too prickly for them. But I'm down 5 plants and counting. Like I said, the Brussels are the only thi...

You could always try to use it for some home made vodka.

Just introduced the eldest to chopping up slugs, she wasn't impressed. It was only when I explained they have a homing instinct and will be back to munch on her broad beans that she overcame being squeamish.

I've tried gravel, salt, beer, bran... there's just too many of the damnable things though bran does seem to have helped. The only things they aren't chomping on are my brussels. I've given up on most of what is growing in the garden, I'm going out to dig most of the stuff up and restart the veggie ...

Here it is... https://sites.google.com/site/ancientcwmbran/project-groups/medieval-farming/growing-flax-making-linen Once you're ready to harvest the flax, pull it up with the roots and knock off all the soil. Then it needs to be dried - in this site they suggest tying into a bundle and leaving outs...

Depends how fine you want your linen. The sooner you pick after flowering the finer the cloth will be, although most wait until the flower wilts and the seed pod grows. If you pick when the seed pod is turning brown after that, you can harvest the seeds after the first drying. I think I found a site...

Niele - It sounds like your friend planted New Zealand flax. That's still great for fibres, though better suited to basket weaving and such.

If you're after linen, the linseed variety is best.

Scutching is once you've dried your flax after retting. It's pretty much beating the flax, you hold it against a vertical board with one hand and beat with a wooden bat with the other. All the waste falls to the floor and you're left with your fibres ready to comb then spin your flax. I've only had ...

Hi :) I was always rubbish with potted plants, but managed to get my first indoor tomatoes last year! Just struggling with keeping the outside ones alive with all the slugs. :roll: How old are the kids? If you can get them to help it's quite nice to grow some of the simpler ones together and take it...

I got very few this year. I don't plant loads, 5 sacks (earlies) and 1 bin (maincrop), but the 5 sacks only had about 20 potatoes in, which is a lot less than last year. Not emptied the bin yet. To be honest, I'm blaming the slugs more than the weather for mine.

Not fostered anyone, but have worked with lots of kids with behavioural problems, some were fostered. In that time I have ended up working with kids who have kicked, punched, head-butted, stole... I still intend to foster when the kids are older though ;-) I find the behaviour side easier to deal wi...