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That sounds interesting, Chuck. How come you have the fish water? Don't the plants in your aquaponics system 'eat' it all? I just ordered a few easy2grow plant containers. They are self watering pots of the nifty kind. Expensive, but it's my birhtday soon :-) Since we had a concrete slab in our gard...

And big stones, too! Glad that you didn't have any damage. Those stones could have easily damaged tender plants.

I have a Panasonic SD207 (must be 8 years old, or so) and it is great. However, I detest the ladles in the finished bread, so I only use it to knead the bread. In my experience that makes a much fluffier bread than when I have the dough kneaded by the Kenwood Chef. Having said that: I can only make ...

We use the scarecrow device at night to convince a neighbourhood tomcat to leave our garden alone. He scares our cats into undesired behaviour (they're now 'marking' their own territory; including our living room). So we lock our cats in at night and hope the scarecrow gives the horrible tomcat a go...

Almost a year ago I got an e-bike and I love it. But with -14 C, the batteries don't work very well. Oh well, I admit I didn't have a burning desire to get on my bike with those temps. In a more normal temperature range the bike will get me into town (8 miles, over a steep hilly part) and to the rai...

I'd put in 'hungry' plants. If it's a raised bed I'd suppose it doesn't stay really wet? Then I don't see why spuds would't work. Courgettes, pumpkins, corn. And don't forget greens which like lots of nitrogen: early spinache, perhaps, to start the season?

Good luck!

Is there a risk of botulism in the jars I use for my jams - (pasta sauces, mayonaise from supermarkets) Shouldn't be: these foodstuffs would be pressure-canned to kill off the botulism spores. Or be too acidic to be any danger at all. and is there a risk in supermarket foods or meat form the butche...

As this is an important suject, with far-reaching consequences if you get it wrong, I am putting on a teachers' hat here. Apologies if I come across as lecturing, but it's just too important to let misinformation continue. botulism produces toxins which are not distroyed by heat. when you heat the f...

Parts of the Netherlands had -23 C last week and over here on the German border we had -15 C. The winter had been so extremely mild up till then, that my laurel and fig and some other herbs were unprotected. Oops...

Yes to both. If it smells pleasantly sour (sorry, hard to describe) and hasn't gone uck it should be fine.

On my allotment I've never had trouble with my fruit trees being pollinated, due to the fruit trees my various neighbours had. I wouldn't worry if I were you.

I dress up a big house plant (ficus benjamini) with fairy lights and a few lightweight decorations.
This year I got led-lights so now the leaves of the plant don't suffer tiny burns anymore.

A gene that switches off the abilty to digest milk doesn't really make sense. The natural cycle would be for a young one to wean off mother's milk, so it wouldn't evolutionally be necessary to still digest milk. In exacly those societies where herding cows has become big business (like e.g. north-w...

That's great, but .... small step??? That's one ambitious small step :-)

Merry Christmas!