Selfsufficientish.com

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,On the other hand, I also agree with Demi that completely excluding all sugars from our diet would be a very bad idea indeed................... As someone who has consciously avoided eating sugar (as in Lustig’s use of the word “sugar” to mean both sucrose — beet and can...

In London, the pumpkins have done reasonably well this year despite the cold and wet spring/early summer, but the butternuts have struggled producing about 6 small fruits from 4 plants. I find butternuts, despite choosing varieties supposedly suitable for the English climate, rarely do well except i...

I used to get a veg growing magazine many years ago, yes they get very repetitive after a couple of years, but what I liked was that you got articles on specific vegetables that went into a lot more depth than you find in most books.

I have suffered from hayfever for many, many years. I tried conventional medicine and took antihistamines, these just knocked me out. Through trying to think about what my body was saying and trial and error, I discovered that if on potentially bad days, if I didn't drink during the day and avoided ...

Thanks Dutch Dave, it is good to hear that people don't have problems keeping animals on their allotments, though I don't think it would go down well with my suburban neighbours if I suggested they could shoot the animals if they escaped!!

An artichoke or is it a cardoon has self-sown itself in amongst my celeriac. This is it's first year and it has grown enormous, the leaves are about a metre long. Having grown artichokes from seed, I know they usually start quite slowly so that's why I am beginning to wonder if it's a cardoon but at...

Oh thanks narmour, do you have any regulations about their hutches/cages or how they are looked after/fed etc?

Being outside of the consumer society, where you spend half your time working for them only to spend the other half giving them back the money getting crap stuff in return. Being in control of part of your life as oldjerry said, but also being creative and constantly learning new skills, in fact usu...

Thanks everyone, I guess the committee's reasoning is they don't want them themselves, so they are only going to be a nuisance. This has only come up because the local authority wants to get rid of the responsibility for allotments and is proposing that we self-manage them and is insisting that all ...

Our allotments are thinking of ruling out the keeping of chickens on our allotments. Currently no one keeps them but it is permitted under the Allotments Act, our Lease and currently our rules. I think the committee should at least provide the pros and cons before outlawing this right. Does anyone h...

I agree in principle with the previous replies but be careful there are different types of lime, hydraulic as diggernotdreamer is using and hydrated which is the lime normally stocked by builders merchants and then there is lime putty. Traditionally lime putty was used in mixes 2 or 3 sharp sand to ...

I also disagree, flour doesn't go 'rancid' within days, it will last several months. Bakers often keep freshly milled flour back for a couple of months because it is slightly easier to use and performs better, without any affect on taste..

Thanks Daz101, this should spur me on to a new venture, although this winter I was contemplating making some beer, I thought I'd start with a kit. Somehow I sense it's not going to be easy getting my head around all the complexities of how to treat the hops, sorting out what type they are and how an...

Don't really know anything about hops, but we have got some self sown ones that are in full flower now. So if we pick them now, what should we do with them?

Sorry I'm a bit late adding my pennyworth. As far as I can see there is no real difference between runner beans and butter beans. I grow both and eat both, but then we tend to eat any left over beans, after saving what we need for sowing next year. Runner bean pods are long and the butter beans shor...