How to make potpourri: starting out
I’ve been interested in drying flowers since I started growing them in earnest this year. This would be a way of extending the ‘sales’ season and getting 100% out of the flowers. Recently a kind reader emailed me and suggested that I dried rose petals as confetti. This would be a great use of our old French climbing roses – these go over fairly quickly so I can only really sell them in bud. I had also been toying with they idea of making a range of really good potpourri – this could be sold all year and wouldn’t be expensive to...
read more‘The Bad Beekeeper’s Club’ by Bill Turnbull : a review
Bill Turnbull’s interest in honey bees was tweaked when a swarm arrived in his garden and was removed by a local beekeeper. A few years later he took a local beekeeping course and was not daunted by his first painful stings. He had arrived for a practical beekeeping session straight from a TV studio. Unaware that bees have an aversion to hair gel, he was stung twice on the head. When he finally managed to get into his bee suit he found that a bee was trapped inside the veil. But even this horror didn’t put him off beekeeping. In fact...
read moreRavenwood Hall Hotel: Review and top marks
Having given me a clean bill of health on the MS and going gaga front, the neurologist put down his pen and announced, “The next thing that I want you to do is to book a holiday.” The ensuing silence was almost squeezable. “We don’t take holidays,” Danny eventually responded. (We can’t really afford them in normal circumstances and with me having been off work for months a ‘normal’ holiday was out of the question). “But we do sometimes go to the coast for a day. It’s a great break,” Danny continued. After a pause the...
read moreBosch Rotak 40 electric rotary lawn mower: a review
We bought the Bosch Rotak 40 electric lawnmower to replace our ancient petrol engine model. Read how well it performed on our bumpy lawn and how well it coped with the ovegrown bits.
read moreTurnip Oasis: a review
Last year Danny was surprised how much he enjoyed raw home grown cauliflower and raw courgette (zucchini) in salads. This year I thought I’d tickled his taste buds further by introducing him to raw home grown turnip. I’m not a big fan of turnips – they are fine in a winter stew but I’d been seduced by the description of turnip Oasis on the Thompson and Morgan site. Turnip Oasis is a new variety of turnip and when eaten raw has the taste of a melon. Danny was dubious about it. “Why would I want my turnips to taste of melon? I want...
read moreHow to make a temporary vase for cut flowers
I invested in Sarah Raven’s The Cutting Garden: Growing and Arranging Garden Flowers a while ago. It’s a brilliant inspirational book if you are raising flowers to cut for the house or to sell. A perfect reference guide. Recently I also bought her later book Grow Your Own Cut Flowers. This is a much simpler book than The Cutting Garden, listing just her favourite flowers and bulbs. But there are new tips and tricks and I’ve enjoyed lolling on the swing seat with the Min Pins and immersing myself in its pages. If I was going to...
read moreOn the Plot with ‘Dirty Nails’ by Joe Hashman: a review
“Stroking seedlings to make them stronger. You’re having me on!” Danny was goggle eyed. I picked up the book and showed him the relevant section. “Apparently seedlings gain strength and build a healthy root system when exposed to air currents. So you need to stroke the leaves of your greenhouse or windowsill seedlings to stop them becoming leggy and weak.” At the moment I’m spending more time reading about gardening than actually weilding a fork. At times this can be very frustrating but the flip side is that I have the time to...
read moreThe Cottage Smallholder’s Reader’s little book of Recycling tips and Pest defence tricks for the garden. Compiled beautifully by Ruthdigs
The February CS gardening competition was a great success and the entries provided an amazing amount of practical tips. Unlike forum comments these can be hard to find through a search engine. So Ruthdigs has compiled them all in a booklet that is beautifully laid out and the file can be printed on your own printer at home. She has mentioned this book briefly on the forum and in the comments section of the results post of the competition. Just in case you missed it we have uploaded the file to our server so you can download the PDF file...
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