Selfsufficientish.com

All the damp has turned my beds into a seething mass of rampant slugs. . . Although the tomato plants have flowers on them now, so if the sun comes out, I might do okay on toms. My surviving chilli plants are getting big, and the perpetual spinach is going jack & the beanstalk stylee. . .

Hello! As far as the uk goes, I think there aren't many people on jobseekers' allowance, these days, who don't have a genuine need. It's simply too degrading and too much hassle for too little money. These people are demonised as workshy scroungers who must be pushed into jobs - when the jobs simply...

I am having a go with chillis, this year. I had a chilli plant given to me many years ago, and it thrived under glass - I lived in a transit and it was perfectly content in the passenger seat, although I did end up doing quite a lot of manoeuvring around to face the sun. I sun-dried the fruit, and t...

I've never used one, but I have a mate in a similar situation who uses an electric bicycle. . . one of those hybrid ones that charges on the way down hills . . . and I know that he regularly does this with his small person on a child-seat. . . You did say the roads are dangerous in the area, tho - I...

Sounds like your cat is scared of something outside. . . can she smell badger, or some such beastie? Have you tried picking her up and taking her to the door, to see that it's safe? Re mice - snap traps. Humane ones don't work. I once built one, involving a bucket and a pulley (had too much time on ...

Don't know your particular stove, I can only just get 8 hours from mine, butit's only a little one. Are you finding that out goes out, with wood still not burned, or that out used all the fuel? Get it good and hot, with a good couple of inches of ash in the bottom, then a handful of coal, and fill i...

I really think there're only four even vaguely valid reasons for objecting to turbines sited locally. . . They're local enough that they're as noisy as a busy road, or a bad rock band (happened to me. Band, not turbines). Someone who produces all their own energy. Someone who doesn't use any energy....

Yes, even in the heat of summer the temperature under-ground is quite a bit lower than that on the surface . . . And, strangely, in the winter it seems to be slightly less cold than the surface - meaning that my milk doesn't tend to freeze when we get frosts. The ground is very rocky where we are, s...

Can't help with freezing, but my fridge is a hole in the ground with a cool-box in it . . . Stone-age technology, mate (well, the hole, anyway . . . ). Keeps my milk good for 3 days when we get a warm bit of summer . . .

a few lines of polyprop over the woodburner have always worked for me in the winter . . . But then, i don't have kids, and i don't mind smelling like mr fawkes . . . Dries quite quick, tho.

Surely. red onions. . . although mine haven't done much yet. . .

Oh - my mate has fruiting bushes - like wabbit sez, that's gotta save a few quid. . .

No way! My beetroot's still seedlings. . . Was spring too late to plant it? My radishes are over & done with, tho. . . Garlic seems to have finished - the plant-bit above the ground has died off . . . dug up a couple to see what was afoot, and they have formed one big, round bulb. . . tasty, tho...

Hey mate, Afraid I don't know about de-mouseification plants, but I've made DIY humane traps once or twice in places I've lived which have been moused . . . You need a big pot sorta thing - a bucket is too small, a field mouse will jump out. . . I had an old glass sweet-jar with a narrow neck, that ...

Supermarkets, innit. . . more and more of our ('our' as in da western world) food is grown on big factory farms and transported across the world . . . much of it is GM food designed to be processed and inedible for humans without additives. . . people have very little idea where it comes from, until...

I know someone who spreads it on brussels sprouts and then eats the evil things raw . . . What a pervert . . .