Selfsufficientish.com

Iam a diehard skip diver, best find from a financial point of view was an Art Nouveau bohemean glass vase- £110 at auction! Recent finds - An Arto Deco chrome fireside companion set in mint condition, now sitting by the woodburner. A very good quality lightweight bycycle frame- all Reynolds 531 doub...

As a dedicated cyclist in an area notorious for bike theft, I recently acquired out of a skip, a traditional three speed bike. It is abit rusty but mechanicaly sound, all I had to do was pump the tyres up! I use this for nipping up the corner shop/allotment and the town centre, working on the theory...

Hello Chad, your onions will tell you when they are ready to harvest as they will start to flop over, resist the temptation to help them do this as some books suggest. You can also put a fork under them and just break the roots hold in the ground, this will speed up the drying and ripening process. ...

Further to my last reply on this subject, we had a massive crop of sloes in this area last year, they looked like bunches of grapes on the branches! I would go along with not waiting for a frost before harvesting sloes, usually the frosts are so late that they have either shrivelled up or the birds ...

I have an old(ish) gardening book that says that you should never eat new potatoes on the day that you harvest them as the flavour will be much improved? Has anyone heard of this? or does anyone agree with this statement? On a slightly different note, I knew an old boy, a poultry keeper of some note...

Type sloe gin in to google and look for the www.sloebiz website for all you need to know about sloe gin. I make sloe gin every year plus damson vodka and cherry brandy using jars of morello cherries from Lidl. I have never tried this, my uncle always used to put a piece of the old fashioned cough ca...

Have been reading these postings with some interest, at the end of the day, I think the use of supermarkets is a question of balance, pragmatic even! If you shop in a supermarket try to buy British/ locally produced stuff, we steer clear of anything flown in. I feel that if we all did this then perh...

Biltong, or Jerky is air dried beef that is usually dried in the open air on racks, having first been coated with a salt/spice mix which acts as a flavouring and as an insect deterrent whilst drying. It has been used as an emergency storable food in Africa and South america for centuries. Other meat...

Hello again everybody, in answer to some of your questions, no South african link Nev, I got into biltong through eating the south american version called jerky that the Chileans i worked with in the Falklands used to make. Regarding the Falklands it is gardening on the edge! Potatoes, root vegetabl...

Last year someone gave me two Kiwi fruit plants from Wilkinsons, one turned out to be a stick! The other one raced away in my green house but no sign of any fruit. It died down and I cut it back, it survived the winter and is now racing away again and is coverd in small white flowers. What should I ...

Hello everybody, found this website via the Kitchen garden website, like what I have found here. I have an allotment, two green houses and grow herbs, soft fruit etc in the garden. As a family we like to hunt, gather and grow a large percentage of the food we eat. Also very interested in preserving ...