Selfsufficientish.com

Of course the ultimate would be to have a smallholding and be totally self sufficient .... Becks :flower: Can I be a wet blanket as ever with things as we were very self sufficient when we lived on a farm when I was a kid - but there were buts of course. Would you be able to provide all your own po...

My family think that there's a mistake somewhere in the makeup of me because I have no foreign travelling instinct whatsoever.

88. It always takes more compost than you think it will when you are working with clay.
89. My adult, working local kids like eating vegetables and don't mind weeding but they don't like digging.

Have a Hadrian's Wall of compost to use at the moment. So I've lifted strawberries, built up two raised beds that had settled and replanted the strawberries. They'll have their feet down by spring and won't have to be disturbed when they are getting ready to fruit. Also topped up the raspberry canes...

Funny oldfella I was just going to say that. Never seen my allotment do anything - it's seen me do an awful lot though.

Let the muck rot well - it needs to be a couple of years old before it's any use at all on the allotment. Then dig it on.

On the other hand - layer of green waste, layer of manure, layer of green waste, layer of manure etc - cover and use next year.

Top three
Carrots
Onions
Beetroot

Failures
Calabrese
Broccoli
Spring Onions

Ah this year you don't know what's in your muck chemical wise and also I would have to ask the family to bring it in as I don't drive. They hated the job last time and whinged about the smell (city kids despite growing up in rural areas it seems!).

My aren't we a set of individuals who post here. Before I moved here, I lived in a block of 12 flats - 6 to each side. You'd find that people would sit on the stairs or the outside wall and natter, look out for each other, share information on repairs, complain about the garden not being done, the l...

I had a carpenter visit this here social housing flat to block access from under kitchen void via the cupboard containing the gas meter (just don't ask about the design). They never came back for a year till yesterday I found one climbing in through the back bedroom window - remember this is a groun...

Well Thurston Garden - you need lots of compost. I learned that last year in the same situation. And I seem to spend more time composting than I ever do gardening. It's not really true but that's what it feels like.

I'm sorting out compost heaps as if it's a matter of life and death - well that's what it feels like :mrgreen: Having moved one and spread it, built another one out of three piles, discovered that I have one that is almost ready to spread last week, today I purloined a passing bin that would otherwi...

Do we really need a house of our own? Or can families become a community again?

It's an interesting line of thought.

Pictures of mother on a Sunday afternoon there. She'd sit down with trousers from me and much younger kid brother. She always bought two of the same style. This allowed her to patch the knees of little brother's newest playing out ones from his older ones. She wanted to know how on earth I always wo...

I actually took the metal rod out of the Ikea blind when it feel apart. slotted it through the slot at the top of a length of netting from charity shop and propped the metal rod on the hooks that were in the frame of the window. It needs tweaking but I've been too busy this summer. I've plenty of ne...