We are officially into Autumn now and the last of my summer crops are finishing.  I am still hanging on hoping that some of my tomatoes may go red but I have harvested a lot [...]

I grew a new crop to me called Amaranth. I had heard that you could grow it like Quinoa that I tried for the first time last year. I am always interested in things that [...]

If we can avoid the supermarket and make things ourselves, we will.  This is especially true if they are made out of home grown produce.  Baked beans are really cheap from the shops but they [...]

At last I have built up enough tomatoes to make some sauce to use during the winter and so we canned some yesterday. Last summer was the first time that I had tried water bathing [...]

I had read about making courgette flour, apparently the Amish do it. It is gluten free and has low carbohydrate.  Since the shortages of flour in 2020 I have been interested in finding flour from [...]

I had a message from some one saying that they were giving up growing food as they were useless at it.  Seeds hadn't germinated, pests had destroyed crops, things had been slow to grow. and [...]

I didn't start growing courgettes until about 9 years ago.  I didn't think that they tasted of much and they took up a lot of my growing room.  When I retired, my food budget drastically [...]

The last few years have not been particularly good years for growing crops. This year has probably been one of my most unsuccessful years ever.  I am normally harvesting and eating most of my food [...]

My lemon balm is really doing well this year. I make hot drinks with it but I don't really utilise it enough.  It has a number of medicinal uses and so I am keen to [...]

A few weeks ago Mr S made me a raised, box tub out of some pallets that we had been given.  Previously he had made me a box out of some scaffolding planks that had [...]

It has been a very wet 18 months in the UK and farmers are already warning that there will be a potato shortage this year as many fields are still not ready to plant. Inevitably [...]

The rhubarb is loving all of this rain and so I am harvesting it a lot recently. Already I have made rhubarb gin, rhubarb brownies and a couple of days ago we made rhubarb crumble [...]

Mr S built me a raised bed that is quite tall to save me bending when I am gardening.  I could not afford to fill it with compost and so decided to fill it using [...]

It is that time of year here in the UK and the sowing of seeds has begun in anticipation of a garden full of food during the summer.  There is nothing better than the feelings [...]

I often get asked if it is worth growing my own food.  It does take quite a lot of time and effort, but it allows me to live on a small food budget and eat [...]

I wanted to have a go at growing some kind of grain to become more self sufficient and so I grew quinoa for the first time this year.  I did not know what a beautiful [...]

I like to use any free resources around me to save money.  One of the ways that I get free soil for my containers that I grow my vegetables in, is to make leaf mould [...]

At this time of year I am processing lots of tomatoes grown in the garden.  I roast them and take the skins off before making them into passata or bolognaise sauce.  I hate waste and [...]

I like to be as self sustainable as possible and at the end of every season I let a few of my crops flower and go to seed, or I save the seed from the [...]

Most of us have woken up at some time or another with that feeling of regret after a night celebrating. You feel dizzy, have a raging headache and your mouth feels like the bottom of [...]

I went on a local permaculture course earlier in the year and they suggested that you should study your garden for a year before you plant anything, and then make a detailed plan.  Well, I [...]

I have started getting free food every day now, and it will only increase as we move into summer and autumn. It is such a relief.  Having this free food helps me feel in control [...]

Many people pinch the shoots out from tomatoes, but not all gardeners remove the side shoots (or suckers as they are also called).  I often don’t pinch them all out as I grow so many [...]

Rhubarb brings back memories as a child of my gran giving me a stick of rhubarb and a bag with some sugar in as a treat, and me dipping it in and eating it raw. [...]