The Doorstep Allotment

Whilst getting my haircut the other day (yes I still have some worthy of cutting) I got chatting with the barber (well she's a skilled hairdresser actually, it's just her skill would be wasted on my 'scratch and go' style hair cut). We were talking about growing veg in containers on the patio... so here's …

14 Creative Ways To Reuse Empty Wine Bottles

I guess it's not every day you pop up in the Huffington Post  14 Creative Ways To Reuse Empty Wine Bottles. Some nice ideas in here but really, do I need instructions on how to make a wine bottle into a rolling pin??

‘Bootifully’ Easy Boot Projects

The wet winter months usually mean a return to more sturdy footwear for gardening, and quite often a return to not-so-stylish muddy platform heels! I wouldn’t describe ourselves as being particularly house proud, in fact with the number of children, chickens and a messy collie dog, its like shovelling snow in a snowstorm trying to …

Green Roof for the Chicken Coop

Every now and then I’m given a chicken house to put through some field trials and as a consequence I can end up with quite a few ‘buildings’ covering the field. It was on one such coop I figured I try a different kind of field trial by sticking a green roof on it. Why not, …

Fence Pole Table (to go with the Fence Pole Bench)

A bit ago on this blog I showed you how to knock together a cheap but very weather resistant garden bench using fence poles and some yorkshire board using nothing much more than a chainsaw, a hammer and some nails. Well heres another simple DIY job with more fence poles & board, again using little else then a hammer …

Wheelbarrow compost riddle & drying tray

With having a fairly large productive garden and more chickens than you can shake a stick at, we create quite a bit of garden waste, though far from ‘waste’ it is, as we compost just about everything we can. We do this not only to supplement the vegetable plot but also to create our own …

“California Dreaming” – the Californian Compost Bin

Good soil can produce good crops, but being able to make good compost can create great crops! I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with the ‘dark art’ of good compost making, and whilst what you put in is key, there is also an important element in terms of what you put it in. …

Make more of your chicken ark

Theres quite a wealth of chicken houses out on the market and if you are reading this then you'll know thats quite probably because keeping poultry at home is a booming hobby/ lifestyle choice. The thing is, it's also rather an addictive thing is poultry keeping. I know, I started with a flock of half …

Chainsaw, fence poles, six inch nails = garden bench

In retrospect I should have used nine inch nails for this blog post as it would have given me plenty of opportunity to put sneaky NIN quotes & references in it - a cracking band and to tenuously link them to a blog about building a garden bench would have meant an enjoyable evening listening to …

Leaf Mould – excellent source of soil conditioner

Leaf mould is one of the simplest things to create yet its source, dead leaves, are probably one of the most wasted sources of lasting humus. Come the autumn time I’m horrified to see people burning leaves, when I would without hesitation, happily take them all. In fact I might even venture to offer to …