At last! I've made some progress with this ongoing saga. Well, there are two types of betel plant. (There might be more but I only know of these two.) There's betel leaf (piper saramentosum) and piper betel (piper betle). The former is an edible leaf, and is exactly what I want. The other is a much ...

Now the weather is warming up a bit there's a noticeable pong inside at the back of the house. It's a kind of sour smell. I thought it was maybe something to do with the building work we've just had done in the kitchen and the smell would wear off. Mr Stravaig thinks it's the dairy farm not far away...

Just to update on this thread... well we did eventually manage to get a curry leaf plant (from P4P meentioned above) more than a year ago, and miraculously it's still living. Doing reasonably well. Too small to be of any culinary use, but as long as it's still alive, there's hope. I found out that b...

Well, no point in leaving the fruit to rot on the tree. I hesitate to use the word 'tree' as it's about a foot tall and is sitting on the kitchen windowsill. I picked the red lime that looked most like it was asking to be picked. Oh, so juicy, sweet, and fragrant. My hands were covered in the juice ...

The plants have just arrived as arranged. I'm delighted with them. :D They were very well packaged. The plants looked very healthy and well looked after. Each came with an information page about how to care for them. The red lime plant even had five fruit ready for picking! They ranged in size from ...

Thanks, yeah, or I could maybe get some cheap ones from the garden centre. It's such a large area, the pots I have are just kinda lost there. I suppose a couple of raised troughs along the front of the house would be a good place to start. We got a job lot of bulbs last year. We could start by excav...

Thanks, Westi, I also found some good advice on the RHS site. https://www.rhs.org.uk/fruit/citrus/grow-your-own Anyway, as you say, they take a bit of looking after, often including moving them indoors in bad weather. That, plus Mr Stravaig said that 50cm diamenter pots weren't very feasible in the ...

I saw an advert in a recent Radio Times for lemons, oranges and limes. The lemon trees are four years old and the limes trees are expected to produce full size fruit within 10 months. This sounds a bit optomistic to me. (The lemon is 20 quid, the lime is £30.) There's not a lot of detail other than ...

Our garden leaves in lot to be desired in some ways. It's big but it's not exactly good for growing stuff. The previous owner had some kind of car repair business, so if you want a small car park (bigger than some I've seen) our place is ideal. However, we only have one car and the occasional visito...

Thanks for your advice. That all went very well. First of all the quote was very reasonable as was the time-frame. We only had to wait three weeks for the start date. Well, I'm thinking, 'Pigs might fly'. The guys (electrician, plumber, joiner, ) showed up as arranged. They were good workers - and n...

We like to support our local businesses. If you don't sometimes buy stuff from the local corner shop or fishmonger, etc. then you might miss it when it's gone. We also try to buy British as far as possible in the supermarkets, without getting silly about it. But, from necessity, I buy a lot of stuff...

I mentioned before that we're having some building work done in the house. One thing that no one mentioned to us VAT (not even B&Q who you think might be geared up to mention it when someone is spending a substantial sum on an accessible shower room). I just happened to find out about this whils...

Many thanks, RetroPants. That's helpul. As it happens, we've already bought nearly all the materials, eg cabinets, sinks, etc. So the guys won't have to buy any of that on our behalf. I suppose most people don't get their kitchens done up if they're not planning to pay for it but people who don't pa...

I wonder if you can help with some advice, please. We're having our kitchen done up. This is a necessity from taking on this house, not a whim. Anyway, our first plumber did a runner and the work he'd repeatedly promised by the end of the year hasn't even started yet. (Fortunately he didn't have any...

Thanks, Geoff I've never heard of a bokashi bin before. There's a good explanation here about the what, why and how of them https://www.rhs.org.uk/garden-inspiration/get-gardening/bokashi I checked out a famous online retailer and you can get 2 x 20 litre bins for about £55. And bokashi bran is abou...