Thanks John for your advice. I'll try the sequestered iron route as our soil is light and stoney. Have already got some as I dose my rhodos and azaleas every year. Guess it's too late to dose them now as they'll be losing their leaves soon and I wont be able to tell whether their tonic has made any ...

Am new to this site Chantal, but have been absolutely fascinated by your story of Rocky. Is he really so domesticated that he's happy poodling around your house, and can a hen/cock adapt to indoor living part of the time? I've just posted a query about keeping a solitary hen as a pet and wonder how ...

The restrictive covenant on our garden sadly prevents us from keeping "poultry" but I wondered whether I could get round this by keeping a single hen as a "pet"? Would it be cruel just to keep one hen? Are they happier in a small flock, and would it lay eggs if it were alone? I r...

Lovely video. I wanted to share it with a couple of animal loving friends but when I clicked on the link again it didn't show up and a box at the top of the website said "This video has been withdrawn due to violations of use" or some such wording. Pity !

I planted them all with homemade compost dug in around the roots and in Spring they had a helping of garden-centre bagged composted stable manure forked in the earth about them, plus a light scattering of Rooster Booster poultry pellets. I had a generous yield of fruit from both varieties of bush. I...

Many thanks for this Sprout. I have lots of tomatoes piling up so will give it a try. Last time I used a very low temperature slow oven. I see this recipe uses 225 degrees so possibly hot and quick works better than long and slow. Worth another attempt anyway as the freezer is fast filling with bags...

I have two redcurrant bushes, and one blackcurrant bush. The leaves on the two redcurrant bushes have been a pale light green/yellow for two years whereas the blackcurrant bush leaves are consistently dark green. Is this normal or are my redcurrant bushes lacking in something which is making the col...

Anybody with a pond should beware of mowing their lawns after the end of June when the baby froglets are migrating from the ponds. I now always do a brief visual sweep of the lawn before mowing and mow very slowly indeed ,so that the little creatures can jump out of the way and I don't churn them up...

Delighted you've snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. It was very brave of you to go for the double whammy, but it obviously worked. I suspect part of your problem may have been not boiling for long enough the first time, and secondly, using over-ripe fruit which has lost some of its natural pe...

Have you tried blackberry syrup? Great with ice cream, in porridge or making Hot Blackberry with lemon drink in winter. Need: Campden tablets (for sterlising,) from Chemists,Winemaking shops or Health Food shops. Blackberries, Sugar, Glass screw top bottles Qtr pint water to each pound of fruit 8 - ...

Can anybody please tell me how to make those delicious semi-preserved herbed tomatoes which are sometimes sold in delicatessens for a vast price? They arn't simply oven roasted & stored in oil. There's some other process involved and my only attempt at trying to reproduce them last year ended in...

Last autumn after my Hungarian Wax chillies had fruited I brought them indoors and pruned them back. They soon started to flower again and even bore a few tiny chillies but at that point they were killed off by whitefly, which also seems to attack my basil plants if I keep them indoors for any lengt...

Last year I tried doing some oven dried tomatoes but wasn't exactly sure how far they had to be dried, i.e. whether they should have a little moisture left in them or whether they should be as dry as leather. I dried them for 3 or 4 hours and then covered them in a sterlisied jar with olive oil. How...

I think you will certainly enjoy your Sweet Dumpling. When roasted the flesh tasted very similar to baked chestnuts. I've always left my Sweet Dumplings on the vines until virtually all the leaves have withered and as they get riper the green stripes start to appear. By this time the skins should be...

How disappointing for you!. In my early married life we once made 25 lbs of marmalade which didn't set so I tried every trick in the book to try rectify my mistake ! How long did you boil it for, and did you use the traditional method boiling on a hob or in a microwave? Do you have a microwave? If s...