The latest surprising results in farmers weekly, show an increase in pesticide use with GM crops and many new glyphosphate resistent superweeds m Both GM intensive and organic farming are heavily dependent on oil which is in decline, as prices rise and oil depletes both will need to reconsider optio...

hi Lindylane, well from what you wrote it seems you have already been feeding your soil well with compost and manure for years to improve the soil which is why the no dig is working well for you now You sound very observant and in tune with your garden and all gardens and gardeners are different, ha...

Sounds fun John. Not quite as exotic, but december and today a large bumble bee in my consevatory partaking of some cyclamen flowers !

Hi Linda, welcome to the forum. Like Solway, my soil was heavy clay, but after years of mulch and no dig it is now rich, fertile and the structure is good. The rain seems to be here to stay so if its working for you stick with it. Thick mulch helps to protect the soil from beig washed away,or blown ...

I am relearning something, as I had not knitted for ages, it's been too wet and cold for the garden so I have been knitting beanie hats for presents - hunky chunky ones for the men and some quite feminine ones for the ladies, must be good patterns because they are turning out very well, fun and quic...

LOL, watching this with interest, as I don't know either. A little glycerine in icing sugar helps to stop icing going rock hard too !

Farmers have struggled too, some still have spuds in the ground - just too wet to harvest. It was even too frozen for my chicken to scratch around in the dirt instead they chose off the frozen ground on a perch today. At this rate there will be a hike in food prices, so I'm grateful for what we are ...

Wow some snake, have you got a pond and frogs, that attracts them.

Just trying to imagine Tommy the Tractor weilding a hoe, pursued by a swarm of bees, there is a kids story in there somewhere.

The bees loved the borage I planted in summer, it flowerred and seeded, lots of seedlings grew and I was amazed to notice it flowering again a couple of days ago, shame there are no bees around to take advantage of it I also picked a couple of rosebuds yesterday.

I just read that somewhere johnboy, so will grow more next year and give it a try as it works well for you.

Hi Plumpudding, how does a round robin seed swap work please ?

Useful info Johnboy - do you cover your carrots to stop cross pollination with wild carrot ? I haven't saved carrots for that reason but I save most other seeds. After a couple of abortive attempts to grow horseradish thongs which were not cheap, I noticed a root of horseradish in my supermarket was...

Well I did manage to glean information from the internet on all candidates , all had said they had no plans to privatise policing, only one candidate was independent and there was something about him that came over as very establishment and I was not inspired to vote for him. As I had no wish to see...

happy Brthday Jude