Category: Garden

Mar 25

How-To: Grow Lettuce

By Bailey

how to grow lettuceSummer salads taste better with homegrown lettuce.
Image pinned by Leslie Simpson from Southern Living

I’m lucky to have a balcony outside my kitchen – it’s ideal for growing all those handy cooking staples. Herbs go without saying – however my pot of lettuce proved the most beneficial last summer. Lettuce is the little black dress of vegetables – it goes with everything. Healthy and packed with fresh flavour when picked straight from the soil, it’ll save you many a penny during the sunny months.

I grow cut-and-come-again lettuce, which does exactly what it says on the packet. You pick the outer leaves to eat, which allows new leaves to grow up the centre. It’s like you have your very own boomerang salad – designed to give you no excuse but to eat healthily.

Here are my top tips to growing luscious lettuce in just one pot…

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Feb 24

How-To: Remember to put the bins out

By Smith

how to remember to put the bins out

I don’t know about you, but I always seem to forget bin day. Having moved house a lot in the last few years, I’ve had bin day on a Monday, a Wednesday and a Thursday, and my brain just doesn’t compute that now it’s a Wednesday again.

I also have the dilemma of remembering whether it is black bin day (general household rubbish) or red bin (recycling) day. Although the council kindly send me a little calendar, I usually go by what my neighbours are doing. However, this is a little unreliable when I can’t even remember what day the bin goes out and if I leave the house before my neighbours are up and putting theirs out.

The reason I’m telling you all of this is because I’ve come up with what I think is an ingenious idea to help me and Tim remember which bin day it is! ( Read more )

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Posted in Garden, Kitchen

Jan 20

How-To: Dispose of household waste safely

By Smith

urban outfitters binTrash bucket from Urban Outfitters

Whenever you embark on a project in the home, the focus is on getting the right tools and materials for the job, and getting it done right, and not so much on what you’re going to do with any of the leftover waste and materials afterwards.

But we all have a responsibility, whether renting or owning a house, to dispose of household waste properly. This seems to be easier said than done though, as there doesn’t appear to be much education about how to get rid of rubbish other than what goes in your black bin and your recycling bin.

So, here’s a handy how-to get rid of household waste: ( Read more )

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Posted in Bathroom, Garden, Living Room

Jan 17

How-To: Display Fresh Herbs

By Bailey

To save surface space, we chose to hang our herbs from the wall. (Storage from IKEA).

A kitchen without fresh herbs is like a bakewell tart without a cherry on top. Herbs make a kitchen – they add a fresh feel to the room and smell great. When it comes to food, they can transform a dish, while also acting as a great garnish.

Displaying your herbs is important – not only do they need to be positioned so they receive sunlight, but you need to be able to grab them in a hurry should your cooking require some herby SOS.

Looking around online, it seems that displaying your herbs in your kitchen has become a thing of style, as well as necessity. With this in mind, I present to you my favourite techniques for displaying herbs…

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Posted in Garden, Kitchen

Jan 04

How-To: Make use of chipped mugs and cups

By Smith

Mugs by elmstreet found on PinterestMugs pinned by Jessica Ray from westelm.com

I came across this thread on one of my favourite forums, MoneySavingExpert.com. I love this site for discovering new ways to be thrifty and inventive, and as I love a good deal, it appeals to the side of me which loves a bargain!

This thread was all about uses for old chipped mugs which were still pretty but not really hygienic to keep using (apparently bacteria get soaked into the fabric of the mug and propagate there which is pretty gross!). There were some fab ideas so I thought I’d share them with you along with some inspirational pics I found on pinterest and pinned to our boards: ( Read more )

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Posted in Bathroom, Garden, Kitchen, Living Room

Dec 15

How-To: Make Roasted Chestnuts

By Smithhow to make roasted chestnuts

When I was a student, I had to be creative when it came to cheap entertainment. I’d spend most weekends driving to Surrey to see Tim, spending all my spare cash on petrol and leaving very little to spend on cinema and shopping trips. One of our favourite and free weekend activities during the autumn/winter months was to go walking in one of the nearby woods and forage for chestnuts.

Sounds very Enid Blyton I know, but it’s so much fun! Finding those prickly green shells on the footpath with their smooth, rich brown gems inside is exciting, plus you get fresh air and exercise…

We’re really lucky that we have lots of woods near us on the Surrey/West Sussex border, but some of you may not live so close to woodland, so if you’ve found chestnuts in suburbia, please comment and share your hot spots with the rest of us!

So, what do you do when you’ve foraged your local woods for chestnuts? You roast them of course! Here’s how: ( Read more )

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Posted in Garden, Kitchen

Dec 04

How-To: Insulate a Greenhouse

By SmithHow to insulate a greenhouse

We’ve only just seen the first proper frost of the winter this week but it does mean the long cold stretch is finally here. Now, let’s not let the cold weather get us down – it comes every year so we’ve no reason to be surprised and it means we can wrap up in snuggly blankets, eat comforting stews and hibernate!

At this time of year there are some things you can do to help protect your garden and home before the real biting weather kicks in, and one of these things is insulating your greenhouse. If you have a greenhouse and want to make sure your favourite pot plants survive the frosts, you’ll want to follow this cheap and easy how-to. ( Read more )

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Nov 27

How-To: Restore a Rusty Iron Gate

By Bailey

Gates are largely overlooked when it comes to gardening. Of course, you don’t need to plant or water a gate – but it contributes to the beauty of a garden just a much as your most prized petunias.

Gates welcome you into their garden – they’re like the front-of-house, the presenters, the doormen of horticulture. If it doesn’t look presentable and inviting, it’s going to give the wrong impression of what lies inside.

When we moved into our new nest, our garden gate was falling off its hinges and had been invaded by rust. This would not do…

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Posted in Garden

Nov 15

How-To: Plant Lavender

By Smith

How-To Plant Lavender

The garden at my rented bungalow was incredible;  it was the kind of garden kids could run around in, build dens and treasure trails in and let your imagination go wild in. In fact, I reckon grownups could get in on the action – it’s that cool. ( Read more )

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Posted in Garden