Recent content by slowworm

That would rule out Dacia, the Duster has reverse under 5th (bizarrely the manual tells you to lift a ring on the stick before selecting reverse but there's no ring there!). The 1.0l engined Duster was good value at little more than £10k new but the 3 cylinder engine is a bit under powered for...

The sound of a pot smashing? Ours is a simple job as there's an external door on the chimney and the pot is not capped. Modern rods are far more flexible that old cane rods, worth using if your chimney has a few bends.

Not foraging as such, but might be useful for others, our bamboo is now throwing up huge shoots which are edible and actually quite nice boiled for a few minutes. Our varieties were chosen for their edible shoots so there's no bitterness at all.

Yesterday I spotted a grass snake in one of my compost bins. Today I spotted two grass snakes in the same bin. Anyone know how to tell male from female? Both would be about 50cm long so still quite small, anyone know if they would be mature enough to breed?

Another bee hotel* to add to the other three which are being filled up by our leaf cutter bees. * Also known as a log with multiple deep holes drilled in it.

They make a good sized candle, how well do they release the set candle? If you are making quite a few candles I would use a long piece of wick and once the candle is set then trim close to the base - that way you don't waste too much wick.

Looks like a female broad bodied chaser.

In many places here they can come and go. I have seen them disappear when you get too much scrub. Here's a couple more photos, one showing the blackthorn that's swamping them. I think I'll thin the blackthorn for now and see how they go. The other pic is shows no purple marks on the leaves, I...

As Ozmundo mentions, it's Allium ursinum which I would normally call Ramsons to avoid confusion. I note it's also called broad leaf garlic. What I mean by saying my patch is not that rampant is I would of expected it to spread far more than it has.

It could well be £75 or over, it depends on who made or sold it, are there any clues? The smoker for example, could cost from about £7 for a cheap galvanised one to over £70 for a well made stainless version.

What has occurred to me is not much eats it, you get the odd leaf nibbled by slugs and snails but we have loads of deer there and they don't touch it, and we have badgers that don't dig it up either. Still it tastes good to us.

We've just been to our patch of woodland and picked some of wild garlic. It's been a short season due to the hot and dry weather, but plenty of insects on the flowers so I hope plenty of seed. This is a photo of the main patch, planted with about 20 bulbs 15ish years ago. We didn't pick much...

One of our small fields had half a dozen small orchids appear when we first moved in, lurking in one corner and escaping the silagers. I decided to stick to my main conservation mantra which is to do mostly nothing and left them to it, the grass hasn't been cut in 10 years and the hedge has...

Is there any makers name on the suit? That might be worth the most. The other equipment might be a fairly cheap kit which can be picked up for £20-£30 new. If you google beekeepers tool kit that should show you some prices.

I don't. Vast amounts of sewage sludge is spread on farmland in the UK and that contains all sorts of heavy metals along, with manmade chemicals, human drugs etc. Old fashioned night soil is probably better. We may have be reducing the usage neonics in the UK and EU at the moment but many were...