Megan Palmer

My favourite way of preserving ginger is to julienne finely and dehydrate.

It can then be used to make a hot lemon and ginger tea, added to marinades, chopped even more finely and added to chutneys.

The council have a mulch storage area beside the community garden and in the 15 years that I have gardened there, there has never ever been a fire.

Some of the mounds have been there for so long that vegetation has grown over them.

The mounds are several meters high and as others have mentioned, they will steam when fresh.

Safari, chrome & DuckDuckGo

No f code

You are logged in/not logged in

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:
I wish that were true here. I go to great lengths to harvest seed. I wonder, at what stage could I harvest the roots and bring them into my cold room to jumpstart next year's production? This would be huge.

Douglas, our winters are much milder than yours so we leave them in ground, I have never lifted them. Perhaps you could try leave some plants in ground and protect with a heavy mulch and removable cold frame?

I would guess that if you wait until the leaves have all started to die back in autumn that would be a good time to lift them.

Please do let us know whether either or both methods work for you.

@tereza when you eventually manage to get your scarlet runners to grow, leave the plants in the ground, they are perennials and will come back again.

How intriguing.

Cannot wait to see inside the pot.

It looks like a version of the Chinese hot pot. The rim on the bottom could be for where it is intended to sit over another pot?

Ours has multiple layers, charcoal is burnt in the bottom layer and a pot of soup sits on the top with a lid.

We haven't used ours for ages, it tends to leave sooty marks on the ceiling. We used to sit the pot on a couple of bricks to prevent heat damage to our dining table.

Nowadays, most people use a portable gas burner at the table with a standard pot.

So so sorry to learn of all your health issues and hope that you are able to find relief soon, if not a cure.

If you are not already growing saffron, are you able to obtain some corms? Both the stigma and petals can be used medicinally to aid  sleep and research has shown numerous other health benefits.

I use a pinch of the stigmas in hot water to make tea and combine the dried petals with lemon verbena leaves (aloysia citrodora) also as a sleep aid tea.

Healing wishes to you.

There are about 15 different apple varieties growing in the community garden orchard of which at least three are cooking apples that cook down into a thick pulp.

I like to use the the cooking apples for apple sauce.

The eating apples tend to retain their shape when cooked so if they are to be used to mkae apple sauce, they need to be mashed.

I always peel and core the apples because I save the scraps to make vinegar.

The cooking apples are often really large - this one is 5" in diameter.

Yes, sauerkraut, kimchee, kefir and apple vinegar

Do you at least remember whether the cake was chocolate, plain, carrot, citrus, marbled or any clues to help narrow down the possibilities?