How to grow your own garlic | Alys Fowler

Plant early to give cloves enough time to shoot up before the dull days of winter

This is garlic season and with love, sun and some good earth, each clove you plant will turn into a dense head of garlic. It is one of the simplest crops to grow, works just as well in a large pot as in the soil, and as long as you give the plants water in dry periods and as much sun as you can, there is little else to do.

You can order garlic now from seed merchants or pick up bulbs from garden centres. If you are doing the latter, squeeze the bulbs gently – you want plump, healthy-feeling cloves. The earlier you plant your cloves the better; try to get them in by the end of September. Garlic needs a cool period of 30-60 days with temperatures of 0-10C for clove initiation, otherwise you will end up with a single clove, like a tiny onion, that won’t store well. By planting now, you give the clove enough time to shoot up before the dark, dull days of winter.

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How to grow your own garlic | Alys Fowler

Plant early to give cloves enough time to shoot up before the dull days of winter

This is garlic season and with love, sun and some good earth, each clove you plant will turn into a dense head of garlic. It is one of the simplest crops to grow, works just as well in a large pot as in the soil, and as long as you give the plants water in dry periods and as much sun as you can, there is little else to do.

You can order garlic now from seed merchants or pick up bulbs from garden centres. If you are doing the latter, squeeze the bulbs gently – you want plump, healthy-feeling cloves. The earlier you plant your cloves the better; try to get them in by the end of September. Garlic needs a cool period of 30-60 days with temperatures of 0-10C for clove initiation, otherwise you will end up with a single clove, like a tiny onion, that won’t store well. By planting now, you give the clove enough time to shoot up before the dark, dull days of winter.

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How to make money from your spare room Nottingham Estate Agents

For many of us our spare room is a place where we store all those things we don’t know what to do with. But this under-utilised space is undergoing a rebirth as more and more people are letting their spare rooms to lodgers. Often, the key to harmony depends on the tenant fitting in with […]

The post How to make money from your spare room appeared first on OnTheMarket.com blog.

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Why the Queen’s money never goes down | Letter

Former Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker on public ownership of the crown estate and the result of a ‘stupid’ change to the royal finance arrangements by former chancellor George Osborne

It is misleading to suggest that “the Queen’s land and property” has dropped in value by £500m (Queen’s property drops in value by £500m after rental receipts decline, 18 September). The crown estate is public property, handed to the government in 1760 in a deal that in return absolved the monarch of the need to pay for the army, the civil service and so on.

In recent decades Buckingham Palace, and especially Prince Charles, has eyed the estate’s profits greedily and been keen to return it to royal hands – but not, of course, to start paying again for those costs removed from the monarch in 1760.

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How can homes sell 26 days more quickly?

Find out more.

The post How can homes sell 26 days more quickly? first appeared on Property blog.

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What is the £5,000 green homes voucher?

Let us talk you through it.

The post What is the £5,000 green homes voucher? first appeared on Property blog.

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‘I mustn’t swear, I mustn’t swear’: life as a victim of a Changing Rooms makeover

It trashed a £6,000 teapot collection; it set neighbour against neighbour; it made stars of Carol Smillie and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. Changing Rooms’ makers and contestants look back on their part in a TV treasure

Twenty years ago, when Caroline Hicks opened the door to reveal her new living room – renovated in just two days by her close friend Jo Thompson and designer Graham Wynne – three words became a mantra in her head. “I mustn’t swear, I mustn’t swear, I mustn’t swear,” the then 25-year-old thought to herself. Hicks’s plain cream Kent living room had been transformed into an “operating theatre”: the walls were white and her dining table was covered in aluminium paint. There were sandpaper squares on one wall and a permanently running water feature on the other. Hicks didn’t swear, but her lip visibly quivered. “Oh,” she said.

Hicks is just one of more than 600 people who appeared on the BBC’s home improvement show Changing Rooms between 1996 and 2004. The premise was simple: neighbours swapped homes and, with the help of designers, renovated a room each. With almost 12 million viewers at its peak, the programme was briefly a British institution – shortly after Hicks’s episode aired, a cashier in her local Habitat excitedly rang his boyfriend to exclaim that she was in his store. Recently, rumours began circulating that the show was to return after 16 years off-air. And why not? The daytime hit Ready Steady Cook was revived after a decade this March.

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