Growing vegetables in your garden is a pleasure, but is it sustainable or even worthwhile? Read More

In times past harvest festivals were more of a pagan celebration. Apart from being a time for hard work, harvest was a time full of mysticism and ritual. Read More

A Brief History of the Organic Movement and Soil Association in the UK. About the original ambitions. Read More

Jasmine flowers are picked in the morning before they open to release their scent. Read More

Tea drinking and cultivation originated in China and for almost 2,000 years was grown nowhere else. Exactly when the Chinese First discovered the useful properties of the camellia sinensis plant is uncertain but by 200 AD it was undoubtedly under cultivation. In 1644 the first tea was sold to British merchants and over the next… Read More

An extra virgin is an extra virgin is an extra virgin? Not so. But before we venture any further, what is an ‘extra virgin’? In 1991 European lawmakers adopted what had been Italian standard regulation for almost a century: they designated as ‘virgin’ an oil obtained straight from the olive only by mechanical means, and… Read More

Who would have known? Vinegar, created by an entirely natural process in which alcohol is turned into acetic acid, was once the wretched spoils of our home-made wine gone sour and the sad relics of the village winemakers’ failure. But here in Modena, in the heart of the region of Northern Italy that has given… Read More