How to Make Mini Lanterns Using Baby Food Jars

Many years ago, long before my gardening obsession began, I spent a season or two living in a ground floor flat in Newbury that had patio doors that opened onto a backwater. Shortly after moving in we made friends with the local duck population, to the point where we bought poultry corn from the pet stall on the market for them – bread not being the best food for ducks.

Header image: The greenhouse at McMurdo Station in Antarctica is the only source of fresh food during winter. Eli Duke/Flickr, CC BY-SA

A few weeks ago I was talking about my desire to have more mint in the garden, a plan which is still a work in progress. It’s hard keeping mints in small pots happy in a hot, sunny garden. Ultimately I’d like to plant them into bottomless pots, sunk into the soil along the fence, but work on that area of the garden has stalled whilst we take care of other things.

Header image: Brooke Lark/Unsplash

The government has appointed a new “Food Supplies Minister” to oversee protection of British food supplies through our turbulent Brexit from the European Union. They’ve chosen David Rutley, who worked for various food companies – including PepsiCo and Asda – before becoming at politician, so at least he’s had experience of a proper job. It’s the first time we’ve had a minister purely for food since Lord Woolton was made Minister of Food in 1940.

I grew up understanding the phrase “a bit Heath Robinson” as meaning something that had been cobbled together, but I wasn’t really aware of the fact that Heath Robinson was a real person. Born in 1872, he was an English cartoonist and illustrator, and he became famous for drawings of convoluted contraptions – ridiculously complicated machines that achieved things you don’t need a machine for. It was in this capacity that ‘Heath Robinson’ entered the dictionary in 1912; he became more synonymous with cobbling things together during the ‘Make Do and Mend’ campaign of the Second World War. In fact, one of the automated analysis machines at Bletchley Park – a forerunner of the codebreaking Colossus – was named Heath Robinson in his honour.

Emma White, University of Surrey and Sarah Golding, University of Surrey

Last weekend, as the temperatures soared, I found a certain amount of solace in learning more about how plants are being grown in Antarctica – the coldest place on Earth. 

Jill Edmondson, University of Sheffield and Jonathan Leake, University of Sheffield

Header image: Space Salad, credit: University of Adelaide

Header image: ifarm.fi, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Native to South Africa, Streptocarpus – or Cape primrose – are lovely house plants that are grown for their fresh green leaves and pretty, primrose-like flowers in the UK. The flowers come in a wide range of colours, from white to pink, blues and purples, lemon yellow and red, and they are often bi-coloured. They bloom from spring though to autumn, offering a long-lasting display. Plants in the ‘Crystal’ series flower for even longer, and may even flower all year.