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If the Electricity Went Off on a Cold October or November Evening, What Would Stop Working?

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  If the Electricity Went Off on a Cold October or November Evening, What Would Stop Working? “A power cut doesn’t just turn the lights off anymore—it can turn the house off.” It is half past six on a dark autumn evening. The curtains are closed, dinner is cooking and the heating has begun to make the house comfortable. Then everything goes quiet. The lights going out are obvious. But the heating has also stopped. The internet has disappeared. The electric hob is useless. The garage door may need opening manually, and the telephone plugged into the router may no longer make calls. Your mobile phone still works—for now. We have already considered what belongs in a resilient household cupboard. But food is only one part of preparedness. We also need to understand the systems that make our homes work. What depends on electricity, what has a backup, and does everyone in the household know what to do? Most power cuts are local and short-lived. A little preparation can make those interru...
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Don't Throw Autumn Away — Turn Garden Waste Into Next Year's Free Fertiliser

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Don’t Throw Autumn Away — Turn Garden Waste Into Next Year’s Free Fertiliser Every autumn we throw away material in one bin—and buy something remarkably similar in a plastic bag six months later. Leaves, lawn mowings, faded flowers and hedge trimmings leave the garden. Then spring arrives, and we visit the garden centre for bags of compost, mulch and soil improver. There are good reasons to buy specialist growing materials. But some of what we purchase could be made from material already growing outside our back door. Autumn offers an opportunity to keep that value at home. With a compost bin, a few reused sacks and a little sorting, much of the seasonal clear-up can become a resource for future gardening. There is one qualification to the promise of “free fertiliser”: garden compost, leaf mould and woodchip do different jobs. Understanding those differences makes them far more useful. Feed the Soil—and Understand What You Are Making “Compost” can mean several things on a garden-centr...
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