Health & Home

With Covid keeping us all confined and the garden going into winter mode it’s time to turn inward and grow some magic in your kitchen. Not just for the five star restaurants - microgreens will raise your ham sandwich to gourmet level.  Microgreens are easy to grow and will provide you with fresh nourishing greens even in the depths of...

Make a healthy start to the New Year and grow something fresh and nutritious without having to leave your kitchen (apart from going to the gym of course).  Sprouts and microgreens will give you a very literal 'kitchen garden' giving you attractive additions to a salad, extra crunch to a sandwich and lots of healthy, fresh food. Microgreens Plate of...

It does seem a little early to be talking about Christmas, but if you want to have new potatoes for Christmas dinner this is what you do: What to plant You need cold treated seed – the cold breaks the dormancy cycle and spurs the potato into growth again. By using your own homegrown seed potatoes, or those from an...

We can all agree that growing your own vegetables has many advantages.  Nothing compares to home-grown for taste; growing your own means that your vegetables are very fresh, full of nutrients and taste delicious.  Then there’s the satisfaction – that sense of achievement that comes with picking your first tomato, or better still, when serve your first salad to a...

We have been stocking the Livos range of non toxic paints and wood treatments for some years now. As far as we know, Livos are the world’s first manufacturer of natural paints. The company was born in 1974 when a group of hippyish scientists and technicians began researching the use of plant compounds (phytochemicals) to create high quality paints and...

Parsnips are a very reliable winter root vegetable.  They have a distinct nutty flavour and sweetness and are very versatile in the kitchen.  In Roman times they were believed to be an aphrodisiac and they were often used as a source of sugar before cane and beet sugars were available.  Parsnips are a member of the cow parsley family along...

There are two types of people in the world – those that like sprouts and those that see sprouts as the vegetable that spoils Christmas.  This is probably all down to cooking so perhaps I should have started by saying there are two types of cooks in the world – those that respect the sprout and those that boil it...

The History of the Turnip & Swede Turnips are a cruciferous vegetable (member of the mustard family). Turnips thrive in cool climates. The turnip that we know is thought to have descended from the Wild Turnip which is native to Central Asia, the Mediterranean and the Near East. The turnip was a well-established crop in Roman times. Fast forward to...

Paint – Look beyond the colour The properties that we desire in paint - such as durability, dispersion, resistance to fungus and vibrant colour - are unfortunately generally achieved by the use of man-made chemical additives.  The constituents of most paints may include formaldehyde, heavy metals and volatile organic compounds - or VOCs for short (those VOCs are partially responsibe...

Livos wood care products will colour, enhance and care for all your wood items in a natural and sustainable way.  The base of most LIVOS products is the oil of linseed - one of the oldest cultivated plants.  You could say that linseed is woods best friend! Linseed Oil Flowers of Linseed (or Flax). When used as a wood finish...