Nancy Reading

One of my new garden resolutions is to use my urine more effectively in the garden. Our indoor toilet is attached to a sceptic system, so my nutrients are lost a little there. I do wee direct outside, but not on my crops as yet.
It is interesting that adding woodash gives a more balanced fertiliser, and it's all free....

I think all parts of all alliums are edible, most of them are pretty tasty too!

Correction - the tray is removeable! I was looking for makers' marks and turned the table on it's side, having removed the glass surfaces, and the tray fell out! What I thought were welds were just blobs of paint.
I couldn't see any maker's marks though. The wrought iron is bent into the shape of stylised tulips. I guess the table could be factory made. I can't find anything similar on a web search.

Jeff Rash,
Your post was moved to a new topic.
(This informational message will self destruct in two days)
good new topic

It was late coming but worth waiting for this year - everything arrived at once last week: sunshine, cuckoo, swallows, all the spring flowers, and now the crabapple is blooming!

spring blossom

Happy, happy, happy!!!

I wonder whether it would be worth doing some research on this ourselves?

I have some established honeyberry bushes that have for 10 years been grown in close proximity to comfrey, which has been allowed to die down and mulch the soil. I also have honeyberries that are no where near comfrey. I could easily take samples of both plants (and the comfrey and the soils) for lab analysis. I wonder how much the testing would cost (anyone know a tame chemist?) and whether we could get crowdfunding for a citizen science paper?

How would a good experiment look? What do we want to know?

Now I've got my polytunnel (yay!) I'm hoping to dry more food myself so am interested in the feedback on this thread. I'm hoping to dry some of my tomatoes, as you mention Jeff, and also leafy greens. Nettles, mint, kale should all dry fairly quickly and be useful and nutritious.
I've heard that dried root veg make easy soup mixes, so I'm going to try with carrot, parsnip and neeps (rutabaga). We sell a vegetable crisp (chips) in our shop which is really tasty made from parsnip, beet and carrot. Normal crisps are potato. Although these are normally fried rather than dried of course.
Not a staple, but dried pears are like sweeties (candy)!

Ac Baker wrote:I think that a valve radio might benefit from air flow, that's a good thought.

I suppose it could be that old. I was thinking it dated from the 1970s. Hallway isn't the obvious place to put the house radio (edit - but maybe it isn't a telephone table at all?). I'll see if I can find out more about the age of the table.

Are we thinking this was a handmade one-off item?  Is it possible that recessed tray was for the phone, and that's just the part they had to construct it?  Is the cushioned seat section made from the same perforated sheet metal under the cushion?

It seems to be handmade, although whether it was a one off is unknown. I would have thought that just making the glass top the full length would have been far easier, unless there is a specific purpose to the recessed area. The cushion may be a replacement, but it is supported by a metal crossbrace halfway and (presumably) a wooden board hidden inside the cushion, no mesh.