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Dear Megg, Suni & Team,

We’ve just had a couple of lovely weeks with Mum staying and helping in the garden. She was horrified we just threw BANANA SKINS into the green bin and got busy showing us how to use them. Aside from chopping up small and using as a mulch around the garden plants, mum swears by a liquid fertiliser she makes up.

She chops the skins into small pieces and puts them into a bucket and covers them with water, leaving the contents to ‘brew’ for a few days. She gives it a stir daily. After the banana skins have been scooped out Mum uses the liquid as a fertiliser. As banana skins are full of minerals the enriched water should give pot plants a boost and help get seedlings off to a good start.

Hope this is useful to others.

Dear GR Readers,

Sage Roberts, Wyo NG , NSW.

I was pleasantly surprised to see my letter in print, GR 276. It’s a shame I don’t have a camera to photograph my environment bags!

Reading the Feedback, I’ve noticed that some ‘mature’ folks having problems tending their gardens as it’s hard to bend, etc. Well, I’ve got a solution I’ve implemented in my back and front yards and it didn’t cost me a cent!

I’ve picked up some LARGE P o L y ST y RENE B ox ES from the greengrocer, cut the bottom, put them on the grass (on balconies it’s okay too, but don’t cut the bottom), fill up to one-third with any compost material, peels, grass etc, then 5cm of soil, repeat. When the box is full you can plant. You can do two, three or more boxes if you have enough compost material and soil, if not, build it up gradually. Five boxes and you can do all your gardening standing up! Additional bonus is that the box produces surprise plants! I had an avocado sapling, plus tomatoes, parsley, flowers and choko spring up! In a few months you can disassemble the boxes, and will have the most healthy beautiful soil, full of worms! Now you can start again.

While living in Japan we adopted many of their beautiful customs. In winter, especially on cold winter days, people cook o K o N o MI y AKI , a vegie pancake. Use any vegies, like cabbage, carrot, onion, parsley, potato, and grate coarsely. You can use many other vegies, whatever you have on hand, or add bacon or chilli. Add eggs, as few or as many as you want, and any kind of flour, a little or a lot, and salt. Mix, create patties, and make a hole in the mid - dle so you don’t need to guess whether it’s cooked all through. The texture is like a hashbrown on the outside. You can eat them dipped in sugar or honey (sweet) or dipped in soya sauce (savoury). Nothing better on cold rainy day than okonomiyaki! Bon appetit!

I am enclosing some more of my handmade bags so all of you hard-working staff can have some, give them to your friends, relatives, or people that visit your busy office.

A good project to get the kids involved in is a net fruit and vegie bag.

You can just hang them in the pantry with veg or fruit in them and they are strong enough to carry 10kg!

I use curtains ($2 from Salvos) or net pieces (50c each); as I don’t have a sewing machine I stitch them by hand while watching TV. With sewing machine it will take literally five minutes! They don’t take any room to store! I also wash my dishes with a 50cm x 50cm piece of lace – no smelly dishclothes or sponges! Just rinse, it’s fresh smelling always!

Also great for bathroom sinks or tiles. No need to use any chemicals – just the lace, rinse and it’s ready for next job!

Gift idea: 1 lace bag – put in a dishcloth (same lace), some soap or anything you want and you have practical a Christmas stocking that lasts for ever! Happy sewing!

Fryderica Apollonov, B ANKST o WN , NSW.