Review - Abel and Cole organic veg boxes.

We've been looking for an organic veg option for a while, I don't get many crops from my garden during the winter, and the organic stall has disappeared from my local market.   We've tried the Morrisons organic veg box, but I think we've settled on Abel and Cole's weekly organic veg boxes for now. 

This is what we got in our first few boxes,

Week 1.

We went for a medium mixed box to start with, this costs £19.95 but we had a super special offer for 50% off our 1st and 4th boxes, so we actually paid £9.98 plus the £1.25 for postage.  This is a bigger box than we would go for usually, but we were cheekily making the most of the 50% off!

The box contains 3 fruits and 6 veggies, our box had,

5 big bananas, 6 apples and a box of red grapes.  A paper bag with 9 potatoes of various shapes and sizes, a bag of 9 carrots, 4 white onions, 3 big vine tomatoes, 3 huge portobello mushrooms, a cauliflower.

Opening the box was like Christmas and all the produce was beautiful and fresh and exciting!  Only two little niggles with the produce, one of the bananas was split and one of the potatoes had a green bit, but nothing that we were particularly bothered about.  I don't like the plastic boxes the grapes, mushrooms and tomatoes came in either - surely they could use cardboard ones instead!

We got a free cookbook too. 

Week 2.

We went for the small mixed box this time, which costs £14.25 gives you 3 fruits and 5 veggies, it contained,

4 big bananas, 5 apples, 6 clementines, 2 corn on the cobs, a red pepper, a punnet of mushrooms, a punnet of cherry tomatoes, a bunch of kale.

Although it wasn't as exciting to open the smaller box, I do think this amount of fruit and veg is more manageable for my two person household to eat in a week.  Usually the box comes with potatoes, but I swapped them out for a pepper because we still had loads of potatoes left over from the Morrisons organic veg box.  Again the produce was lovely and fresh and we were excited to eat it!

Week 3.

We had the small mixed box again, this time it contained,

4 bananas, 9 apples (a double portion of apples), a bag of 7 potatoes, a red pepper, 3 big leeks, 5 medium size chestnut mushrooms, a bag of corn salad.

Again, everything was nice and fresh, although I could have done with a few more potatoes in my bag!

Week 4.

Ok, I'll admit that we went too far with this one!  To make the most of the 50% off the 4th box offer I bought the large mixed box, which is usually £27.50, but we only paid £13.75 plus postage.

Inside the (huge) box was,

6 bananas,7 apples, 7 mandarins, 4 baking potatoes, a bag of 10 potatoes of various sizes, 2 broccolis, a cauliflower, 5 tomatoes, 12 mushrooms, 4 corn on the cob and a bag of salad.

I guess the portion sizes are bigger in the bigger boxes as well as you getting a larger selection of items. Luckily, Abel and Cole boxes are really flexible, so I skipped the next week's box to give us enough time to eat all this veg.

I made a couple of extra purchases from the Abel and Cole shop too, some organic pumpkin seeds and garlic.

Overall, I've been super happy with the quality of the fruit and veg in the boxes, everything is fresh and it feels like a real treat to eat.  I love the convenience of having it delivered too, I don't have to go to the market, or try to find organic in the supermarket.  It's nice that the boxes are flexible too, you can skip weeks, and check the website to see what's in your box in advance -and swap out anything icky like parsnips or butternut squash!  I wish there was less plastic packaging on some of the things, but I suppose there's less plastic than if I'd bought my veg pre-packaged from the supermarket.

If you fancy trying Abel and Cole for yourself feel free to use the code below to get £20 off your first order (and I'll get £20 credit too!).

Can you recommend any other organic veg boxes for us to try?

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Review - Morrisons organic veg box.

Now that the growing season is nearly over I've been looking into organic veg boxes to keep us in fresh and ethically grown fruit and veg during the winter. 

I ordered the new Morrisons organic veg box so I could compare it to the Abel and Cole organic veg boxes I've also signed up to. 

The Morrisons veg box costs £8 and is available in store or for home delivery.  They also do a non-organic box for £5. 

The organic box I received was quite big and it contained the following,

17 potatoes of various sizes

11 carrots

4 leeks

4 golden beetroot

5 small red onions

1 bulb of garlic

1 fennel

The veg is nice enough, but not as nice as the posh veg that comes in the Abel and Cole box.  It's a good budget organic option - and it's going to take us ages to get through all those potatoes and carrots - but I'm going to stick with the Abel and Cole box as long as we can afford it.  

Having said that there's nothing actually wrong with the Morrisons veg box, other than the veg is not quite as fresh as I would like.  It's nice to get a bulb of garlic, the leeks, fennel and onions are fine, the beetroot and potatoes are all perfectly usable but they're a bit knobbly bobbly and blemished. 

As you can see, my fridge will be full for quite some time! 

Can you recommend any other organic veg boxes for us to try?

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My Hotbin composter.

Back in spring I bought myself a Hotbin, which is a super-posh composting bin, that takes all cooked food waste, as well as gardening waste, and cooks it up into compost really quickly.

I emptied it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and I thought it would be a good time to share how I've been finding it.  Spoiler alert, I love it!  

It's clean, not-smelly, compact, gets really hot and steam comes out of it - what's not to like! 

Filling the Hotbin composter.

There's a set up process with the Hotbin, you fill it with twigs at the bottom, then either add a lot of waste to get it heating up fast, or add little bits of waste as you have it (both these methods are described on the Hotbin website).

Once you've done that first step you continue to add a mix of waste to the Hotbin regularly.  I find my compost stays hotter if I add waste every other day, but sometimes I go a week between topping it up if I'm busy or the weather's bad, and it still works good.

The mix of waste you need to put in the hot bin is as follows,

Food waste - raw and cooked food waste is fine

Garden waste - chopped into smallish pieces so it breaks down quicker

Shredded paper - a handful or two of shredded or ripped paper or card - I find shredded paper works best and I shred it with a pair of those special shredding scissors with 5 sets of blades.

Bulking agent - a couple of handfuls of bulking agent - Hotbin supply partially composted wood chippings, but you can make your own and I often cut up some twigs to use instead.  

Use half the volume of shredded paper to waste, and another fifth of bulking agent to get the mixture right.  I like to mix everything up in a trug before popping it in the Hotbin, then I tip it in and mix it with the top layer of compost.

Emptying the Hotbin Composter.

I put off emptying my Hotbin for ages, because I thought it might be tricky, and because I was worried if it hadn't have worked I'd have wasted a lot of money!  But I shouldn't have worried it was fine. 

Once I'd opened the bottom hatch I started digging the compost out.  Eventually the top, unfinished layer of compost collapsed down, but it happened slowly enough that I was able to shove a trug in place and catch it.  

Emptying the Hotbin was a surprisingly un-smelly and quick job, it took about 45 minutes to empty including spreading the compost.  I've spent entire days emptying compost bins before, so I was really happy with this!  I got about 4 small trugs full of compost out too which was more than sufficient to spread by my fruit trees.

The finished compost.

The finished compost is dark brown, it smells good (am I the only one who smells their compost to see if it's ready?!), and it's also really, really sticky.  This is normal apparently, due to the large amount of humic matter in the compost. 

It was easy to spread, although a bit clumpy, but I'm sure my garden worms will work on that over the winter and by spring my garden beds will be lovely.

My most favourite thing about my Hotbin composter.

I just love that it comes with two thermometers (one on the lid and one on a probe to poke inside) and that steam comes out of it.  It's so satisfying to see it working! 

Don't forget to check out my other gardening blog posts! 

Disclaimer - I received a teeny little discount on my Hotbin in return for the promise of reviewing it.  I was going to buy one anyway, and as always all opinions are my own.  I've also borrowed a graphic from the Hotbin website - I hope they don't mind and it 100% belongs to them. 

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Eco review, Greencane paper.

Greencane Paper make eco friendly and biodegradable toilet paper, paper towels and tissues, from sugar cane and bamboo pulp.  Eco friendly loo roll is the kind of thing that excites me, so I was really happy to be sent some to try out! 

I was sent Greencane's mixed paper box, which is huge and will impress your postman and make your husband ask where all this loo roll is to be stored!  It contains 32 rolls of toilet paper, 6 rolls of paper towels and 3 boxes of facial tissues.  

 

Each case costs £23.80, which I think is really good value.  You can also chose to get a case of 48 loo rolls, 24 kitchen rolls or 24 boxes of tissues for the same price.  You can make a one off purchase or subscribe and be sent your chosen box of Greencane paper every 6, 12 or 18 weeks - how handy is that?!

I've been using Greencane paper for the last couple of weeks and I'm really impressed.

Toilet paper.

The loo roll is really smooth and soft and strong.  It's so smooth that to be completely honest, when I opened it my heart sank, because it looked really thin and I thought it was going to be no good.  That couldn't be further from the truth, and I think it's probably down to the materials it's made from.  I'd guess sugarcane and bamboo are stronger than wood-paper, so it doesn't need to be as thick.  We usually use triple velvet, and Greencane's toilet paper is as soft and as strong.  Also the rolls are really long and last ages!  We're converts!

Kitchen roll.

I gave the kitchen roll the greasiest task I could find, soaking up the oil when I fried poppadoms.  I don't use kitchen roll often, but it's handy for a few cooking jobs and it stood up to the task really well.  

Facial tissues.

Again, I rarely use tissues as I prefer reusable, fabric hankies, but I do use tissues if I have a cold and Joe isn't a hanky fan!  We've both had summer colds and the Greencane paper tissues have been soft and gentle on our noses.

Eco credentials.

Greencane is made from sugar cane fibre (a byproduct of sugar production, one tonne of recycled sugar cane pulp saves 17 trees) and bamboo (quick growing and low impact) and 30% wood pulp. 

The harvesting methods for sugar cane and bamboo are kinder to the environment than felling trees.

The paper's made from GMO free and BPA free materials, and bleached with non-chlorine bleach.

The packaging is plastic free.  The clear part of the wrapper is made from plant based cellophane that will biodegrade in a commercial composting facility.  (The only niggle I have with Greencane is the inclusion of the cellophane panel.  I'd much prefer totally paper packaging, and plastic free tape on the cardboard crate.  However, there's still waaaaay less plastic packaging on the Greencane than on conventional loo roll products.) 

Greencane paper products are made in a nice factory subject to external environmental audits.

Read more about Greencane paper's eco credentials.

Keep up with new developments on Greencane's twitter account and buy your lovely biodegradable loo roll from greencane.com.

 

Disclosure - I was sent a case of Greencane paper to review.  I only write about products I like and I like Greencane paper.  All opinions are my own, but some of the photos I've used belong to Greencane.

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