Allotments 4 All

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My onions appear to be ready, lying there looking fat and tasty. What's the recommended method? Leave them lying in the soil and harvest as required? Or harvest now and store by tying and hanging up?

Also - how do I know when my garlic is ready for pulling up?

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This morning I decided to have a look at my large compost bin after ignoring it for several weeks to see if we had any compost worth spreading.
What I found was a large ants nest with ants busily running around and carrying eggs etc. There were a few winged ants as well.
This presented me with a problem. Basically the ants are breaking down the stuff in the heap which is what I want to happen. However it make clearing the bin of compost awkward and I don't want to transfer the ants to my beds to set up yet another colony. I popped round to a local DIY store but all the ant killers around use permethrin which would also bump off the beneficial insects as well that help the breakdown process.
Any suggestions,advice or previous experience with this matter.

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Well as we have been down Beer in Devon all day got in tonight and couldn't be R,s d to make something much so no fannying about in the kitchen..........

Had some Bratwurst in the Fridge and some white Onions......oven baked the French sticks.....and served with some Cold Beer Gherkins and German Mustard..............

not hard...........but Bloody delish

Gazza

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So I took my three fig cuttings and then looked on line to see what to do with them. 
Big mistake I had take the wrong part of the tree.  I should have had lengths of old wood and put them into a plastic bag with water.  I watched as he cut off the nice pieces I had with part old wood and part green with leaves, and said those would go to the pigs.
As we no longer have pigs on site, I decided to plant what I had. 
The leaves fell off quite quickly, but there was a small green shoot left on each cutting so I decided they were worth watering until this also fell off.
Well I watered and watered and watered.  And I made some willow water and watered with that as well.
The weeks went by and nothing.  But they got watered because I had other cutting on the go.  Big surprise first one, then two and finally three, the green shoot at the top opened and a tiny leave has appeared.  To my amazement all three cuttings appear to have rooted.   
The big question is now when to move them.  I cannot have three figs, five black currants, two gooseberries and an aronia growing out of the top of a dalek compost bin.  Though actually the aronia does not look happy.  They do not get much light in there.