The Potting Shed

Guides, gift ideas and honest answers from the people who hand-pack every kit.

All articles Kintsugi Cheese making Gin making Meat Chilli sauce Wine making Kimchi Gift guides

Gin making experience at home with a gin making kit, juniper berries and botanicals on a kitchen table

Gin Making Experience: Book a Gin School or Make It at Home?

Gin schools are a brilliant day out, but a kit brings the same craft home. An honest comparison to help you choose the right gin making experience or gift.

How is gin made: juniper berries and botanicals infusing a bottle of vodka into homemade gin with a gin making kit

How Is Gin Made? From Juniper to Bottle, Explained

How commercial gin is made, what gin is made from, why it starts as vodka, and the centuries-old compound method that lets you make real gin at home.

Bottle of whole supermarket milk beside fresh homemade cheese, the best milk for cheese making at home

What Milk for Cheese Making? The Truth About Homogenised, UHT and Raw

What milk for cheese making you actually need: whole pasteurised supermarket milk works, why you do not need non homogenised milk, and never using UHT.

Wabi sabi in practice, a kintsugi bowl repaired with gold seams celebrating imperfect beauty

What Is Wabi Sabi? The Japanese Philosophy of Imperfect Beauty

What wabi sabi really means, its Zen and tea ceremony roots, the three marks of imperfect beauty, and how to practise the philosophy at home.

DIY gift ideas: homemade chilli sauce, gin and spiced rum bottled and labelled as handmade gifts

DIY Gift Ideas: Presents You Make Yourself (Without Being Crafty)

The reverse gift guide: make the present yourself. Homemade chilli sauce, infused gin, spiced rum, fresh cheese and gold-mended pottery, no craft skills needed.

Homemade biltong strips made without a biltong box using the Sandy Leaf Farm Biltong Making Kit

Do You Need a Biltong Box? An Honest Answer for Home Biltong Makers

What a biltong box does, when one is worth buying or building, and how to make proper biltong at home in a couple of hours with no box at all.

Beginner's cheese making kit ingredients for making fresh cheeses without cheese cultures

Cheese Cultures Explained: What They Are and When You Actually Need Them

What cheese cultures are, mesophilic versus thermophilic in plain English, which cheeses need them and which don't, and why beginners start culture-free.

Cheese making equipment for beginners laid out in a home kitchen with pan, cheesecloth and colander

Cheese Making Equipment: What You Actually Need to Start

The honest guide to cheese making equipment: what is already in your kitchen, what a kit supplies, and why you do not need a press or a cheese cave.

Homemade biltong strips seasoned with coriander and black pepper from a biltong making kit

What Is Biltong? South Africa's Great Dried Beef, Explained

What biltong is, where it comes from, how vinegar and coriander make it unique, how it differs from jerky and how to make your own batch at home.

Unusual gifts for women including kintsugi, gin making and kimchi kits from Sandy Leaf Farm

Unusual Gifts for Women: Kits They'll Actually Use (and Love Making)

Nine unusual gifts for women who have enough candles: kintsugi, colour changing gin, kimchi and more, organised by personality rather than the gift aisle.

Cheeses of the world making kit with homemade mozzarella, paneer and halloumi

The Cheeses of the World Kit: Ten Cheeses from Your Own Kitchen

A tour of all ten cheeses in the Cheeses of the World Kit: where each one calls home, the difficulty ladder from ricotta to chevre and who the kit suits.

Kintsugi repair kit with gold pigment and practice bowls, the most beginner friendly of the Japanese craft kits

Japanese Craft Kits: Kintsugi and the Art of Slow Making

Why Japanese making traditions appeal, a short tour of the crafts people try at home, and why kintsugi is the easiest Japanese craft kit for a beginner.

Halloumi making kit with slices of homemade halloumi ready for the grill

Halloumi Making Kits: Make Your Own Squeaky Cheese at Home

Why halloumi squeaks, how the kit method works from curds to press to brine, and the mistakes to avoid when you make your own squeaky cheese at home.

Unusual gifts for men: Sandy Leaf Farm make-your-own kits including gin, spiced rum, biltong and hot sauce

Unusual Gifts for Men: Kits for the Man Who Says He Doesn't Need Anything

Nine make-your-own kits matched to every kind of man, from the barbecue devotee to the quiet maker, for birthdays, Christmas and Secret Santa.

Gin botanicals including juniper berries and citrus peel laid out beside a make your own gin kit

Gin Botanicals Explained: What Each One Brings to Your Glass

What gin botanicals actually are, why juniper leads every blend, what citrus, spice and floral botanicals add, and how to balance a gin of your own.

Christmas gifts for foodies: Sandy Leaf Farm making kits stacked and ready for wrapping

Christmas Gifts for Foodies and Makers: Kits They'll Remember

A seasonal gift guide for food lovers: making kits for the main present, stocking fillers and secret santa, sent straight to any door in time for Christmas.

Valentine's Day gifts for a make-together date night including colour changing gin and a kintsugi kit

Valentine's Day Gifts That Beat Roses: Make Something Together

Skip the wilting roses and the set menu. Valentine's Day gift ideas you make together, from colour changing gin to kintsugi mended in gold.

Father's Day gifts from Sandy Leaf Farm including make-your-own bacon, gin and chilli sauce kits on a kitchen table

Father's Day Gifts for Dads Who'd Rather Make Something

Why a make-your-own kit beats another gadget this Father's Day: projects to start together on the day, last minute timings and bacon sandwiches for weeks.

Mother's Day gifts for mums who make: gin, cheese and kintsugi kits from Sandy Leaf Farm

Mother's Day Gifts She'll Actually Use: Kits for Mums Who Make

Beyond flowers and chocolates: make-your-own gin, cheese, kimchi and kintsugi kits that give mum an afternoon to herself this Mothering Sunday.

Is kintsugi food safe? A gold repaired kintsugi bowl kept for display, not for food

Is Kintsugi Food Safe? What to Do with Your Repaired Pottery

Modern epoxy kintsugi is decorative, not food safe. The honest rules, the traditional urushi exception and the lovely jobs a repaired piece can do next.

Learning how to make hot sauce at home with dried chillies, bottles and the Chilli Sauce Making Kit

How to Make Hot Sauce at Home: A Beginner's Guide

What hot sauce is made of, the step-by-step method from dried chillies to bottled sauce, how to control the heat, common mistakes and how to store a batch.