If push comes to shove...?

ceridwen

Kirri wrote: »

I live in flats with a reasonable area of 'garden' including grassed areas around them, as do most of the blocks here but in our flats we aren't allowed so much as a washing line - such a waste of useful land like a lot of blocks of flats in London when it could be used by at least a few of the residents for veg growing and a bit of community spirit.

Time for a bit of guerilla gardening maybe?

The other tactic could be to get together with other more "community-minded" residents and approach whoever owns that land with details of communal grow-your-own type schemes for similar places and officially request you be allowed to imitate them.

Would you maybe be allowed to put out a builders' bag or two each to grow food in? (after all thats something thats only of a "temporary" nature).

I've got loads of links to info. re schemes like this if you look on a very obvious place - ie my home page.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Sorry if this one has been said before ( have only managed to skim through the posts)

this type of senario were to happen... obviously the demand for seeds and fruit plants etc would go through the roof, and what might happen with anything which is in high demand the prices go up.....

so not only would we be trying to grow as much food as possible, we would have to try and keep our own seeds too, As i would imagine if this type of senario happened there could be a possibility that the seed companies would only sell a certain type seed that once grown wouldnt produce seeds etc IYSWIM

valk_scot

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

Sorry if this one has been said before ( have only managed to skim through the posts)

this type of senario were to happen... obviously the demand for seeds and fruit plants etc would go through the roof, and what might happen with anything which is in high demand the prices go up.....

so not only would we be trying to grow as much food as possible, we would have to try and keep our own seeds too, As i would imagine if this type of senario happened there could be a possibility that the seed companies would only sell a certain type seed that once grown wouldnt produce seeds etc IYSWIM

I was thinking about seed saving. Yes the F1 hybrid types would be useless for seed saving if you wanted the variety to grow true the second year but that's not to say the seed would be useless. Not all F1 varieties are sterile (some are)...a lot of them would revert to give the range of parental varieties, which may or may not be useful. I think there would be a scrabble for genetic material (seeds, rooting materials, young plants etc) at first but what the seed companies lost on selling cheaper types of seed they would soon make up on volume. However the volume produced would have a time lag in production time, obviously....and yes, seed prices would go up at first I expect, then level off as production caught up with demand and also as home seed saving became more widespread.

I do think we would see an upsurge in the use of more traditional area specific varieties too. I know our allotments have a healthy insider trade in seeds and varieties of things like garlic that have been proven to do well in our areas.

No, the crop that would concern me is potatoes, simply because I used to work in the Scottish Seed Potato Certification Program. Potaoes pick up viral and other diseases extremely quickly and really, it's bad practice to use your own potato crop as seed potatoes for more than one following generation and that's only when the original crop has been grown from certified seed potatoes with a viral and bacterial burden set at a low % per crop. It's not just the disease burden in the potato you plant that's the problem, it's the diseases build up in the soil. Traditionally you combat this using crop rotation and clean seed potato stock. If you start saving your own seed potatoes over too many years you'll end up with heavily diseased crops and a greatly reduced yield. Home gardeners need good quality seed potatoes at least every second year and I can see demand outstripping supply very quickly, especially in competition with commercial growers.

RAS

v_s

Totally agree on the tats. Even more so as Jeavons lists them as the producer of the highest number of calories per area of ground.

Quite a few of my fellow allotment holders grow potatoes over 60-80 percent of the plot, often re-planting their own potatoes from clamps. The allotment committee think it is great, all these nice neat rows and overwintered bare ground. I think it is a nightmare; and certainly blight has become a much bigger problem since this group of people took over plots. Does not help that they do not have the first clue how to deal with it when the blight first shows either. When I mentioned this to one of our fellow Scots who grows high grade seed, the response was shock and "Hell'll mend them".

It is apparently possible to clean up badly diseased stock by forcing the shoots very quickly, taking the tip and rooting that and then growing the plant very quickly and taking the tip and over time, the plant material grow fast enough to leave the diseased material behind. Then you need micro propogation techniques to multipy up the stock once it is certified disease free.

Regarding seed, I grow a lot of varieties already and know how to grow others, just I do not like dealing with chaff from lettuce, for instance. With some things like beans, I rotate about 20 varieties over 3 years, growing smallish quantities of each. I get enough fresh beans and allow the rest to go to seed rather than freezing them. Then I share them round.

It would take a year and extra ground to bulk up stocks.

pelirocco

Poosmate wrote: »

Back! Sorry, had to nip to shop for milk! It's a bit more expensive from my local shop but I don't mind because I'd rather pay a few pence extra a few times a week than find I have to jump in my car and trek off to the nearest "open 24hrs" supermarket if I ever run out of anything.

Anyway, back to loo rolls and pushing and shoving............

Another way to reduce your expenditure is to use products in a different way to what they were intended. For instance, I used to buy kitchen roll. But then it seemed expensive for what it was so I bought a cheaper brand. But the cheaper (cheapest) brand just didn't seem up to the job. Then I spotted 12 Morrisons "Value" toilet rolls for £1.29. I now use those as kitchen rolls. They work out cheaper than "proper" kitchen roll and I believe are more efficient, I can use 1 sheet if it's just a cup/mug ring to wipe up or several sheets for bigger spills.

Poo

Why dont you just use a cloth ?

shellysue

having stockpiled kitchen towel I recently had run out, so went to cash and carry and thought there had been a mistake with shelf lable it was literally :eek:
cloth for me from now on!!

rhiwfield

Dont know whether to laugh or cry!

• Tesco cut organic curly kale is £5.95 kg
• Tesco cut curly kale on offer £4 kg

Nice to be able to have luxury foods in your back garden in the depths of winter, though some of mine goes to the hens

and if you want to buy organic raspberries, they'll set you back a cool £23.92 kg

RAS, suspect a lot of people dont try to grow maincrop due to blight, space and the generally good, cheap local supply. But if you buy 2kg of organic spuds from Tesco it'll set you back 85.7p kg atm, so buying sacks from your local farmer is generally a good way to get cheap spuds, low food miles and little packaging. In the summer months when new potatoes will prob set you back £1 for 500g, it makes good sense to gyo if you have space. Wilkos first and second early seed potatoes bought recently averaged 7p each and should give over 500g each when cropped. 2 bags costing £5.96 had 85 seed potatoes so should produce a crop value of about £85. And there's prob time after to get in crops of carrots and brassicas.

RAS

rhiwfield wrote: »

Dont know whether to laugh or cry!

• Tesco cut organic curly kale is £5.95 kg
• Tesco cut curly kale on offer £4 kg

Nice to be able to have luxury foods in your back garden in the depths of winter, though some of mine goes to the hens

and if you want to buy organic raspberries, they'll set you back a cool £23.92 kg

Have you looked at the price of rhubarb or runner beans when they are in season?

Barb - 50 pence per stick! Runners - about 6 -8 large stringly things for £1.50. Definately one of those veggies for which supermarket standards result in a much inferior product.

rhiwfield wrote: »

RAS, suspect a lot of people dont try to grow maincrop due to blight, space and the generally good, cheap local supply. But if you buy 2kg of organic spuds from Tesco it'll set you back 85.7p kg atm, so buying sacks from your local farmer is generally a good way to get cheap spuds, low food miles and little packaging. In the summer months when new potatoes will prob set you back £1 for 500g, it makes good sense to gyo if you have space. Wilkos first and second early seed potatoes bought recently averaged 7p each and should give over 500g each when cropped. 2 bags costing £5.96 had 85 seed potatoes so should produce a crop value of about £85. And there's prob time after to get in crops of carrots and brassicas.

Agreed but

1. I do not know of anywhere I can get cheap spuds (all the likely growers would be the other side of the city).
2. I would have to carry the sac home in my rucsack. A lot easier to walk over the road.
3. I grow lots of different varieties from Swift and Rocket that I raid really early to things like Arran Victory that only really comes into its own at this time of year. I enjoy the variety.

And they are another crop in the rotation that works well and needs limited care.

ceridwen

RAS wrote: »

v_s

Totally agree on the tats. Even more so as Jeavons lists them as the producer of the highest number of calories per area of ground.

Quite a few of my fellow allotment holders grow potatoes over 60-80 percent of the plot, often re-planting their own potatoes from clamps.

Well RAS - you know way more than I ever will about gardening:A

- certainly those allotment holders have a lot of "eggs in one basket" and that looks dicey to me.

As I recall from reading a book about the history of potatoes recently - the Irish Potato Famine came about because the family plots of land got divided and sub-divided yet again (in order for each household to have their own plot). So - the plots got progressively smaller and therefore it was more and more the case that they had to "extract maximum value" per square foot of land and that was why they used so much of the land to grow potatoes (ie that was the way to get best calorific value per acre of land). Hence they ended up with all their "eggs in one basket" and when blight hit they were up the creek without a paddle...

valk_scot

RAS wrote: »

v_s

Totally agree on the tats. Even more so as Jeavons lists them as the producer of the highest number of calories per area of ground.

Quite a few of my fellow allotment holders grow potatoes over 60-80 percent of the plot, often re-planting their own potatoes from clamps. The allotment committee think it is great, all these nice neat rows and overwintered bare ground. I think it is a nightmare; and certainly blight has become a much bigger problem since this group of people took over plots. Does not help that they do not have the first clue how to deal with it when the blight first shows either. When I mentioned this to one of our fellow Scots who grows high grade seed, the response was shock and "Hell'll mend them".

We have some pretty strict rules about tattie growing on our allotment including one rule that's been on the books since Year 1, which is to lift all potatoes by the end of October and no tatties left in the ground or in clamps over the winter. Also we as the committee have the right to insist on tatties shaws being either treated or cut down if blight takes a hold and to issue a formal disciplinary warning to anyone found leaving potato debris around on their plots or disposing of it on compost heaps. We also run a communal buying scheme for seed potatoes from a reputable local seed merchant, which works out as a very good deal for plotholders and encourages them to use fresh seed potatoes every year. (£2 for a 2Kg bag for most varieties, including blight resistant and organic varieties.)

We also subscribe to the national Blightwatch service and send out emails to members/post warnings on the notice board, so that people can spray early if they feel they need to. We still get blight of course but it's fairly minimal, and most of the members' potato crops are good healthy ones. We do our best without getting too draconian and the members are very cooperative tbh.

Personally, I grow on raised beds so rotation is easy and I don't actually grow huge quantities of spuds either, just enough to last through to about January. I prefer to use my potato section for new potatoes and salad types. But, referring back to the original question, I think we've all got a good start on maximising potato yield on our site, where disease is concerned anyway. Good growing hygiene! I think if more people became dependant on growing their own food some sort of code of good growing practice would have to be developed to help with disease control and to maximise yields, which would be good for everyone.