As The Workhouse Approaches....How To Do Everything To Avoid It, the Old Style Way

Greying_Pilgrim

I was browsing mysupermarket and noticed that it was showing Mr A's smartprice penne pasta at 32p for 500g! Mr T and sainsbugs still showing as 18p and 17p respectively for their value and basics penne pasta 500g bags.

HTH anyone with pasta on their shopping list in the next few days. The 3kg bags (own brand range) still appear to be £2.99 in all 3 shops, depending on what shapes they stock.

Greying

ceridwen

sammy_kaye18 wrote: »

Garden - I am thinking about some giant tubs for planting my veggies in. I have two hydrangea bushes - one is being savaged by bind weed so thinking I may remove that and put a few concrete slabs down in its place so I can keep my pots there. Owen is already digging shed foundations! :eek:
Apart from that the only downfall I can see is that I have 2 cupboards in the kitchen which I can allocate to food storage and it is not alot of space so Im thinking the weird cubby hole cupboard that is upstairs in my bedroom - its probably about 3ft square so hardly a wardrobe - might need some shelving added and then it could be a perfect pantry :D:D:D:D:D:D
Have applied for a warm front grant too being as I now have a loft! Havent actually been up into the loft yet but figured I could double check as they'd have it on record if they have done work here already - and figure it might help me get a new boiler jacket too as I currently don't have one!

Re giant tubs to plant food in - the latest idea I spotted for containers to grow food in is trugs (with drainage holes drilled in them obviously) and that seems like a good idea to me for anything involving quite deep depths of soil/compost. Also a thought is that salad greens such as lettuce only need 4" depth of soil/compost - so something like a cat litter tray or one of those large shallow-ish trays that "home catalogues" and Lakeland sell for soaking oven shelves in is about the right depth for that - so with a few holes drilled in then Bob's your uncle.

Wise to check out the depth of that loft insulation - non-existent, shallow or adequate. Ideas as to "adequate" are getting higher all the time and I think??? that the current idea is 12" thick. Thats pretty thick and I doubt that the insulation will be to that standard. What you DO need to check out is whether any loft insulation grant is only for lofts that don't have any insulation to date or whether its still available even if there is a shallow amount of insulation already. I dont know the answer to that - I know I got a grant for it when I bought this house years ago (even though there was some pathetic extremely thin insulation there to start with) - but things have changed in all sorts of respects since then.

What I DID find when I called in a contractor to do the loft insulation for me is that they had found the loft had all sorts of junk in it from the previous owners (eg tatty old carpets, etc) on the one hand and the contractor laid the insulation the wrong way just straight over the top of all the junk on the other hand. I didnt have the access I now have to my loft - so had no idea the previous owners had left all that rubbish there and the contractor knew I wouldnt be able to shin up a loft ladder and check his work....

Larder in the bedroom - well it makes perfect sense to me... My kitchen is too small (even though I had it crammed with as many units as possible - its still not enough). So - I've got kitchen stuff in 2 cupboards built into the sitting room and duly replaced a shelf the previous owner stole from one of those cupboards to ensure I have 4 shelves worth of storage space there.
Another thought (depending on floorspace available) that I would have in an inadequate kitchen is a tall (ie 6 shelf) cheap bookcase and that would give sufficient room to store quite a few food items on. Don't know how practical this would be with children in the house?

Red_Doe

For the second time this week, we`ve just been pelted by hail, lashing rain, wind and thunder! The garden is now officially a washout. My pumpkins and squash have just browned, crisped and withered away, and everything else is looking very sorry for itself or has been damaged beyond saving. I`m really fed up with this, and would far rather have the drought conditions further south than cold, gales, wind and hail.

redlady_1

Good Lord Red, what on earth is going on up there??!

Red_Doe

Don`t know redlady, but this whole month has been more like the beginning of winter....cold, continuous rain, gales, now hail. It`s pretty depressing.

HariboJunkie

Red_Doe wrote: »

Don`t know redlady, but this whole month has been more like the beginning of winter....cold, continuous rain, gales, now hail. It`s pretty depressing.

I feel your pain. It has rained every day in May and it's heavy, damaging rain too. The temperatures are too low for growth and the storm last week and continued gale force winds have killed alot of my garden. As I grow everything from seed, it's pretty soul destroying as our growing season is too short to start it all again. Fortunately I have friends who have given me some undamaged courguette plants to replace mine and there is still time to sow more salad. The tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouse are ok and the soft fruit is fine although my cherry crop is now reduced by more than half. The broad beans, runner beans, french beans and brocolli look like they'll recover in the beds and the beets nd turnips look fairly unharmed.
Flowers and shrubs have all been maimed by the wind though my lovely, talented OH has managed to rebuild arches and frames (with salvaged scrap wood) and has saved all my climbing plants.I don't know what I'd do without him as he's so helpful to me in the garden with the things I can't manage, even though he hates gardening himself.
I must say, I too would rather have a drought.

OH and I are also tackling the house again. It's 90 years old and needs constant maintainence so rotten door frames and roof tiles are being replaced aplenty and we need to redecorate a couple of bedroom. Luckily OH is very handy so that keeps costs down and I am using his time now before a new contract starts in two weeks.

Desperately trying to keep the food budget down here but am fighting a losing battle. Even the thriftiest of my menu plans is more expensive than it was.

Also wanted to say HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Jedi on the birth of Daniel. :j:j:j Nothing like a new baby to cheer everyone up. :beer:

mardatha

Snap. Totally bloody sick of it. Every time I go out - and the furthest I've been in WEEKS is the hens - I get either soaked or blown away. And we had hail and we had thunder too. Godawful year. It's 7C here.

jackieglasgow

I'll join in with the moaning about the weather too. The grass in my back garden is knee high, in just three weeks and has been far too wet to cut. Its only fit for dogs and boys, which is just as well really, seeing as I have some of those in the house. My DS2 is back from his camping expedition, with a suntanned face and clothes filled with mud. Only in Scotland could you get that particular combination.

mardatha

Can anybody answer Redlady's query re weevils in a sack of flour ? How to get rid of them? I freeze all flour in bags in a spare freezer and just keep them there. But Costco has a huge bag of Canadian wheat flour at around a tenner and I really want to get it. But not sure re storage.

jackieglasgow

Once you've frozen it, all the weevils and eggs should be dead.