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

rachbc

verging on self sufficiency with a harvest of 5 strawbs today!

mardatha

Dear God. Courgettes have a sex life ?

ginnyknit

mardatha wrote: »

Dear God. Courgettes have a sex life ?

Nah the males sit there looking pretty and the women provide the food and do all the work - ring a bell??

If we pooled our harvests you wouldnt have enough for a butty and a fruit pie:rotfl: well I live in hope :j got to do really havent I. Thats if the field mouse leaves me owt, little nibbles taken out of pea pods - 2 tom cats who are not earning their Felix - in scaring away the mouse I mean not dispatching it.

Cheap shampoo working really well in washing machine, towels nice and white and smelling good too.

ChocClare

Well, you can all bow before me I have had a dozen strawberries and half a dozen raspberries. My broad beans need to be harvested pronto and I even have a French bean. As to the peas: already eaten 'em! And I've had lettuces. Pfft!!

Translated into modern-day English (I am a linguist, after all ), this means:

Strawberries have ripened wonderfully on my plants. 'I see them from the bedroom window. I throw things out of said window at thieving so-and-so birds who have so far munched their way through all but two of my ripe strawberries :mad:

The raspberries were yum, but not enough to fill a bowl. The blackcurrants LOOK ripe, but aren't.

Broad beans - well, they're more than ready. JIL - you are SO right about them. I was given a dozen plants, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. Still, they kept the weeds off for a bit. I have a nice recipe somewhere of broad beans, bacon and wilted lettuce which is scrumola, but by the time you've shelled all the beans and then taken off the grey bits (because they're yuch, I know you don't have to) you're only left with one meal for your twelve feet of planting space. Still, the hens enjoy the pods!

Talking of which, the peas WERE delicious. If I'd had more than five pods, I might even have cooked them instead of eating them raw off the (dying) vine.

Salad has been fine however. I'm putting a lot of faith in those French beans :rotfl:(not picking just ONE!!)

lovebargainshatewaste

My courgette plants have obviously been very ...ahem.. active, as I've got 6 courgettes growing. I think some of the flowers are boys, so hopefully the boy flowers have been ever so busy and they've done their "thing" :kisses3:

I've got some flowers on a chili plant, some flowers are desperately trying to gather strength on the tomato plants, and the rocket is growing like a jungle - I can't eat it fast enough The spring onions are looking fairly healthy, but I'm not sure what's going on with the sweet potatoes. Are they supposed to flower? Or give some indication that they're happily growing?

Oh, and quite a few strawberries are nearly ready. They're wild strawberries that were here way before I moved in 3 years ago. They're teeny weeny, bless them.

Who would've known up until this year I've never grown anything in my life! Am quite a bit proud of myself

Well done to all the growers! I'm sure the harvest will be great!

charlies-aunt

Feeling very lucky as tonight I have picked another 3lb of strawberries from our 'inherited' strawbeery path on the allotment - total of 7.5lbs to date :j and the 'inherited' raspberry canes are bent down with the weight of fast ripening fruit :j DH dug up half a carrier bag of new potatoes from three plants ready for tomorrows tea . . . . . . suddenly all those tedious evenings spent watering up with a watering can and bucket seem worth it

If you need to net off fruit bushes etc - go to a builders merchants and buy DEBRIS NETTING- is fine mesh netting, very hardwearing, reuseable and much cheaper than garden netting - we bought ours - 3metres wide x 50metres long = £37 & 2m x 50 mts +£27 - the edges have eyelets so very easy to fastenup onto nails or to join two pieces together. We made a very basic fruit cages by hammering 5ft stakes in the ground around our fruit bushes and then draping this netting over and securing the bottom with bricks

jackieglasgow

show off!

HariboJunkie

Interesting article on the increasing use of food banks.

hornetgirl

I've been picking 2-3 strawberries a day for the last couple of weeks. It's a new patch that we've started this year, so am quite pleased with this. I've also been picking salad leaves for several weeks and last weekend we had the first of the early potatoes. Quite a few flowers on the tomatoes, and the tumbling one I have in a hanging basket has actual tomatoes, although not showing the slightest sign of ripening yet.
DH bought a new water butt on Saturday, so was delighted with all the rain we had on Sunday as it almost filled it. It's a slimline one to sit near the house - we already have a normal sized one at the other end of the garden which collects water from the shed roof.
More :eek: at the prices in the supermarket this evening. I knew I'd be spending more than usual as it seems to be all the expensive things I needed this week. I'm usually pretty good at estimating what I'll spend and thought it would be about £30, but it was nearer £38. Where will it all end?

ChocClare

HariboJunkie wrote: »

Interesting article on the increasing use of food banks.

Thanks for this, HBJ - scary stuff, particularly for me, as it was in Bournemouth.

Funnily enough (or not) Bournemouth is or was actually a pretty affluent area in the scheme of things, with the exception of areas like Boscombe - or so you'd think.

My DH is working at a church in Kinson (for those who know the area) and the vicar has just had the go-ahead from his diocese to do up an area to use as a food bank. This is seen as a matter of urgency by the parish council. I was at a church in Christchurch the other day, and the priest there was saying how shocked he was to discover how many of his parishioners were now really in need - people who were managing perfectly well last year. He was appealing to everyone who could afford it to bring in food every week - he suggested using the GOF in your BOGOF :rotfl: - so that they could set up a food bank there urgently.

So that's two food banks in my local area I've heard about in the past few weeks APART from the one on the BBC news. And other churches are probably setting up similar things - all in a comparatively small, comparatively affluent town. What is the rest of the country like, particularly in areas hit by widespread unemployment?