Preparedness for when

westcoastscot

jk0 that sounds awful! I'm fortunate that I work 2 miles from home; the only time i'm further away is when I'm citybound and always "plan" for an overnight stay just in case - the Rest closes at the drop of a hat at any time of year and we're stranded.
As I get older i'm away from home less and less - I have everything I need right here
WCS

GreyQueen

pineapple wrote: »

Don't worry. Now where did I put my teeth................? :think:

Just to the left of the muriel............another old bat here.

Mar, gorgeous scenery. I've seen a Harris hawk mantled over prey like that up very close (as in virtually at my feet). It was giving us evils. How the heck does a falconer persuade a hawk to give up its prey for the pot?

Been knackering myself on the lottie. The rain closed in once I'd been up there an hour but I had my GoreTex jacket and soldiered on, swearing slightly. Took me ages to de-muddify the tools and myself afterwards but I squeezed two hours' graft out of a pretty unpromising day. Then it stopped raining and now it's started again.

My iron-bound trunk of pieces of eight has unaccountably failed to materialise but I have dug up a slab, a hitherto unseen wadge of chickenwire and enough rusty nails to give a regiment lock-jaw. Getting there slowly..........

nuatha, my Dad had that blasted weed (mare's tail/ horsetail) in our cottage garden, back in the sixties. He fought it to a standstill and that seems to be as much as a body can hope for. You never win; it's roots are 6 feet deep and it's been unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs. It's very good at what it does. I have a reluctant respect for it; darned thing grows an inch every 24 hours and I'm enough of a nerd to have measured it. My aim it to stop it spreading any further and to discourage it mightily with cold steel wherever it rears its ugly head.

I dig it up and burn it or transport it to the green waste section at the city dump. Ooops, my bad; recycling centre. They sell compost made from the green waste section but I would never buy it as the main ingredient seems to be cupressus leylandii.

And horsetails as a garnish, naturellment.

jk0

GQ, I read somewhere that if you coil the weed in a cup of Roundup for a week, it kills it.

Is that worth a try, or are you an organic gardener?

GreyQueen

jk0 wrote: »

GQ, I read somewhere that if you coil the weed in a cup of Roundup for a week, it kills it.

Is that worth a try, or are you an organic gardener?

Organic, deffo. Prolly also a masochist and a fool, but there you go.

I attended a talk given by Bob Flowerdew (top bloke, btw) and he was telling us about horsetail. As in yes, you can poison it, but if it's in adjacent gardens it will just come back again. He reached a compromise for a customer when he was a gardener by planting her garden with standard fuchsia and mowing the horsetails underneath as if it was grass. She was out in the countryside and surrounded by farm fields with horsetail so it'd just move back in.

I like his style............

nuatha

GreyQueen wrote: »

nuatha, my Dad had that blasted weed (mare's tail/ horsetail) in our cottage garden, back in the sixties. He fought it to a standstill and that seems to be as much as a body can hope for. You never win; it's roots are 6 feet deep and it's been unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs. It's very good at what it does. I have a reluctant respect for it; darned thing grows an inch every 24 hours and I'm enough of a nerd to have measured it. My aim it to stop it spreading any further and to discourage it mightily with cold steel wherever it rears its ugly head.

It grows deeper than that - its been found in some of the shallower pit workings in these parts (grew up in a mining village)
I consider standstill a victory.

I dig it up and burn it or transport it to the green waste section at the city dump. Ooops, my bad; recycling centre. They sell compost made from the green waste section but I would never buy it as the main ingredient seems to be cupressus leylandii.

And horsetails as a garnish, naturellment.

Despite the volumes they handle, they cold compost it round here and try to sell it with identifiable plant matter visible in the mix - and complain its not very popular. (It doesn't help that even the local posh garden centre is cheaper)

[Deleted User]

westcoastscot wrote: »

am a Guardian lady myself - never could get along with the times - neither one thing nor the other :rotfl:

Talking about the newspapers, always reminds me of this episode of Yes Prime Minister.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M

GreyQueen

:eek: Blimey, nuatha, I thought 6 feet deep roots were bad enough. Bindweed has been found with 30 foot deep roots before now, ghastly stuff. I have zero tolerance for certain weeds; horsetail, bindweed (both kinds), curled docks and common mallow.

How deep is a shallow mineworking, btw? Am from a non-mining area.

I don't beat myself up about the horsetail although some tender souls have quit adjacent plots because of it. We shall square up regularly and I aim to hold the line. In my fantasies, I am a Boudicca in gardening duds, steely-eyed and determined, with a mattock in one hand and a tea flask in t'other. The [STRIKE]Romans[/STRIKE] weeds won't know what hit them.

In boring old RL I'm just another nutjob who likes playing in the dirt. Beats going to the gym, imo.

Shropshirelass

Talking of prepping for growing something eatable.. DH cut down a bush last year, it was a miniature/stunted leylandii, ugly, deformed, and taking space on a side of the house where fruit trees seem to prosper. Last week he decided to dig up the roots, to plant a baking apple tree I have been nursing along . Around the root, he unearthed the plastic pot in which it had been planted .... previous owners didn't have much idea, I'm afraid:rotfl:

BTW our honeysuckle bush has turned into a wild damson/?sloe - it is in a (proper clay) pot, probably honeysuckle was grafted onto damson stock - wonder if we could plant it in ground would it produce a decent crop? It makes me a bit nervous about buying fruit trees - does it often happen that the top bit dies and the plant turns into the original stock?

jk0

Shropshirelass wrote: »

Talking of prepping for growing something eatable.. DH cut down a bush last year, it was a miniature/stunted leylandii, ugly, deformed, and taking space on a side of the house where fruit trees seem to prosper. Last week he decided to dig up the roots, to plant a baking apple tree I have been nursing along . Around the root, he unearthed the plastic pot in which it had been planted .... previous owners didn't have much idea, I'm afraid:rotfl:

BTW our honeysuckle bush has turned into a wild damson/?sloe - it is in a (proper clay) pot, probably honeysuckle was grafted onto damson stock - wonder if we could plant it in ground would it produce a decent crop? It makes me a bit nervous about buying fruit trees - does it often happen that the top bit dies and the plant turns into the original stock?

I think you just have to make sure you prune away 'suckers' from below, and not prune the top bit below the graft point.

herbily

Horsetail is supposed to be brilliant for curing cellulite, but you need a lot of it, the equivalent of a large jugful for each bath, and you need a hot bath with horsetail in every day for at least six weeks to see results - I've never been able to find enough horsetail to test this! So really you're very lucky to have this source of horsetail....

(Also, owing to something known as the Law of S*d, the moment you actually want a plant, it dies on you - ask me how I know:))