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Preparedness for when

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  • GreyQueen
    GreyQueen Posts: 13,008 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    :)greenbee, if I need a busman's holiday, I may just take you up on that.You do know I have ME and my physical labour is 2-3 hours a day, max, don't you? :rotfl:But I have a mattock and a stubborn streak and itcy fingers when it come to uncleared ground.

    My allotment site has been in existance since pre WW2 and before that was farmland. I can remember toiling on it and digging up unbelievable carp. Stuff which should never have even been on a farm never mind a lottie. 1950s lino, anyone?! I halfway wish I'd weighed the stuff as I retrieved it as the quantity must be staggering by now. Only last week I got a chunk of concrete the size of both my fists out, and that was ground that has been worked for several years. Still haven't uncovered a treasure chest of gold doubloons yet, to my great disappointment.:p

    I think that there a probably a fair few people, including some preppers, who have it in the backs of their minds that if food prices go up or food supplies get uncertain then they'll start with the veggie gardening.

    Trouble is, if you actually do gardening as opposed to just thinking about gardening, you know it ain't that easy and that soil needs to be worked to keep it in suitable condition. That there's a lot of skills to learn (or re-learn) and that a lifetime is barely adequate to it.

    F'rinstance, take Dad, with only 60+ years gardening experience. Total failure to grow parsnips in 2012. Several sowings of different seeds and nada. Never been known before or since. The family are normally maxed out with 'nips, but not that year. He still doesn't know what went wrong.

    It's a clearish morning and I can't tell by the city centre if there will have been frost up at the lottie in the 'burbs. There has to be a phenomenal degree of frost for it to appear on our carpark as we're very sheltered by the surrounding buildings. I have known no frost here and a full-on white air and ground frost only 100 m up the road. When I see my lottie later today, the lottie neighbours with uncovered tatties will tell me whether there was a frost up there last night.:(

    Late last night I was recalling an early June frost when I was a teenager and still living at the parental home. It was one of those rare occasions when the parental units had gone dancin' and kid bruv and me were in charge of the homestead. I was watching the 10 pm news and there was warning of a widespread frost.

    Went into the back garden and could see a clear sky so bullied the kid bruv to help me drape the tatties and wrap the runner beans, which were halfway up the beanpoles. Took over an hour and much grumbling from the brat-boy. But there was a terrible frost and lots of peeps lost a lot of stuff. Mum and Dad came quietly home rather late, slipped into the back garden and saw our handiwork.............Dad was pleased that I was on the case.

    Time for brekkie, going to let the day air out a bit, then pack up some sarnies and head lottie-wards. There's weeds in the onions and my peas have been pre-soaked for planting in TP tubes. The ones sown in open grouind have all failed. Bliddy thieveing !!!!!! mice, I expect.
    Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
    John Ruskin
    Veni, vidi, eradici
    (I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
  • greenbee
    greenbee Posts: 17,784 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    You don't have to bring your own mattock GQ... I have one I can lend you :)

    In my last place, the garden hadn't been worked for about 5 years, but it didn't take long to get it back into a decent state. In this case, it hasn't been worked at all so it is going to be hard work getting it into a decent state. And as one of my neighbours found a human jawbone a few weeks ago, I'm guessing there might be a few surprises :)

    (The jawbone was approx 500 years old and probably left over from the civil war as there was a battle in the field that our houses back on to)
  • GreyQueen
    GreyQueen Posts: 13,008 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    edited 3 May 2014 at 8:58AM
    greenbee wrote: »
    You don't have to bring your own mattock GQ... I have one I can lend you :)

    In my last place, the garden hadn't been worked for about 5 years, but it didn't take long to get it back into a decent state. In this case, it hasn't been worked at all so it is going to be hard work getting it into a decent state. And as one of my neighbours found a human jawbone a few weeks ago, I'm guessing there might be a few surprises :)

    (The jawbone was approx 500 years old and probably left over from the civil war as there was a battle in the field that our houses back on to)
    :eek: Gordon Bennett! I find chicken bones and what I think was a cow's shinbone but no human remains as yet.

    Keep turning up Early Neolithic flint tools. Bloke at the Museum reckons they were known to be farmsteading up there, back in day. Think what is now the city centre with the river snaking through it was prolly a marsh.

    Err, whatever do you do with a human jawbone? Contact a church for a proper internment?
    Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
    John Ruskin
    Veni, vidi, eradici
    (I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
  • D&DD
    D&DD Posts: 4,405 Forumite
    Morning all :)
    All seems ok here thankfully,wasn't up early enough to see any frost if there was any! Will do the same again tonight just in case then I think we're ok after will check on metcheck later.


    Have a great day at the lottie GQ wrap up though the winds a bit chilly here,I even had my hat on to walk Rosie yesterday.


    Doing some tinkering in the kitchen with DS3 today when he gets up,he's being so good trying new foods so got to keep the momentum going,we're doing some dips today hummus etc so should be fun..and extremely messy :)


    I love experiments in the garden I'm fortunate to have loads of seeds as my Wyevale sell them off at 5 or 10p a pack frequently so I'm always trying out stupidly early sowings and later than normal ones..some years it works some it doesn't.


    I have sweetcorn,pumpkins and climbing courgettes planted out already and growing quite happily this year.


    My peas and legumes finally got going but struggling to germinate squashes and that sort of thing GQ have done 3 sowings now and still very scant appearances,they usually grow like triffids.A few people have been reporting weird germination problems this year so it may not be meeces ??
  • GreyQueen
    GreyQueen Posts: 13,008 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    edited 3 May 2014 at 9:43AM
    :) Oooh, thanks for the reminder; must sling my fleece 'burglar hat' back into my gardening bag. Thought we were firmly into sunhat territory but it seems not.

    I was trying to save myself some time with the peas by sowing into open ground. I last did this 4 years ago. The peas which came up (about 10% of the planted ones :() were up in just over a week. The rest weren't there any more when I did some excavations (thieveing !!!!!! mice).

    I was hoping that a few more cultivated plots around me might have reduced the mouse-habitat but it seems not. Have plenny of peas so am sowing them in compost and TP tubes; will bring them down to the flat to keep them supervised and then will transpant them when they're ready to climb.

    The only thing growing in the pea rows are weeds and one of the dead wood pea twigs I collected a couple of months back. It's willow and it's struck and started to shoot...........:rotfl:

    Last year I had a terrible time with runner beans, which are normally idiot-proof. They germinated poorly, and once they started growing, grew badly and couldn't seem to get the hang of twining the canes. I resorted to tying the beggars on in the end, never known that before. More than one pkt and of different varieties, too.

    Gardening is never boring. Maddening, exasperating, challenging, WTH-ing but never boring.

    :D Soon the slugs will start moving.......and I shall be waiting for them. Cold steel - they don't like it up 'em.
    Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
    John Ruskin
    Veni, vidi, eradici
    (I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
  • pineapple
    pineapple Posts: 6,934 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    GreyQueen wrote: »
    Last year I had a terrible time with runner beans, which are normally idiot-proof. They germinated poorly, and once they started growing, grew badly and couldn't seem to get the hang of twining the canes..
    Me too but it was my own stupid fault as the conditions were fine. I blindly bought the seedlings at the same farm shop as the previous year but failed to notice they were a different variety and a dwarf one at that. Deep containers, plenty of compost, carefully tied stakes forming a wigwam to the heavens and the miserable things only got half way up. It was mainly bushy foliage that failed to wrap itself round the poles so I spent my life tying the b* things up and trying to spot the (much fewer) beans hidden in the foliage. Absolute carp :mad:
  • pineapple
    pineapple Posts: 6,934 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Frugalsod wrote: »
    I do not know if anyone has posted this:-

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-01/when-nations-go-broke-mob-justice

    Showing the problems that could happen here.
    I actually don't think it could happen here - Brits just aren't hot blooded enough and imo we are too wrapped up in ourselves to go after someone who stole a purse or robbed a stall etc. I might well be completely wrong of course! :D But I can see an increase in burglaries, bag snatching, pick pocketing and general lawlessness.
  • Frugalsod
    Frugalsod Posts: 2,966 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary Combo Breaker
    Scary reading, Frugalsod. I am under no illusions; it really could happen here, and some placid little backwater like this is exactly where it really will happen, rather than in an inner-city run-down estate where everyone's watching out for it. I watch the great & the good of our little town go puce & shake with indignation over some imagined slight from Westminster, and it's clear to me that the forces of darkness are not far below the surface...
    We are already seeing these sorts of problems in Europe. Greece is getting closer to complete collapse and if that happens we could have mass migration all across Europe. If governments are unable or unwilling to pay pensions or benefits promised what will be the outcome? There is no way that many on low pay could cope with their in work benefits being scrapped. It would ripple through the economy pretty rapidly.
    It's really easy to default to cynicism these days, since you are almost always certain to be right.
  • craigywv
    craigywv Posts: 2,342 Forumite
    Great to see everyone out gardening, my peas have gone crazy and are starting slowly to climb the wigwams,scallions look pityful like wispy green hairs dont know what happenned to them? Soft fruits all budding nicely so fingers crossed. Have a good long weekend all weathers been lovely here though its just started to drizzle hope its off again for tomorrow i have plans that invole gardening xxx
    C.R.A.P.R.O.L.L.Z #7 member N.I splinter-group co-ordinater :p I dont suffer from insanity....I enjoy every minute of it!!.:)
  • guineapiglet
    guineapiglet Posts: 13 Forumite
    Heathrow flight 'Mers' virus warning on the bbc news site (can't link):o
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