Preparedness for when

Charis

Frugalsod wrote: »

Another thing to add is that any stores will be miles away with very low quality tracks to and from any towns. You may have no water, drainage or power. So costs of living will be higher because of the lack of facilities locally. Also Spanish property is still falling in value so it looks over priced as well. Plus you would need to spend a fortune on the place.

There's probably power available at a price, there are half a dozen large wind turbines in one of the shots. However those things are noisy close up, I have been told and there have been several accidents where they have burst into flames or bits have flung off them. Who knows how well maintained they would be? If Spain goes the way of Greece, you may find your harvest requisitioned to feed those with no food and no money to pay for it.

Wyre

Just watched 'The Island' with Bear Grylls on channel 4, 13 men abandoned on a pacific island with 6 tools and a daysworth of survival training. The only water they found was stagnant and needed boiling to sterilising - the fire took more than 12 hours to start! Next episode they go looking for food.

Definitely food for thought. Gotta practice those life saving/preserving skills.

[Deleted User]

It was the Alex Scarrow one, not to my taste at all I'm afraid!

GreyQueen

Morning all.

Now getting my workaday head back on as have been toiling most happily on the allotment for the Bank Holiday weekend. Have really cracked on and can now cruise into the weekend, just doing work stuff, eating and sleeping and - it being a Tues today - archery.:D

Oh, deep joy, the new bow to play with. What kind of damage can I do to a target with a 36 lb pull longbow?

MrsLW, interesting about your seeing some former lawns coming under cultivation. I can recall a few years ago a peep with an ex-LA house up in arms because his LA neighbour was growing veggies in his front garden. We thought it was estimable. Sometimes, the front garden has the most light, so it makes sense to put the veggies there. We can't all live in a bijou versionette of a landed gentry life with a formal flower garden out front and a kitchen garden out the back.:rotfl:

One thing I will say, should anyone reading be replacing their lawn with a veggie bed for the first time; beware of the grubs. There are things living in the soil under grass which are pretty hostile to veggies and for the first couple of seasons or so, you can have fun with them.

I'm thinking of the cutworms, the colloquial name for the soil-dwelling caterpillars of various moth species. They're fat, found lying in the soil in 'c' shapes, and are various muted shades of khaki and dullish green/ beige. Their endearing habit is to cinch themselves around plant stems just below the soil and cut them down. If you come up one morning and find a plant lying wilting, obviously severed overnight, it was probably a cutworm. I've known them to take down broadbeans and runners.

Then there are the 'chafer grubs' which are fat white grubs with brown heads, which are a particular pest of newly-broken up grassland. They eat stems and tunnel root crops. And the 'leatherjackets', the larval form of the craneflies (daddy-long-legs). Plus the orangey wire worms which just adore tunnelling spuds, among other things.

The one thing about hand-cultivation is that you turn these beggars up. I kill them on sight. It'd be even better to put a chicken run over the ground for a while and let the chikkies eat them.

This year, I'm culitvating a piece of ground on my lottie which was grassland for a decade for certain, possibly a lot longer. I cleared it last autumn, then went through it about 6 times in the months before planting the spuds, with a digging fork to remove roots and pests. I was very thorough, but I won't have got them all, and there will be some damage to the spuds, especially wire worm.

I shall keep the area cleared and under cultivation and each season will see the soil in better condition and the pesties made less welcome. Although I have found and killed 6 leatherjackets in one 2 x 9 m strip of previously-cultivated soil this weekend.

Keep pecking away at the preps, lovely peeps.

[Deleted User]

If you reclaim grass pastureland for a veg plot you will have problems too as any pests will decimate the first plantings you make, particularly potatoes which are a 'groundbreaking' crop often used to condition a plot in the first year of planting. You'll inevitably be getting massive amounts of wireworm and those tiny little slugs that live inside the potato tubers and make them unuseable. The idea of running hens on the plot for the first cleaning is a really good one as they'll manure the ground too and the fertility will be increased hundredfold for the second years plantings and they'll clear out the pests too.

GreyQueen

I wished I'd had hens, Lyn, but alas, not to be.

I did grab and kill quite a few wireworms - and they move fast to get back out of the light - and also 'baited' the soil with some sacrificial potatoes, spiked on pea sticks so they wouldn't be lost, to attract wireworms into them and then dispose of them.

I feel I've done the best can with the resources I had available, and it will be a few months before I see how my 7 rows of tatties will yield. I didn't have too much trouble in earlier years with the slugs inside the spuds; they don't seem to favour the very dry and free-draining soil I have up there.

All of which is to stress the importance of gardening as a continuous activity, not to labour under the illusion that growing food crops is something that you can drop in and out of easily as the economic climate dictates. Besides, I think it's best to take yourself out of the cash economy whenever possible; if nothing else, it builds self-reliance and frees up the cash to be spent elsewhere.

In the first series of the original Survivors from the 1970s, I can recall a couple of places where the surviviors encountered stashed cash, hestitated, then left the paper money behind. A nice little aside from the producers that banknotes aren't going to be a lot of use in that kind of situation..............other than possibly TP substitutes/ tinder for fires.

[Deleted User]

GQ when we got our first allotment it was in a previously grazed field that had just been ploughed up and the pest problems we had in that first year were huge. We didn't have hens then either but they really are the best way to 'cleanse' an area of land prior to planting. The best way to clear the land in the first instance would be to run a couple of pigs on it wouldn't it? Oh that ideal world we all hear about, if only!!!

I think that cash, be it coin or note will not feature in a post disaster world, it might whilst the problem is unfolding, but afterwards, when all that is important is actually obtaining the basics to stay alive I think the only currency that will be valid will be the right attitude to make sure you do!!!

GreyQueen

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

GQ when we got our first allotment it was in a previously grazed field that had just been ploughed up and the pest problems we had in that first year were huge. We didn't have hens then either but they really are the best way to 'cleanse' an area of land prior to planting. The best way to clear the land in the first instance would be to run a couple of pigs on it wouldn't it? Oh that ideal world we all hear about, if only!!!

Pigs followed by hens; 'animal tractors' in permaculture practise. With self-manuring function. Way to go, if you can finesse it.

D&DD

Morning all
Lyn sorry for my abrupt post last night I found out I could get wifi in the greenhouse so was reading along out there and decided to be all clever and post from my phone lol go me all tech savvy!! I couldn't see a damn thing though as I hadn't got me glasses with me!!! Shame you didn't like it but it wouldn't do for everyone to have the same taste eh?


I found your post about the gardens very interesting,theres hope yet then! I still keep plugging away here trying to help people grow a bit and it is a good feeling when someone pops up and tells me they just harvested something


We had rain overnight after 2 beautiful days so the garden is due another explosion,has anyone got a spare shoehorn? Running out of planting room already..


Wyre I plan to watch that it looked quite good.Thanks for the reminder.


Off to the greenhouse again gotta repot some aubergines,have a great day all XX

[Deleted User]

D&DD you can only lead from the front when it comes to common sense things like providing your own fruit and veg, sooner of later you get someone asking questions about how to do it and sooner or later someone will be inspired to try it themselves and one successful season will get them on board and then people will start asking them how etc.etc.etc. It's how self sufficiency works, so well done you keep the faith sister!!! Yes, it really is a 'my taste' thing with books isn't it? I love the original Terry Nation 'Survivors' novel, but disagree very much with his ending, ne'mind me dear, room for them all isn't there? Lyn xxx.