Preparedness for when

mardatha

And meanwhile up here, we have the last daffs and the first tulips and one solitary sweet violet.
signed Nanook of the Frozen North

jk0

The softening up exercise to prepare us for WW3 commences:

http://news.sky.com/story/1256597/ukraine-crisis-may-force-nato-to-deploy-troops

mrsmortenharket

Thanks for the ant advice.
Will they not damage any veg/fruit I try to grow GreyQueen?

[Deleted User]

Not meaning to be nasty to anyone, but many of the obese people you see, lumbering around the streets, wouldn't stand a chance, if the needed ever arose, for people to Bug Out on foot.

Butterfly_Brain

D&DD wrote: »

Morning all


I'll pass that on to my mum Ali,thanks, she has problems sometimes in her kitchen with them.


I have the field mice back again,swarms of birds and squirrels..
I don't do anything about any of them as they don't damage anything (famous last words)...


Off to hospital today with DS2 so not much'll get done and I've got a list as long as your arm will have to catch up tomorrow.


Still got around 8 bags of loganberries to use up,my bushes are absolutely groaning this year so thinking about dehydrating some when I pick them to save on freezer space.I prefer loganberries to raspberries so at least its a good problem to have!!


BB thanks have bookmarked to watch later,hows the recovery going???


Right better get a shift,will read properly later on have a great day all XX

thanks for asking, bless you :A
i have the stitches out tomorrow thank goodness but it will be a while until i can use the hand properly. DS is a pain when i am telling him how to plant the seedlings etc, he is at the age where he knows everything:p
hope ds's hospital visit goes well x

[Deleted User]

If anyone still has leeks standing in the veg patch it would be worth harvesting and freezing them now. I've just done half of what was left of ours and every one of them has the flower head inside. Despite that I've just washed, shredded and popped into the freezer 2 kilos of leeks for soups, stews and casseroles in the months to come. I'll process the other half tomorrow or I'll lose them and next year I'll start using them earlier in the winter to make sure we're not in this position again at the end of the winter.

Butterfly_Brain

looks like hsbc are wobbling again, if you have an account with them, i suggest moving to another bank asap

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/epic/hsba/

GreyQueen

mrsmortenharket wrote: »

Thanks for the ant advice.
Will they not damage any veg/fruit I try to grow GreyQueen?

Not to my knowledge, although I sadly don't know everything about everything, I admit. They do like sugar, so may end up on fruit that's over-ripe.

Ants do things like milk aphids so you may see them tootling up and down plant stems to do that. They basically get on with doing their stuff, building elabourate underground cities and living complicated lives.

I've had them nesting in the veggie patch and mostly haven't known they were there until I forked over some soil and accidentally disturbed their nest. Which I felt a bit sorry to have done, seeing them run about trying to gather up their eggs. We're giants to them and they mostly do very little harm to us in return, apart from the aforementioned tunnelling.

If you have ants indoors, it may be helpful to know that they send out scouts and then establish pheromone trails for other ants to follow to promising stuff like the proverbial jam-smeared knife.

After the parental units had a rear extension built on their house, which involved interfereing with the concrete outside the back door, we no longer had an ant nest right by the doorstep. They did arrive in the sitting room but, with a little observation back down the column of ants, I found that they were getting in through a tiny hole in the hearth. Quick dab of filler closed that off and no more ants.

I have a take-no-prisoners attitude to some garden critters, ones which I know do a lot of damage like the cutworms, chafers, wireworms, snails and slugs, but am pretty chilled about the rest. My lottie has a lot of soil-dwelling spiders, in charcoal black or brown, and delightful beetles pootling around. I feel that their presence is the sign of a healthy ecology (I use no chemicals) and that they're doing good stuff, or at least not doing bad stuff.

A good rule of thumb with garden critters is; how fast are they moving? If they're moving fast, they are liable to be carnivores and predatory on other creatures, some of whom fall in to the slow-moving camp.

Things which move slowly tend to eat things which barely move; vegetable matter. So that big nasty grub curled in the soil is no friend of the gardener, whereas that speedy beetle or centipede is accidentally on your team. I've been known to gently lift good bugs out of harm's way whilst digging, so I don't accidentally injure them.

[Deleted User]

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

if you have an account with them, i suggest moving to another bank asap

Fortunately, I moved from HSBC, a couple of months ago.

ArthriticOldThing

Originally posted by Bedsit Bob:
Not meaning to be nasty to anyone, but many of the obese people you see, lumbering around the streets, wouldn't stand a chance, if the needed ever arose, for people to Bug Out on foot.


Thanks for those kind words Bob. I guess that means I'm excluded from this thread.:(