Preparedness for when

fuddle

It's kind of like that here. I'm surrounded by Towns - one 10 mile that way, another 20 mile the other etc but as a village we're pretty rural, what I would call semi rural(surrounded by fields and link roads are 60mph country roads.)

If it snows, we get on with it. The biggest hardship is the Coop runs out of bread. The schools close at the drop of a hat mind - except the one I work in, the head gets in regardless, canny woman. The buses try their hardest to get through and common sense tells the locals to just not bother waiting in the streets on normal routes and walk up to the main road. DH has never missed a days work through snow, even the time the snow plough chucked all the snow in front of our drive. He still dug it out and was on his way. I think we're stubborn us Northern folk.

valk_scot

mardatha wrote: »

VS, if I get seed tatties now (supposing I can find any) will they keep until planting time next year??

You're better off buying in the spring. You don't have the same climatically controlled storage facilities the big potato merchants do and any you keep will probably become wizened/sprout/go mouldy by planting time. You can of course plant wizened and sprouting potatoes but they won't get off to as good a start as ones you buy in the spring fresh out of decent storage.

D&DD

public service announcement:cool:

Sainsburys have the pgtips decaf on for £3 *at last* so there will be a shortage in the local area as I have to stock up for us and my mum and dad too

See that's one difference right there Fuddle I was the only one in my street with a shovel I kid you not when we had the snow 2 years ago...I now have snow shovel,grit,salt and 3 shovels :rotfl:


Mary hope your pre op goes well let us know when you're going in X

PrincessX its been another funny growing year even here in the south east where we usually have it easy compared to the more northerly members I'd say to you and any other new growers stick with it its worth it honest

If you can pick up free or cheap seeds and start from there you don't need a lot of outlay while you're learning I pick up most of my seeds in Wyevales sales at the princely sum of 10 pence but sometimes splurge and get the 50p ones..

RAS

I live in a city so things can be OK At least the main roads are usually open whejn it snows. However, it only needs the first bus to crash into the snowplough as happened in 2010 and things get interesting. Did not help that the main road was also half blocked by a burst gas main repair to which the contractors could not get back.

In serious floods all 8 rail routes can be closed for one reason or another and all three motorways at some points.

With respect to food,, even in cities things could get difficult very fast. Most supermarket chain operate just in time, which means they have a day's worth of some goods and a few days worth of the less perishable stuff. We have two small supermarkets and two big ones with a mile but towards the city centre there are no supermarkets at all. So a high percentage of people in that area would be looking to get their supplies from one of those stores.

On the other hand, the last three Christmases (with family) we have had to dig, grit and clear the road from the house to the main road. Four wheel drive and chains are a good idea and a landie is useful. DS did not go to work for two weeks as neither the hill down or the hill up the only road across the moor was passable. Postie's solution is generally to deliver the mail to the nearest point he can reach and ring and let us know where it is. On another occasion he was driving down the road when he spotted a local, screeched to a halt, yelled "hamlet?? Can you deliver the mail to everyone?" and bunged the whole lot in the local's hands before driving off. it works.

There is no mobile reception, although you can walk up to the moor to connect and no cable. Two small buses a week and when yet another twerp wrecks the bridge, a 20 mile diversion to get round theb road works.

valk_scot

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

VAL - I totally agree with your post above, surely what is needed is an education programme to teach good practise to newly joined allotmenteers? Allotment associations could easily put together a do and don't list to send out when allocating the plot and the site representatives could pick up any mistakes when they do the periodic inspections of the site. It isn't rocket science is it, but if you're a newcomer to growing your own you wouldn't necessarily have the knowledge you needed. Cheers Lyn x.

We do put out information sheets, we do have very strict plot inspections and we do have the power to evict plotholders that continuously flout the regulations re potato growing and a number of other things on site. Still, every year we get a good solid %% of offenders whose excuses range from "Oh, I didn't bother reading the sheet" to "I do things my own way and !!!!!! the rest of you". As they say, you can lead a horse to water....

Anyway, any good gardening book will have this sort of information, by which I don't mean a glossy coffee table Easy to Grow Your Own!! type, I mean a gardening book. RHS or Readers Digest, something like that.

annie123

mardatha wrote: »

VS, if I get seed tatties now (supposing I can find any) will they keep until planting time next year??

You can pre order now for delivery next year.

Tattieman is up you way, I've had great crops from his spuds.
http://jbaseedpotatoes.co.uk/

and he does youtube videos too
http://www.youtube.com/user/potatospecialist

and he's a regular on here: http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/grapevine/new-shoots/potatoes-made-easy-revived-2012-a_26499.html

GreyQueen

Lotus-eater wrote: »

That was nothing to do with black people. It was a WW1 song written about the young farm boys from all over the USA.

Oops. My bad. I've checked and you are right; 1919. Thanks for the heads-up.

Valk that's shocking. Perhaps I've been sheltered from the true horror of some people's allotment ignorance as my site (established for 80+ years) has a lot of the old boys, some of whom took over from their fathers, and they are very savvy. Good on ya for being so strict at your site; we need this all over. How the heck are people doing rotations if they have 70-80% down to spuds each year?!

Among the newbies here, the typical thing is not to get under cultivation at all, never mind over-cropping on potatoes and doing stupid things with the haulm (as we call tater-tops around here). My allotment is surrounded by plots which have been allowed to revert to couch grass- grrr!

I have about 20-25% of my plot to potatoes each year, under strict rotation and would never dream of composting the tops or putting potato bits into the (dalek-type) composter. I had it dinned into me by my dad and grandad that you never replanted ordinary potatoes, for the sake of a few quid saved it's just not worth it. You want proper certified seed, preferably Scottish. I don't usually peel potatoes at all, just give them a quick scrub, steam them and eat them skins and all.

I was watching the advance of the blight via BlightWatch and a map; it came here from the south-westerly direction over a period of weeks. My lottie pal J (retired farm worker) was keeping me up-to-date as to what was going on several miles away and they were spraying weekly as the blight risk approached. This will have cost them a blinking fortune.:(

I was keeping a close (daily) eye on my tater tops and had the tops off and off site at the first sign of tiny brown freckles on a few of the leaves. It was on a mere half a dozen leaves on two plants and could've been something other than the blight but I wasn't prepared to risk it and in days it was revealed as the correct call. Some bystanders thought I was nuts but it doesn't pay to dilly-dally if you think it's blight.

As they were 2nd earlies they were still fully-green at that point, not the slightest sign of natural yellowing and die-back, so I wondered if I would have an undersized crop but there were some whoppers and not too many tiddlers.

I left them 2-3 weeks before lifting them, then had them between sheets of newspaper on the shed floor (Dad had the other 2 sacks and did the same at his shed). We were watching for signs of rot. Intercepted some nastiness; 1 kg of trimmings off spuds which had started to turn and a half-dozen which had completely rotted, which went into landfill. The 6 kg net of spuds which I trimmed were brought indoors for immediate use and sat on my kitchen counter in a basket; all fine bar one which went soft although it didn't rot.

Dad kept picking over and trimming and got on top of any nastiness in a couple of weeks. They've just finished "my" potatoes at their house.

I've just picked my potatoes off the staging in my shed and floor in the past week where they've spent the past few months laying so they don't touch in case anything starts to rot. Not a single one has had any problems since the mass trim session (but I have discovered that for some reason SPIDERS like hanging-out among the potatoes. Who'da thunk it?)

Concerned about frost risk so have now got the spuds at home in my bikeshed, in newspaper-lined baskets and boxes on the shelving. I had a go-round with blight in 2007 and policed the stored tatties for a few weeks and got past the problem and they kept excellently and I was eating them until June 2008.

Funnily enough, I was forking thru a corner of the potato patch this afternoon, dealing with an area of couch grass which had spread from the dereliction next door and found a small spud I'd missed and I go through several times after I'd lifted them. If I can, I get them at this stage, otherwise I'll intercept any volunteers when they reveal themselves by growing next year.

Should be good for h.g spuds well into late spring and then will move onto the canned ones from the stock-cupboard, so there will be "my share" if you like, in the shops for someone else to buy.

Since I can't see the amount of lottie and back-garden potatoes declining, the way forward must be education. I can still recall the posters from my 1970s classroom about colorado beetle and tsetse fly, so that wasn't paper and ink wasted.

annie123

D&#8517 wrote: »

It always strikes me that * apart from the level headed craprollz brigade of course* around here if theres the slightest glitch people fall apart extremely quickly..the queues when we had the non-existent fuel strike were ridiculous !! We have a foot of snow and we grind to a halt..that sort of thing whereas out in the more rural areas life goes on as it seems to be no big deal am I right in my assumptions I wonder?

That is so true. The snow we had 2 winters ago stranded DS in Croydon with what must have been hundreds of other last to leave shop staff. Trains stopped and buses got stuck going up the hills. So he walked 4 of a 7 mile journey where DH caught up with him as he was driving/sliding home from work in the van.

With so many people in a small space here in London, the shops could be totally empty in 24 hours, leaving the elderly etc unable to get even basic items.

When snow is forecast I do a quick wizz around the older ones/disabled/with young kids in my street and gather shopping lists for MrS and get it all in the car. I hate to think of someone near me desperate for XYZ when I could have easily got it for them before 'the OMG I've never seen snow before everything's going to sell out buy it all up brigade' .

D&DD

annie123 wrote: »

With so many people in a small space here in London, the shops could be totally empty in 24 hours, leaving the elderly etc unable to get even basic items.

When snow is forecast I do a quick wizz around the older ones/disabled/with young kids in my street and gather shopping lists for MrS and get it all in the car. I hate to think of someone near me desperate for XYZ when I could have easily got it for them before 'the OMG I've never seen snow before everything's going to sell out buy it all up brigade' .

Thats hit the nail on the head Annie our local stores were cleared before the snow even hit that year as it was so well forecast,but the chaos your poor son was caught up in was horrific..I remember that was the day I kept mine at home from school due to the weather reports and was so pleased I did!

I did a massive MrT's with spares for the neighbours the day before it hit too but the shortages in the shops here caused a few people real problems as they didn't even have any money to buy stuff when they could find it..

We all have the same choice to prepare for something like this when we have warning bad weather is imminent so should gov resources help those who ignore warnings or those who have at least tried to help themselves and others??Mmm a sticky question..

GreyQueen

:T Good on ya, annie123, everyone with a neighbour as thoughtful as yourself should thank their lucky stars.

Provincial City is in southern England and is relatively-hilly and no one here seems to have a clue about driving with any snow at all on the ground. Even half an inch seems to cause chaos. I have personally seen a Transit van trying to get up one of the city centre hills and it was going sideways...........:eek:

Also, the bus company seems to live in dread of not being able to get their vehicles back to the depot and is apt to withdraw all services with no notice on a snowy day, stranding commuters and shoppers from the 'burbs or the satellite towns and villages in the city centre. The other year some even had to put up in hotels or crash on floors with friends.

I've never seen a really bad snowfall here, but I do watch the supermarket delivery lorries shoe-horning themselves around the ancient tiny streets in the city centre (with the driver's mate walking point) every day. The tolerances are so tight with these ancient buildings that you huddle in doorways and think respectful thoughts of their prowess- and hope that they don't hit you. Not hard to envisage how much more difficult it would be with ice or show on the ground as they try to squeeze artics between listed buildings with jettied upper stories.

I very much doubt that the little city centre stores could handle more than a day or so with no fresh deliveries and the superstores on the periphery serve rural as well as urban customers and probably wouldn't last much longer. Better hope we don't see a re-run of '47 or '63.