Preparedness for when

moneyistooshorttomention

GreyQueen wrote: »

You baffled me there for a moment, as I hadn't written anything about chickens.... then the penny dropped.

'Fat hen' is the English country name for this;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenopodium_album

It's a fast growing and extremely prolific weed. Its leaves are edible, as is the mealy-type grains. Back in the day, they were gathered, parched and ground into meal.

If anyone would like to experiment with Chenopodium aka lambs quarters, melde, goosefoot, go into the fields or veggie patches of this septic isle and you're sure to find some.

I've deliberately left some I found growing in the garden - and lined-up for a dinner plate next to me soon:). Waste not, want not and I feel like I need some sort of alternative for the teeny greens I planted out that were promptly eaten by summat-or-other pdq:mad::(

At least the chomping jaws that live in my garden are leaving my strawberries alone by and large (though I have found earwigs eating them darn it...). I'm managing to get most of my strawberries myself. Have now gone into overdrive producing them and starting to give them away. Must prepare the couple of bowls worth I picked today and will experiment with leaving them in the freezer. They will probably turn somewhat mushy - but I figure I can use them as strawberry puree and mix with some yogurt or something or just put a bit on my morning porridge.

GreyQueen

It survives the equine digestive tract perfectly, too, RAS. My allotment has always had a lot of it, but the amount has just gone crazy since I barrowed up the horse manure from the common where the ponies graze.

I'd far rather pull weeds than use chemical fertilisers. Remember me grumping about them next door on the plots who'd used herbicide and oversprayed my path? Well, they oversprayed the plot on the other side of them, too, and got a telling-off from the lottie officer for being careless.

It's interesting to watch how the plant life is recovering. The couch grass has been the slowest to regenerate but the weeds are coming back nicely, especially the perennials like docks, nettles, mallow and misc other things. They're presently 2 ft tall. And the bellbind is going gangbusters over there and trying to get back into my plot.:eek:

You can cheat to try and get ahead, but you still have to deploy cold steel. My observation of gardeners who use chemicals or power tools to get the drop on the botany is that they seldom follow through with hard work, and are in fact pretty darned poor gardeners.

Frugalsod

daz378 wrote: »

most environmental changes , may take decades or even centuries to fundamentally effect our lives, unless a lotterry style super event occurs , like canary island dropping in sea or yellowstone caldera , but say a medium event of icelandic volcanoe stopping airtravel for months , combined with grexit, a year of hardship could provide excuses to bar all benefits except the most disabled ........just had a couple of days in blackpool , but because i arrived on spec got hammered on single supplement..... 55 pound a night , but my kneee was hurting , it was warm and wanted somewhere to stay ... not a bad hotel though........you all take care

I think that we are probably well on the way for climate change. It was noticed in the 1950's and has carried on regardless. So the fact that it is mainstream now does not discount the fact for nearly half a century we have done nothing to mitigate our carbon emissions.

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/us-navy-predicts-summer-ice-free-arctic-by-2016/

An ongoing US Department of Energy-backed research project led by a US Navy scientist predicts that the Arctic could lose its summer sea ice cover as early as 2016 – 84 years ahead of conventional model projections.

So if we do have an ice free arctic by 2020 then we can clearly see that climate change is well on its way and that major changes are coming whether we like them or not.

daz378

that does seem to bring the problems closer to home , in terms of time and location, the consequences of long term escalation of oceanic methane , could eventually effect our water supply, the geo political consequences are worrying. What country isnt going to fight for access to water, the west is already struggling with the influx of thousands migrants escaping unstable/barren societies, imagine that hundred fold......just hope the change turns out to be more gradual and give us a chance to adjust......i know its better to know the potential risks in the future.....but a part of me thinks sometimes ignorance is bliss

boultdj

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I've deliberately left some I found growing in the garden - and lined-up for a dinner plate next to me soon:). Waste not, want not and I feel like I need some sort of alternative for the teeny greens I planted out that were promptly eaten by summat-or-other pdq:mad::(

At least the chomping jaws that live in my garden are leaving my strawberries alone by and large (though I have found earwigs eating them darn it...). I'm managing to get most of my strawberries myself. Have now gone into overdrive producing them and starting to give them away. Must prepare the couple of bowls worth I picked today and will experiment with leaving them in the freezer. They will probably turn somewhat mushy - but I figure I can use them as strawberry puree and mix with some yogurt or something or just put a bit on my morning porridge.

I slice and dry strawberries for use in my porridge in winter, they also make do as a nice fruit 'crisp' when dry.

GreyQueen

Morning all.

Went to bed at silly o'clock yestereve as exhausted and am now up, fuelling up and getting ready to go show those weeds who's boss*. I have a time-critical mission to deal with the 4ft tall grass growing on next door's plot, which is leaning over my fence and about to drop gadzillions of seeds into my soil. She's a nice enough woman, the plotholder over there, but as dippy as all come out. Last weekend she was marvelling about the beauty of the several varieties of tall (and seeding) grasses growing on her plot.

I had to bite my lip in order not to scream IT'S A VEGGIE PLOT NOT A HAY MEADOW, WOMAN! The seeds end up on my plot which means that I get to play haymeadows, too.

I've been noticing in the last 15-20 years, that we're prone to getting a kind of rain in the UK which I don't recall from my earlier decades. I'm talking those sudden almost tropical rains, where an enormous amount of water comes down in an incredibly short time. The sort where you'd get soaked to the skin in about 20 seconds, where streams of water run over the pavements and down the roads, where surface water flooding is likely.

Our phones go crazy at work when this happens. The public report that the gulley drains (those gratings in the road beside the kerb) are blocked. They're not, in most cases; the volume of water is in excess of the ability of the systems behind them to drain, and they will temporarily appear blocked until the water has had a bit of time to go down/ the rain has slackened off or stopped a bit.

There are places where surface water flooding is becoming common in these cloudbursts, and the water can rise very quickly, even to the height of a couple of feet. And that's enough to knock you off yours and to float a car. And I can't see how the infrastructure of drains under urban areas can be retro-fitted to make the capacity greater. The capital cost of digging up most urban areas would be enormous, and there are a lot of utilities buried in the roads, apart from the drainage.

Dunno what the answer to that is, other than to wish people wouldn't pave/ tarmac/ brickweave/ deck so much soil.

* Them, apparently. I've been told but am refusing to comply. Mammals trump vegetation, I insist on it.

moneyistooshorttomention

GreyQueen wrote: »

It survives the equine digestive tract perfectly, too, RAS. My allotment has always had a lot of it, but the amount has just gone crazy since I barrowed up the horse manure from the common where the ponies graze.



It's interesting to watch how the plant life is recovering. The couch grass has been the slowest to regenerate but the weeds are coming back nicely, especially the perennials like docks, nettles, mallow and misc other things. They're presently 2 ft tall. And the bellbind is going gangbusters over there and trying to get back into my plot.

You can cheat to try and get ahead, but you still have to deploy cold steel. My observation of gardeners who use chemicals or power tools to get the drop on the botany is that they seldom follow through with hard work, and are in fact pretty darned poor gardeners.

I'm not so bothered about some of the perennials - ie nettles and mallow and the like - as at least they are useful.

Couch grass on the other hand:silenced::silenced:.

I quite agree that its "lazy gardening" to use weedkillers and I'm out there swearing and tugging at the ones I get, rather than using weedkillers. I'm working on the theory that the better the soil is, then the easier it is to tug up the weeds (and, of course, plants that have "had their day") so still working on my permaculture "chop and drop" and will be getting my act together to feed it in other ways. Some of my soil is now pretty good - and will work on the rest.

Tell me about neighbours bindweed...:mad:

moneyistooshorttomention

GreyQueen wrote: »

Morning all.

Went to bed at silly o'clock yestereve as exhausted and am now up, fuelling up and getting ready to go show those weeds who's boss*. I have a time-critical mission to deal with the 4ft tall grass growing on next door's plot, which is leaning over my fence and about to drop gadzillions of seeds into my soil. She's a nice enough woman, the plotholder over there, but as dippy as all come out. Last weekend she was marvelling about the beauty of the several varieties of tall (and seeding) grasses growing on her plot.

I had to bite my lip in order not to scream IT'S A VEGGIE PLOT NOT A HAY MEADOW, WOMAN! The seeds end up on my plot which means that I get to play haymeadows, too.

I've been noticing in the last 15-20 years, that we're prone to getting a kind of rain in the UK which I don't recall from my earlier decades. I'm talking those sudden almost tropical rains, where an enormous amount of water comes down in an incredibly short time. The sort where you'd get soaked to the skin in about 20 seconds, where streams of water run over the pavements and down the roads, where surface water flooding is likely.

Our phones go crazy at work when this happens. The public report that the gulley drains (those gratings in the road beside the kerb) are blocked. They're not, in most cases; the volume of water is in excess of the ability of the systems behind them to drain, and they will temporarily appear blocked until the water has had a bit of time to go down/ the rain has slackened off or stopped a bit.

.

I have been rather wondering that too.

I've spent time living where there were monsoon rains as a child and thinking to myself "I didn't pay a load of heed back then....but I could swear this is that there monsoon type of rain I've noticed here a few times recently. How come?" and wondering whether British drains need adapting to those huge great ones they had abroad for this rain.

Hmmm....waddya think GQ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkgMSCD-sDY


for comparison purposes.

Monsoon is the last blimmin' thing we need in some parts of Britain (speaking from Wales.....).

GreyQueen

Permaculture isn't going to work on my plot as a good half of it has an extremely-heavy horsetail infestation. I dig with a fork and remove as much of the roots as I can get, but the roots go down 6 ft. Bindweed roots have seen seen 30ft deep and even found in wells.

I'm quite cross about the bellbind, that's the large bindweed with the giant white trumpet flowers. I eliminated it on my allotment years ago, there was a colony of it on the neighbouring plot which had encroached. I sorted it, they're letting theirs go, and now tendrils of it are reaching through the fence.

Due to the layout of the site, and subdivisions of plots, I have five neigbouring plots sharing my boundries and only one of those is cultivated, so I spend scarce time and energy dealing with nettles, brambles, grass, bindweed and all sorts coming into my plot from theirs.

:mad: I daren't let those seeding grasses drop their payload into my ground or there'll make even more work later on.

But yes, couch grass is the devil's own instrument, I have pretty much won the battle with that, apart from keeping the grass path from spreading its boundary into the veg patch, and the stuff coming across underground from the haymeadows next door.

I've seen couch grass grow through wooden panelled doors left lying on the ground, through potatoes underground, like beads on a necklace, and have a hearty respect for it. Prefer digging up brambles to dealing with horsetails and bindweeds, tbh, you can win in under 12 months with brambles.

I have 3 large mallow plants in full bloom on the veg patch. I shall be dead-heading them to stop the seeds dropping as they are already in the top 5 commonest weeds on the plot, but they are so beloved by the bees, and I am a bee-friendly gardener. I shall dig them up in the autumn, though, two of them are in the middle of the patch. The third is in a small area about 3 x 3 m at the top corner of the plot, which is a wilderness, largely due to encroachment from the 3 plots which border it, and I haven't had time this season to wrestle it into submission.

If asked, I tell people its a Nature Reserve.

Frugalsod

daz378 wrote: »

that does seem to bring the problems closer to home , in terms of time and location, the consequences of long term escalation of oceanic methane , could eventually effect our water supply, the geo political consequences are worrying. What country isnt going to fight for access to water, the west is already struggling with the influx of thousands migrants escaping unstable/barren societies, imagine that hundred fold......just hope the change turns out to be more gradual and give us a chance to adjust......i know its better to know the potential risks in the future.....but a part of me thinks sometimes ignorance is bliss

It is the methane in the Taiga that I am worried about, much closer to the surface and large enough quantities to cause havoc with the weather. The oceanic hydrates will be enough to heat the planet up considerably, and make much of it uninhabitable.

Though knowledge of what is coming will help you prepare for things like water rationing. If you are really careful with your water use you will find water rationing easier to cope with. Those that are completely wasteful will find the change traumatic. You only have to see the attitudes of some to see how that will work out.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/water-restrictions-in-california-rich-residents-angry-over-brown-grass/story-e6frflp0-1227401774568