Preparedness for when

Karmacat

thriftwizard wrote: »

And I'm a very happy bunny; 5 x 1.5l Ravenhead Kilner jars, £4 each from a local charity shop. More than I'd wanted to pay, but after weeks of searching, I've realised that you almost never see that size. I can face TEOTW quite happily if I have plenty of Kimchi & water-kefir!

thriftwizard, are there any websites you'd recommend for water-kefir? I really want to use kefir regularly, but I don't want to try to start drinking milk again, its really bad for my stomach.

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

The aforementioned mushrooms would be a good choice.

They grow indoors, so safe(ish) from further disastrous effects, and with a pretty rapid growing cycle.

Thats one of my prep projects for after I retire

[Deleted User]

daz278 wrote: »

But would Europe not be obliged to help us if our net immigration continued to be 300k plus?

You would think, but I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is no.

The fact is, the other major countries don't give a damn about the UK, hence them hacking away at our fishing limit.

As for the French, do you think it's a coincidence, that they set up migrant camps within easy reach of ferry and Eurostar terminals?

As far as the French Government is concerned, the sooner the migrants are on the way to the UK, the better.

jk0

daz278 wrote: »

would there be a marginal level that would deter future migration.

Hmm. I dare say there is a fairly limitless supply of homes that could be packed four to a room rather than one per room.

The rest of Europe hasn't been much help so far.

milasavesmoney

GQ thank you for the blight information. I did not know this was still a problem. How very awful!
I have GGgparents that came to Texas during the Irish potato famine. Texas was wild and wooly then, but very fertile. They prospered as did their children.

[Deleted User]

We grow climbing French beans and runner beans each year, not as a follow on crop from potatoes but in their own right and I leave any pods on the vines that have been missed and become mature and leave them to dry completely on the vines at the end of the picking time. The French beans dry to something between a haricot and a cannellini sized bean, I pod them and then dry them thoroughly for a few weeks on top of the boiler then put them in sealed bags and into the freezer for 48 hours to kill off any potential pests in them. The runner beans dry well too and are nice in chunky casseroles/chillis etc. and get the same treatment. Last year I ended up with over 2lbs of dried beans from 12 plants so a good yield and we'd picked the fresh beans for weeks beforehand.

We're as far south as you can get without being in the ocean and we aren't harvesting even our new potatoes yet, we've had a couple of roots and although delicious they were tiny so follow on crops will have to be either grown in pots and held until the potatoes are out which could be sweetcorn, you can dry that and grind for cornmeal but it would be a late maturing crop. He Who Knows says on the allotments people tend to follow potatoes with a crop of leeks, you might think of broad beans to overwinter for an early crop the next year but it's a bit early for those even.

thriftwizard

mardatha wrote: »

Does anybody else feel that life is changing really fast and that things have got away from us now? Like a bike without brakes going down a steep hill..

Oh yes! But I've had it ever since I had the twins, and they're nearly 24 now.

I do know what you mean, though... it's why I keep feeling that our votes on 23rd are almost irrelevant; one way or another it's still going to be a bunch of people who just see us as milk cows at best, and cannon fodder at worst, in charge. Rents will go up & thousands of people will lose their homes if interest rates go up, but businesses will continue to go under & jobs will be lost if they don't. Our youngsters are hamstrung by student debt before they've even had a chance to live independently, let alone build a life. Reading around the WWW, you can't help feeling that many people would actually welcome TEOTWAWKI as they feel things are going horribly wrong all over & really can't get much worse.

So - we have to keep our morale up, otherwise They're winning... out with the jellybabies & some terrible jokes!

[Deleted User]

'Twas ever thus cherubs, as long as rich men and women hold the power in this world they'll make absolutely sure that THEY keep the reins firmly in their hands and us firmly in our place, working for them for a pittance while they keep the profits and stay as fat a cat as it's possible to be! It would seem that through all of history, even after a bloody coup or peoples revolution given a few years of power the strongest become the 'fat cats' and the rest of us are still in the same place.

We'll manage whatever this world throws in our path because we don't just sit around repining on how good life used to be and how it isn't fair. Well cherubs, Life ISN'T Fair but the old saying 'Ours is not wonder what is fair in this life but find what may be and make it up fair to our means' holds a lot of credence even in this unsettled day and age. Life might not be luxurious after whatever happens but we'll unitedly make it as good as it is possible to do because we're that of type of mind set, aren't we?

Karmacat

I like both those posts, thank you thriftwizard, thank you Mrs LW.

Thriftwizard, can I ask again about the water kefir? Whats a trustworthy source of how-to? I'm really interested, sorry!

GreyQueen

Morning all.

Yeah, mila, potato blight is still a major problem in the UK. Commercial growers spray against it, several times a season, with organisations like Blightwatch sending alerts. It's really for farmers but there's nothing to stop gardeners like me joining in, which is what I did. It works on postcodes (our version of zip codes).

The darned stuff lies dormant in the soil and is activated when the temperature and humidity are right (90% plus humidity is perfectly common in the UK btw but temperatures are often cool-ish even in summer) and then it marches across the country with the prevailing wind, travelling several miles a day. My understanding of the commercial sprays is that they are only active for a limited amount of time, so that the farmers have to wait until the blight is close before they can spray against it, it doesn't seem to be a case that you can treat at the start of the season and sit back.

When I started allotment gardening, I was warned by the old boys up there to stay away from main-crop spuds because they got blight. Which I did, favouring the second-earlies. Still got blight but not every year. I've learned how to cope with blighted potatoes in previous years, and it is possible to save most of them, with careful observation. I've posted about it on this board on previous years and many of the same people who're here now will have read it then, so I won't re-iterate it unless someone specifically asks me to.

Prior to the coming of the spud into Europe, we'd've been eating starchy root veg which store well, dried peas* and beans and pottages of things like barley as our stable carbs. And hitting the 'hungry gap' every spring when the last of the stored food is going and the new crops aren't bearing yet.

* The childish rhyme; Pease pudding hot, pease pudding cold, pease pudding in the pot, nine days old.

maryb

Oh lord, we're on holiday atm in definitely not v sunny Italy and won't get back to check the allotment until after 20 June. Dd1 is at home and under instructions to water if there is a drought. Not much chance of that so she won't be going anywhere near it.

I hope we don't lose our crop of Charlottes and also hope we don't spread blight to anyone else. Touch wood we've not had any probs in previous years but everyone has told us not to grow tomatoes on the site because of blight.

I was looking forward to a summer of our own potatoes. Charlottes are just gorgeous part boiled then crushed and roasted with herbes de Provence and lots of olive oil.