Preparedness for when

[Deleted User]

Morning playmates, a busy day ahead as the family is coming for the weekend and I'll have a Zebra to play with. He Who Knows is heading for our allotment this morning, because of the warm and wet weather there is very bad 'Potato Blight' in all the plants, I guess it's across the south of England. Yesterday he harvested all the new first earlies and we have about 1/3rd of a sack but we also have in Desiree and Estima the haulms of which are badly affected so he's going to lift a root of each (as with the green growing parts dying they won't put on any more weight) and if they are big enough, he'll begin to dig the whole lot out for sack storage. We'll have to go through them once a month to make sure they don't rot because of a stray infected one. This is relevant to prepping, if the whole of the country becomes infected with blight we might be looking at a smaller yield overall and potato prices might be higher and availability smaller in the winter. I'm going to buy in instant mash, rice and pasta in slightly bigger quantities than normal to give us the carb part of meals just in case.

[Deleted User]

I thought I spotted a bit of blight on my tomato plants, here we go re the spuds again. I am leaving the rest of my charlottes in the ground, having cut the haulms off two weeks ago as the spuds were big enough then. If the south is affected then the whole country will be soon enough.
http://www.blightwatch.co.uk/

re the preserving in water, no not for me, not ever. Dicing with botulism. My neighbour on the allotment has a jostaberry, it is now an enormous plant and so far has about a 12 foot spread. Tbh I don`t like the fruit as it is neither here nor there.

The farmers all around me are growing arables for cattle feed and for fuel. What a waste, they go out time and again with this and that sprayer. I am thinking of soil conditioner if shtf means a shortage of manure and I grow comfrey bocking 14, it is all I ever use and add it to my own compost. The arables are becoming golden in colour and from now on any storm will devastate the crop, they only keep fungus at bay because of fungicides

ivyleaf

I was musing last night about sauerkraut and other fermented foods - kimchi, live yogurt, etc. - and got to wondering. These fermented foods obviously contain probiotics - but where do the probiotics come from ? Where were they before the fermentation process? They must have been somewhere :think:

Lyn Have a lovely weekend! I hope Zebra's mum is keeping well.

That's bad about the blight Many of us will remember the year there was a very poor potato harvest - presumably for that reason? - and the price shot up, and it never did really come down again! They'd been very cheap before that. All of a sudden a bag of chips cost £1 almost overnight.

pollyanna_26

Happy 10000 post Lyn I hope as much as possible of the crop is ok .
Hi to New Shadow .
If anyone can recommend a laptop 15screen or slightly larger I would be grateful . Hard to google them when this one keeps playing up .
Hi to Kittie
polly

[Deleted User]

Isn't it exciting, MSE Badger has given me a lovely new badge, I shall wear it with pride!!!

ivyleaf

Forgot to say NewShadow Really nice to see you posting - you were missed :j

[Deleted User]

oh I must shut the laptop and go, after this post, I keep seeing interesting posts and want to keep chatting. Re laptop, I just ordered a dell 15 inch as I do have live charts for stockmarket stuff and want that programme to be on a dedicated laptop

Re probiotics, they are bacteria and are everywhere. My sourdough starter just came from bacteria in the air. Fruits lying on the ground ferment naturally etc. The bad bacteria are the likes of clostridium, one of which can produce botulism. These bad bacteria are kept down by the good bacteria
http://www.stopcancerfund.org/pz-diet-habits-behaviors/bacteria-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

moneyistooshorttomention

Kittie, I shall google further re that fruit canning in water and see what Google has to say then....

I turned down an offer of free manure recently. Darn annoying - but I remembered there is a reason why not to take it any longer and it turned out that its down to modern-day "chemical" farming contaminating it. The animals eat chemically-treated whatever-it-is and it goes into their manure and that goes onto our soil and can damage some of our food-growing. Darn annoying not to feel safe about using this traditional resource until "chemical" farming is no more :mad:. Some allotment gardeners were complaining a few years back and there have been recent reports of further complaints (seem to recall John Harrison - well-known allotmenteer - saying about it in one of his recent newsletters). Presumably one is safe for using manure that is certified as organic - but I wouldnt care to use manure generally until chemical farming has gone into the history books and been there for a few years (giving it time to "wear off").

I've been using rock dust/bark "fines" and "chop and drop" basically to date to build soil back up again. I think too that the "mushroom" type stuff (mycorrhizal fungi - I believe its called) seems to be starting up okay in my garden. The earthworms are here now in abundance too - must remember to physically "help" some of them into a newer section of my garden - rather than waiting for them to get there under their own steam...:rotfl:

I've given up on trying to find any comfrey growing wild here and now have some young plants of my own in the garden (taking up space darn it - but whatcanyado...).

ivyleaf

kittie wrote: »

oh I must shut the laptop and go, after this post, I keep seeing interesting posts and want to keep chatting. Re laptop, I just ordered a dell 15 inch as I do have live charts for stockmarket stuff and want that programme to be on a dedicated laptop

Re probiotics, they are bacteria and are everywhere. My sourdough starter just came from bacteria in the air. Fruits lying on the ground ferment naturally etc. The bad bacteria are the likes of clostridium, one of which can produce botulism. These bad bacteria are kept down by the good bacteria
http://www.stopcancerfund.org/pz-diet-habits-behaviors/bacteria-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

So the fermentation process causes any probiotics that are already present in the raw cabbage or the milk to multiply hugely, is that what you mean kittie?

pollyanna_26

Kittie Thanks for that . I know you are offline now so will hope to speak later .Mine is a Dell Inspiron 1545 15.6 screen (I think )
I don't need bells and whistles but would be interested in your views . This is about six years old but original Dell parts ordered from the usa ( charger and battery ) are not suitable .as I found to my financial cost
polly