Preparedness for when

mardatha

RAS - would you kindly, when you have spare time, give us some advice on growing stuff in poor climate/poor soil areas? Or even in changing conditions as we're all experiencing now.
I don't suppose the whole of even the south of England has soil where you can shove a seed in and voila next day you have a perfect plant .. and so many new growers look at the gardening catalogues and believe them :rotfl::rotfl:
I've given in, I'm going to have to grow whatever poor deluded mad vegetable that likes being up here. Probly turnip!

ginnyknit

Its not much better here Mar, grew nowt last year as you know and back garden is a quagmire, I have my own paddy field. Even the greenhouse didnt do well as nettles grew inside it making things difficult, going to solve that problem this year too. Every potato I planted melted away at the jaws of slugs. I am hoping the new fencing will help so weed seeds dont blow over from unkempt garden next door and I will gain more space with the hedges gone making it a lighter garden and possibly dryer as the hedges hold a lot of water. God knows what they will find when they drag the hedges out.

I start each spring full of hope and enthusiasm only to be beaten down by pests and weeds - this year I will not be defeated :mad:

Butterfly_Brain

missrlr wrote: »

Thievery of all variants in on the increase. We have had much more opportunistic (open windows / unlocked doors) thefts and distraction thefts. Also bag snatching - not nice but how long until this gets more violent and people are seriously hurt?

I know, we were broken into on the 23rd December, luckily I sleep downstairs and heard the little sheet and when I yelled who is that they ran. I am so angry because he got into a brand new (Oct) double glazed French door, so I am waiting for the DG company to come and change the barrels. The police officer who came out to me was really helpful and sympathetic and said that thievery of all sorts is already on the rise.
Evidently there was a gang doing the whole area that night and quite a few were broken in to around here :mad:the last I heard was that they have arrested one of them so lets see if he squeals.

Confuzzled

mardatha wrote: »

RAS - would you kindly, when you have spare time, give us some advice on growing stuff in poor climate/poor soil areas? Or even in changing conditions as we're all experiencing now....
I've given in, I'm going to have to grow whatever poor deluded mad vegetable that likes being up here. Probly turnip!

when we lived on skye i managed to grow cherry tomatoes OUTSIDE. there are a lot of things you can do if you know some basic things about simple science and use easily found local resources

first thign we had this little L shaped bit at the back of the house that got full sun, with thick white walls this was a little pocket of heat protected from the wind so i of course immediately thought of using it to grow my more needy and less hardy plants. we lived half way up a big hill so we really got a lot of wind, so much so that even if it was raining lightly clothes on the line got dry because the wind whipped them around so much!

what we did was to take some old tyres and stack them against the wall in a pyramid fashion. because they are black they just soak up the heat and in northerly places like scotland it's more the lack of heat than noticeable sunlight that shortens the growing season.

next thing we did was to collect matured horse muck from some nearby farms and loads and loads of seaweed from the shore we could see from our front window. with seaweed wait til it's dry to collect it, wet seaweed weighs a ton! when we got the seaweed home we let it sit out in the rain for a few days to wash away excess salt.

seaweed has a couple of interesting and wonderful properties, first off, it takes forever to breakdown. it gets wet, swells, retains water and then shrivels up and gets dry as the water slowly evaporates. as it decomposes it gives off a fierce heat, again very useful in a cold or windy climate. so the heat combined with it's wondeful water retaining feature really makes it superb for mixing in with the soil and horse muck and shoving in a tyre. the soil we had was poor quality, if we had had good soil we could have skipped over the horse muck.

once you have your mixture of seaweed, muck (if using it) and soil stuff it inside the tyres and then fill the holes (looser than the insides of the tyres) you need the insides filled well because you need them for structure to the pyramid. the centres need to be loose enough to allow the roots to spread out without issues.

after you do this give it all a good soaking. then plant your neediest greediest water loving plants at the top and the less fussy plants at the bottom. to facilitate watering the roots rather than just the top of the soil which is very prone to evaporate in windy areas cut off half of a small drinks container (like a single bottle portion of coke etc), save the bottom half for a seed starter and retain the top half with the lid.

if you have a very water greedy plant, remove the lid all together and shove this with the opening side down inside an easily accessible part of the tyre in your pyramid. leave perhaps an inch showing above the soil line, any lower and soil will fall inside the bottle and clog up your watering system. this is now where you water, don't spray the plants, they actually get a bit 'burnt' when in a windy climate with wet leaves, water the roots, they'll get what they need and you'll use less water too.

you need to put one of these in EACH tyre in the pyramid. if you have a less water hungry plant you can drill a hole through the lid so it drains slowly, or you can use some scissors etc to poke a few holes through the sides but only as far down as will be below the soil. keep the lid on for plants that don't like as much water.

ok so now you've planted your plants, you have your watering system in place (remember, fill the bottle halves, don't spray the plants, fill them as often as necessary but try not to spray the leaves) now you need to think of making your own little green house. we used plastic tarpaulin affixed to some long poles and we would simply stretch it over and around the tyre pyramid as needed and open it a bit or all the way as needed

with this method you must really keep a watch out, if it's been hot for a few days you will have to keep up with the watering more as the tyres absorb soooo much heat so the soil can dry faster than you would think, however all that heat and all the fierce heat given off by the wonderful seaweed also keeps them toasty and at a great growing temp even on grey cool days. the plastic sheeting is more for dealing with the wind than anything else, believe you me the tyres and seaweed are keeping your soil nice and warm!

we successfully grew cherry tomatoes, peppers and a ton of herbs in ours despite everyone telling us it couldn't be done on skye pfft

RAS

westcoastscot wrote: »

One of the most positive traits I see in my grown children, apart from their raft of practical living skills, is the relative ease with which they've adopted a portfolio lifestyle. I worry about the future much more than they do - they assume they will have to have lots of strings to their bows in terms of income, living a self-sufficient'ish lifestyle and supporting each other and wider family as we all age and genetic illness progresses in some of us, and they are each successful in their own way.

I was on a very small island a little while ago and one of the things that really stunned me was the relationship and the skills of one of the families there. I have seen somewhat similiar in the far north but the families there were less visible (the lie of the land meant I could not avoid seeing what they were doing if I was at the front of the house).

The young teenagers earn their own money making craft goods from locally foraged materials or from their own fishing and netting. They plainly enjoy each other's company based on the number of times I came across them together.

When major projects were involved, they pitched in with their parents and sometimes alongside other islanders; the youngest is a mean quad-bike rider! During the tourist season they and the rest of the islanders operate a very tight co-operative effort that ensure the holiday let visitors get on and off the island with all their kit transported between the harbour and the houses. Impressive for a dozen shifting anything up to four times the number of visitors.

And when off duty, I watched the youngest teach his older sister how to kite surf.

They will put their hands to anything and assume that they can learn the skill but know their limits (how far out to go in their boats for example). That confidence seems to spill over into their academic work; they are home-schooled but travel off the island to take exams. Based on my conversations they are doing as well or better than their peers on the mainland.

westcoastscot

RAS wrote: »

I was on a very small island a little while ago and one of the things that really stunned me was the relationship and the skills of one of the families there. I have seen somewhat similiar in the far north but the families there were less visible (the lie of the land meant I could not avoid seeing what they were doing if I was at the front of the house).

The young teenagers earn their own money making craft goods from locally foraged materials or from their own fishing and netting. They plainly enjoy each other's company based on the number of times I came across them together.

When major projects were involved, they pitched in with their parents and sometimes alongside other islanders; the youngest is a mean quad-bike rider! During the tourist season they and the rest of the islanders operate a very tight co-operative effort that ensure the holiday let visitors get on and off the island with all their kit transported between the harbour and the houses. Impressive for a dozen shifting anything up to four times the number of visitors.

And when off duty, I watched the youngest teach his older sister how to kite surf.

They will put their hands to anything and assume that they can learn the skill but know their limits (how far out to go in their boats for example). That confidence seems to spill over into their academic work; they are home-schooled but travel off the island to take exams. Based on my conversations they are doing as well or better than their peers on the mainland.

RAS this brings back so many memories for me - you could be describing my family. We homeschooled too and all three of mine produced their own income from the age they decided they needed some - one sold eggs to a cafe on the island, another salad greens and another used our rotivator and small tractor to dig folks veggie patches! They went on from that to working with local carpenters, mechanics etc to learn skills, and we had a small shore-based oyster farm that was theirs too. Productive work was part of their day - we all cooked, cleaned, sewed, knit and crafted, looked after the animals, vegs, machinery and each other. We had a small boat and a day boat which brought fish and fun - I had a sider making/mending fishing creels and traded this for fish and game.
Looking back its no wonder they're resilent young adults!

Also makes me realise how difficult it is for young people these days - how are you supposed to learn these life skills - not just the skill themselves but the work ethic, and the value of a days work done well and appreciated? Alongside this you learn that applying yourself brings results, you learn communication skills and self confidence. It must be so difficult to give young ones meaningful work sometimes.

WCS

pineapple

mardatha wrote: »

RAS - would you kindly, when you have spare time, give us some advice on growing stuff in poor climate/poor soil areas?

I'm not RAS but...
Over on an MSE gardening thread it seemed that many of us in the UK had success with runner beans last year - despite the wet weather. I grew mine up a wigwam in a big container (with 4 sections) on the patio and they grew so tall it was like Jack and the flippin beanstalk and I ended up trailing them along the washing line! I had several plants and the beans were prolific - I froze a load and even gave some away.
Also had success with potatoes in sacks (better drainage than my actual garden) but not tomatoes as they were planted out when the sun disappeared and the rain started

2tonsils

Unixgirluk said ''
As for the tax on fire wood , people will just do what they did before go to the woods and cut what they need!!!! As for the tax, thats awful!''

Unfortunately they already thought of that as now you have to buy a license to cut wood to sell and a different one for your own use. You can't go to a wood and cut olive wood as all the trees are owned by the families for generations....you can even buy land but not the trees that grown on it! The forestry commission and fire prevention people manage the licenses but the money goes to the government...of course lol

No matter what we do to try to cut costs they come up with new ideas of how to take it off you one way or another. If you don't pay the taxes they can take it directly from your bank account or take your property off you and you can't sell anything without the tax being paid in full.

But still we carry on trying our best and muddling through one way or another. I am stubborn as a mule and I will not give in to the urge to leave, as I love it here and chose to make it my home for life. My neighbours have been very good to us and appreciate the fact that we are still alongside them despite everything. Most of them are farmers and wine and oil producers and are lovely ordinary people.

Crime has gone up here and now we are getting opportunist thieving as well, something that was unheard of till a couple of years ago. I live in a village and its still reasonably safe but they have set up a 24/7 patrol to make sure it stays that way in the future. The local council has set up a flood light over the back of our roof since I complained people were running along the roof in order not to be seen in the village . It has been quieter in the last few months so the lighting and patrols are having a good effect.

The EU has also started a scheme (run by the security police ) which ''encourages'' non eu immigrants to leave and return to their own country with assisted travel . It seems to be working but then they cannot stay if they have no work and there is none for the Greeks never mind the immigrants who came here a few years ago. It seems to be working as numbers of them have really gone down in the last few months.

My friend has told me that very cold weather is going to hit Europe and the UK as early as the end of next week so we are preparing for that in advance. I am well aware that if we get ice or snow we won't be able to leave the village as the roads would be impossible to negotiate.

We had an earth tremor last night, just after I had dropped off to sleep. The closed bedroom door starting creaking while still closed, then the roof and the front of the bedroom wooden ceiling. We both heard it and woke up but once we decided it was an earth tremor and not a burglar on the roof we decided to go back to sleep again....lol! There were a number of earthquakes in Italy yesterday and the ones at the bottom of Italy are almost opposite to us...hence we feel them more than most of the Greek ones.

All three of the Italian volcanoes keep shaking and erupting , they have been for the last couple of years. I know they have caused tsunamis in the Med in the past...one old lady here told me she could remember one when she was small where it swept fish in the sea water into the olive groves half way up the mountain!

I feel we can cope with most things that are thrown at us...what with strange weather swings from 42 degrees to near freezing, earth tremors, taxes and medicine shortages we have had plenty of practice the last few years! I am a survivor.....

mardatha

Confuzzled - the north west has a far milder climate than I do, we go up there on holiday because the air is so much warmer
Really interesting hearing everybody's stories and experiences, I love this thread!

pineapple

Thanks for the weather tip 2tonsils - I think we're in danger of being lulled into a false sense of security by this unwintery weather and I need to make sure I'm stocked up as access can be tricky where I live. Though to be honest I would welcome it getting a bit more 'seasonal'. I find the mildness and incessant rain unsettling. In fact I'm thinking seriously of selling up (or trying to). My big fear here is not flooding but landslip - I don't think we've seen anything yet..:(