THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

GreyQueen

ivyleaf wrote: »

I did read today that TTIP looks close to collapsing. Should I be pleased, or not? I haven't a clue - I'd sort of gathered that TTIP was a Bad Thing, but the piece said that it would be much more difficult for the UK to secure trade deals after Brexit without it.

If TTIP collapses, it will be a good thing. As regarding trade deals, they can be negotiated and will be negotiated.

We're in the top half-dozen richest countries in the world. People will want to do business with us. They will need to do business with us. Can you imagine Frau Merkel or her successor meeting with the big cheeses of the German car industry and told that her prospective tariffs against trade into the UK cannot and will not be allowed to stand, their bottom line is at stake? And tens of thousands of her countrymens' employments?

Repeat indefinately for all businesses in all countries. Yes, there will be some very public political stropping, blustering and toys-from-pram moments but, in the end, we have traded internationally for millennia and will continue to do so.

Have you been to the Hook of Holland and disembarked from a ferry and driven through an ocean of edge-to-edge greenhouses where flowers and veggies destined for the UK market are being grown? Or been in the Sierra Nevada of southern Spain, and looked down at the valleys full of plastic greenhouses near the coast? Lots of that produce in being sent here. Those growers and their investors aren't going to disappear any time soon, nor are the greengrocery needs of the UK.

We could just say sod yer citrus and we'll eat our own apples and pears and be done with it, but we were importing oranges when Elizabeth I was on the throne. I expect there was some kind of duty paid on them at the ports, but they got here just the same.

The trade negotiators will just have to pull their finger out and hustle for some tasty deals.

Re TTIP, anything the US proposes by way of international trade tends to be good for their biggest businesses and very bad for everyone else; their small businesses and businesses of all calibers in what is amusingly called trading partners.

I shall now head allotmentwards, to ready my soil for the coming year and to admire my pumpkins. Talk is cheap, but gardening is eternal.:rotfl:

DigForVictory

GreyQueen wrote: »

Talk is cheap, but gardening is eternal.

To my irritation, so appear to be slugs. I was going to invest in nematodes via t'internet (and blinking at the name as it sounds like the sort of race Dr.Who would vanquish) but having read this article and blinked still further, I may print it out that the Gardener's Boy can read & heed. I foresee another ten-pence bounty per critter (he earned the nickname SnailFarmer a couple of years back) but a steady supply of AntiSlug concoction may be worth it.

GreyQueen

I don't know if you were reading back then, but some old stagers from MSE may recall the Great Slug War of 2013; GQ vs the Allotment Gastropod Nation.

Armed only with an attitude problem, and various items made of Cold Steel *, I waged a solitary war on slugs with a few side sorties against snails. I was killing about a hundred a day, the blasted things were everywhere, it was ridiculous. Like a low-level version of a proverbial plague of Eqypt.

Bearing in mind those big slugs can live up to 6 years, and that this far south, most of them will survive the winter, I had to do something. I killed them on sight, they weren't hard to find, the brazen critters were everywhere. I was genuinely fearful I'd have no veg at all in 2014 if they lived to breed.

In 2014, I found 6 slugs (killed on sight). 2015 and 2016 ditto. Other people on the site are having lot of trouble still.

I have no idea if a gastropod species has a race memory, and if the ones local to me have been passing warnings down the generations, but they do seem to stay out of my plot and off my veggies and fruits.

* grass shears, hand trowel and spade.

DawnW

DigForVictory wrote: »

To my irritation, so appear to be slugs. I was going to invest in nematodes via t'internet (and blinking at the name as it sounds like the sort of race Dr.Who would vanquish) but having read this article and blinked still further, I may print it out that the Gardener's Boy can read & heed. I foresee another ten-pence bounty per critter (he earned the nickname SnailFarmer a couple of years back) but a steady supply of AntiSlug concoction may be worth it.

GreyQueen wrote: »

I don't know if you were reading back then, but some old stagers from MSE may recall the Great Slug War of 2013; GQ vs the Allotment Gastropod Nation.

Armed only with an attitude problem, and various items made of Cold Steel *, I waged a solitary war on slugs with a few side sorties against snails. I was killing about a hundred a day, the blasted things were everywhere, it was ridiculous. Like a low-level version of a proverbial plague of Eqypt.

Bearing in mind those big slugs can live up to 6 years, and that this far south, most of them will survive the winter, I had to do something. I killed them on sight, they weren't hard to find, the brazen critters were everywhere. I was genuinely fearful I'd have no veg at all in 2014 if they lived to breed.

In 2014, I found 6 slugs (killed on sight). 2015 and 2016 ditto. Other people on the site are having lot of trouble still.

I have no idea if a gastropod species has a race memory, and if the ones local to me have been passing warnings down the generations, but they do seem to stay out of my plot and off my veggies and fruits.

* grass shears, hand trowel and spade.

I have a small terraced house with a bit-more-than-a-courtyard garden, beloved of slugs, snails and many other pests

I did try the internet nematodes one year, and in all fairness, there WERE far fewer slugs that summer Haven't bothered since, though I have adopted GQ's strategy Might use them again at some point, not ruling it out - though the cold steel option is cheaper! Meanwhile I am about to apply a nematode treatment for vine weevils, the curse of the container gardener :mad: These nasty little beggars eat the roots of plants overwinter given the chance. The nematodes stop them in their tracks, applied autumn and / or spring.

Si_Clist

GreyQueen wrote: »

...I shall now head allotmentwards, to ready my soil for the coming year and to admire my pumpkins.

While you're there, tell 'em it's only 38 more days now before The Great Pumpkin appears :cool:

ETA - Just in case somebody out there hasn't yet rumbled this, one way to attract slugs to wherever it's most convenient for you to jump on them is to leave the corpses around for others to feed on.

milasavesmoney

Slug cannibalism! I've gotten quite the education reading this thread over the last year. :rotfl::rotfl:

monnagran

I had great success with beer traps.
Having sunk the margarine cartons into the soil I hastened to T*sc*s to purchase the fatal liquid.
Being a teetotal family, (well, me anyway) I surveyed the massed ranks of cans and bottles with some dismay.
The spotty youth I collared to quiz, did his best to help by showing me what was what. I was still bemused but assured him that I wanted something as cheap as possible.
Was it for a barbecue, he asked.
No, I explained, it was for the slugs.

His face was a picture.

I bet he is still dining out on the story of the mad old bat who threw parties for slugs.

x

culpepper

monnagran wrote: »

I had great success with beer traps.
Having sunk the margarine cartons into the soil I hastened to T*sc*s to purchase the fatal liquid.
Being a teetotal family, (well, me anyway) I surveyed the massed ranks of cans and bottles with some dismay.
I wanted something as cheap as possible.
x

I think you can just use yeasty water.
They definitely like ginger beer.

Si_Clist

culpepper wrote: »

I think you can just use yeasty water.
They definitely like ginger beer.

But according to a bloke on the allotments, they're not keen on Morrison's cheap cider.

We tried all sorts of tactics in our veg garden from nematodes to beer traps, and in the end solved the problem by going out with a torch on a rainy night and seeing where they were coming from.

In our case, most of them were based under the hedge that runs down one side of it, and I soon established that the optimum time to catch them crossing the path was just after it got dark. Having worked out peak time, I soon found that the quickest and easiest way to dispatch the things was the rapid application of the heel of my welly to the back 1/3 of 'em while they were still on the path. If done just right, that shot their insides clear across the path and back into the hedge, leaving a minimal amount of squashed slug on the path for me to skate on.

Best tally for one session was 90+ slugs and 16 snails :cool:

ivyleaf

Si_Clist wrote: »

But according to a bloke on the allotments, they're not keen on Morrison's cheap cider.

We tried all sorts of tactics in our veg garden from nematodes to beer traps, and in the end solved the problem by going out with a torch on a rainy night and seeing where they were coming from.

In our case, most of them were based under the hedge that runs down one side of it, and I soon established that the optimum time to catch them crossing the path was just after it got dark. Having worked out peak time, I soon found that the quickest and easiest way to dispatch the things was the rapid application of the heel of my welly to the back 1/3 of 'em while they were still on the path. If done just right, that shot their insides clear across the path and back into the hedge, leaving a minimal amount of squashed slug on the path for me to skate on.

Best tally for one session was 90+ slugs and 16 snails :cool:

All I can say to that is _pale__pale__pale_