THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

princesstippytoes

FairyPrincessk wrote: »

No worries, I'll just keep some in my imaginary planters of spreading herbs. I'd have to keep some separate for culinary and medicinal uses anyway.

This is all still in the very early stages of dreaming. It is part of how I while away long winter evenings when I'm trying to put all of the pennies towards the deposit fund. I would imagine there will be other priorities for the first few years of the garden anyway, I just like to gather ideas like a magpie, ready for when I need them.

Do you use Pinterest? It's a brilliant way to while away the bourse dreaming about gardens.

Cappella

A mature lemon balm plant is bushy, and it grows tall. The older stems are quite tough. You could edge with it at a pinch but it's not a plant I'd like to walk over. It's also a bully, it seeds everywhere and can take over beds quite cheerfully. I live it because it thrives here whereas thymes just turn their toes up - too wet for them I suspect.

Mila - I just make an infusion of lemon balm leaves, I've never mixed it with black tea, please let me know how you get on. Also I'm wondering (first sunny day this year here :rotfl:) about iced lemon balm and mint tea. Think I might try it for a change.

GreyQueen

Brief visit as going to work shortly ('scuse my Klatchian).

FPK, the various similar looking plants of the umbellifica type, such as cow parsley, hemlock, and pignut, are very very similar and even botanists have to be careful about mis-identification, so I'd not touch them with a barge pole, myself.

Giant Hogweed is a must-avoid, but it quickly reveals its giantism and will be over 5 ft tall by mid-May and is much bigger than the other umbellificas. It's sap causes photo-dermatitis as do a few other things. This is very painful and doesn't appear until some time after - my exposure was on a Thursday evening and the damage appeared with no warning when I woke on the Saturday.

As a child, my Dad showed my giant hogweed and told me why to avoid it, so it would be useful life lesson to pass onto children and grandchildren if you're out and about on country walks. It also appears in urban areas, too. Dreadful stuff.

FairyPrincessk

Princesstippytoes I do use pinterest, although I have to be careful with it. Sometimes it gives me a case of the green eyed monster, not what I want to cultivate in my house dreaming.

Capella, that is very useful to know. My father was going to start a creeping thyme lawn before his stroke and had me get the seeds for him, but then decided the timeline wasn't feasible. I'll definitely have to think carefully about water drainage etc. And possibly experiment with a small section before committing to all of it. To use chamomile requires separating the plants by hand as they multiply or else having the outlay for many, many plants which I'll never have.

GQ I'll look up giant hogweed, it sounds like one I should know and I can make it one of my walk objectives. I won't be eating or touching anything from the carrot/celery family that I find in the wild. It is far too risky, as you say. In fact I'm pretty reserved in what I'll forage for eating---blackberries, elderflowers/berries and I suppose I'd do dandelions although I've never fancied them. I'm too much of a novice and don't know anyone with enough experience to do anything more serious. Even with elderflowers I was extremely careful to ensure I verified as many features as possible to ensure I had the right plant. I have a lot of skin allergies and react to things many people don't so I don't go touching most things anyway. I do, however, have this terrible problem called curiosity and so I choose things to read up on before my walk each week and go around using my eyes only to see what I can observe.

thriftwizard

I think lemon balm is too tall for a lawn; in our garden it gets up to 12"-18".

Much sympathy to daz278 - not an easy time for you.

Back now from a week camping in a very noisy farmer's field with a horrible cold! Saw lots of my delightful old treasures go off to new homes, too, but I now have even more cause to worry for the future of the human race... some of the upcoming generation really are appallingly selfish & inconsiderate, just dropping litter/half-finished drinks/lit ciggies where they stand despite being two yards from a bin, or deliberately obstructing people who are trying to work & evidently finding that very amusing. And as for the lady who carefully picked her way around our Vintage Market, unfolding every piece of old fabric, carefully examining every lacy blouse, opening every book or tin, then turned to me with a worried face and asked, "It IS all new, isn't it?" - erm, not much I can say!

Jazee

Oh dear Thriftwizard.

Just looked up the hogweed stuff, will pass on to DD. She does a lot of running through the countryside and has sensitive skin.

Doveling

When we go orienteering, thinking of the events over a few days such as the Scottish Six Day, there will be between 3,000 -5,000 people in the area arena. The day after the event, apart from flattened grass and some churn up of the parking area (if the weather is wet), you would not know anyone at all had been there

I was reading an article about a man who goes round picking up litter - he thinks that everyone presumes it's someone's job to go round picking up litter.

I was taught not to drop it in the first place!
Leave nothing but footprints
Unless I've just mopped the kitchen floor :rotfl:

ivyleaf

melodramaticme wrote: »

I keep Vicks vapourub in my medicine box along with normal paracetomol and ibuprofen. And a packet of "injury peas" in the freezer. These are a polybag full of peas that are never eaten but kept frozen for treating twisted ankles and knees.
The Vicks is great for coughs and colds used for inhaling, but also rubbed on the soles of the feet when going to bed can ease a chesty cough. (a reflexologist's trick which works for me and mine)

That's amazing! Thank you I just hope I remember this tip next time one of us gets a bad cough (I shall probably be on here asking "Can anyone remember what that good tip was for easing a chesty cough?" ).

thriftwizard Words would have failed me too about the lady. What did she say when you told her it was all vintage? Sad to hear about the behaviour of some of the younger people - I'm sure they're not all like that though, or I certainly hope not! My grandchildren and many others are being brought up to put their rubbish in the bin and to treat older people with respect, as I'm sure your own children were and their children will be .

DigForVictory

<Pokes head around door, and read the Whole Thread!>
Awed at the things you folk feel are required learning (crochet? Bug out bags?) but impressed/respectful. Myself, I'm shambling at a tangent to rampant consumerism by learning to use the dehydrator & (shortly) a vacuum packer. Apple rings in "pretty" Mylar bags this Christmas I suspect. Not wholly sold Quite how MS that may be, or how Prepper, but made not bought & I'm monitoring the apple trees affectionately. I just want to be certain I have food (&, when I can find that bathtub emergency tank at a reasonable price, water) for periods of inconvenient weather, sudden loss of income &/or all three teenage lads having a growth spurt with concomittant requirements for food (it's not quite a zombie apocalypse when they're your own children, is it?!)

Pretty much All I know came from reading "baby steps" from Jodi & Julie (https://www.foodstoragemadeeasy.net), which although I'm neither American nor Mormon just made a certain sort of sense at the time & fitted with how I'd seen my parents operate (hardened consumerists but bought the canned & dry goods we went through in bulk rather than each week - the kitchen seating was storage-with-a-back.)

Practical skills are at novice level like wiring a plug, knitting a scarf, machine sewing a straight seam (but treadle machine) and cheering as plants germinate. Odd skill (as a family) likely that of making rushdips & using them. Takes a bit of stubbornheadedness as we've neither sheep for the tallow nor a reedbed but the lads can identify & sing out when we drive around & we then have to check for issues like trespass, other traffic & local livestock, but we enjoy it. One son's travel sickness caused us to pause for him to get fresh air while on holiday - right in the middle of a thickly reeded area & we even had a length of pipe to carry the reeds (thick as my little finger - splendid crop!) back in.

Husband has decided we need to grow 'more' of our own food as we spent a couple of years trying to raise Anglo Saxon crops as an exercise in curiosity & history - all good clean fun & splendid healthy exercise but not reliably filling. (Small patch, collective effort.) We started on The Edible Hedge last year & are gradually thickening it with gooseberies & other berries (as cuttings survive or not). He's bought a mill - hand powered but you can get an adapter to use a drill! The bere patch, spelt, Hebridean Rye & even the emmer & einkorn make slightly more sense but the volume of most so far suggests developing seedstock rather than hearty loaf!

In my parents second home there is a "pigslab" - a lump of stone with an orderly groove chiselled into it. It's not any part of a serious pantry setup but if the new owners don't want it, I do & I'll figure somewhere to put a five stone "shelf" before leaving it to St.Fagan's in my Will. Unless the lads learn to raise & butcher a hog in the interim.

We go camping for holidays so we're not short on stoves or fuels. Startling what you acquire over time! Marie Kondo will just have to wait til we're in a carehome.

Spuds? Currently I've 5 sorts growing in bags - to judge from the leaves there'll be sufficient for several meals, but god knows what lurks under the foliage.

"Soft fruits tend to be unproductive for the first year" is pretty much word for word what I told husband when the edible hedge failed to produce much last year. It was all too new in. This year? The goosegogs are definitely giving it a try (the rain has helped them, lord knows what the sunshine is doing) & I need to scramble further up the path to see how the up the hill plants are doing.

Diet affects mood? *Especially* in teenagers.

Crises in a rush - oh yes. Not singly but in batallions (often with conflicting orders, intended outcomes, incompatible kit & wildly varying budgets, but that may not help the person clutching the Designated Target label. Does my public service background show at all?! If only Yes Minister were still running - we barely need writers, but someone to edit the email feed.)

Slugs and bindweed are the two things that affirm any notions of Christianity I may flirt with. Time spent on my knees combatting the Devil suddenly seems *reasonable*. When my neighbour had chickens, I threw any slugs found into their run. Now, they've stopped, the expensive baby herbs m'husband insisted were Essential This Year were indeed essential nutrition for the slugs. Grr. I've a Christmas wish list for seeds!

The copper trying to get the WI will have a hard time finding anyone to help teach him how to darn his socks. Or get an invite to join a chara going to Stratford to see David Tennant. Happily my wild food foraging is for cuttings rather than fruit, although if I come across mushrooms I can recognise all bets are off.

The back garden has revealed all sorts of unexpected articles. A thunking great hammerhead, which has cleaned up a treat. An Action Man, unstrung & definitely a Lazarus job but which I stuck on ebay as a lesson to the children, had a watcher in half an hour & sold for just under a fiver After fees & postage (ice creams all round!) a geologists nightmare of rocks but also a rather charming gardeners knife which again got cleaned up & re-handled & now looks like a useful tool not a pestiferous blight under the spade. The rocks are an ongoing problem but the edible hedge is planted through weed suppressant fabric & that's all but disappeared from view under relocated rock.

I've three hulking great hostages to fortune. I'm strong for them, because of them, by/with/to/for them. They will eventualy leave, leaving a horrific void, mostly of all the food but also my ability to reach the higher level storage. (In me, the family height gene went recessive.) That one is an unstabilised epileptic means we track various pills with an enthusiasm that would disconcert the unwary, but of 5 of us, we're all glasses wearers & 3 are on lifetime meds. My inner prepper stresses that I can't arrange a three month stash but at least I've several small coolbags for insulin. If everything goes badly sideways, we'll be in rather a lot of trouble but at least the lads watch out for each other. The stuff we need is not herb based but lab derived. For some gifted prepper chemistry is the way to go - Breaking Bad for any cash wanted & near enough medication for pretty much anything cash can't sort. I've a current First Aid ticket & a slightly out of date kit, but can at least discourage bleeding whilst preparing the casualty for shipping. I've a biscuit tin of basic pain meds, cold remedies etc & even menthol crystals. (Not yet clove oil!) At least the garden plants will sort pain correctly managed & there are a couple of others that are my alternative to Dignitas. My sons think I 'just' download weird herbals onto my kindle. They've not seen that the herbals have tags with locations as to where various plants are growing.

We've a Kelly Kettle - default Long Walk kit as at some stage I sit (sprawl) and demand a brew. My short legs can only go so far before I need tea. We've also it's NZ cousin that does the same thing but in 36 pint volume, which we use to defrost the boiler out-pipe & to be able to sort a pack of scouts (or mountain rescue or whomever appears with mugs, teabags, milk suagr & a pleading expression) with.

I really need to get water sorted. Apaprently there's a spring in the back garden (Ordnance Survey map says so) but that space got landscaped before we bought the house & I'm not disassembling a retaining wall (beautifully done) to find a spring. Yet. I've made blinking sure we have two working real fireplaces but the current family response to a lack of heating is to put on another three layers & wander around wearing their duvet (whilst indoors).

Saving pound coins? Interesting idea. Hiding them from teenagers all good practice to defence against zombie apocalypse.

Thank you all for what I've learned just today!

VJsmum

Epic post DforV. Love that you clarified the duvets are only worn indoors