THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

dND

Capella, I feel for you. As someone living in France for the last 11 years and hoping to sell up and return, I can understand the the loneliness and isolation you must have felt. :A

[Deleted User]

Not you Karma, I'm just aware that the last few times I've picked up a snippet of news from the TV or paper or News Feed that might just come under the preppers radar there have been comments that feel like I'm being slightly talked down to, like an old person who is slightly fragile about things that might happen because of it! which has made me slightly prickly. I AM a prepper, I don't believe 1% of things that appear in the media BUT I feel if they're in the media it IS worth flagging them up on this thread as it is supposed to be about preparedness for any eventuality that may happen that could impact our lives. I may be wrong and if I am I'm quite happy to keep such things to myself and prepare as I see fit, definitely NOT you Karma xxx.

[Deleted User]

It's a tiny garden here but I've hoed through all the borders and was going to prune out the roses which were looking dead and seemed not worth their place in the garden.....and then it rained and they have all sprouted luxuriant new leaves and some even have buds on! so they get a second chance but I will have to give them a good old haircut when they DO loose their leaves. We've also taken out the conifer that had a wasps nest in just outside the french doors into the kitchen as it was virtually dead. I'm putting in some hardy herbs so Bay, Rosemary, Sage, chives I've had already from DD1 and I shall put in parsley, winter Savoury, Tarragon, mint in the spring and we'll grow parsley and oregano in the greenhouse we've been given when it's installed and warmer next year. Hopefully we'll have the allotment by then and be producing as we were in Hampshire, I know we'll have to re-plant fruit bushes and it will be a little time before we get a decent crop but the future needs looking after as well as the 'now'. In the garden back south at this time of year we'd have cleared all the beds, spread the compost heap over them and given a top dressing of all purpose fertilizer. When the rain had washed that in we'd have covered any that weren't still part filled with standing veg with either old carpet or black plastic as weed suppressant. He Who Knows would have done the 'big dig' before any of this happened and then we'd be set for planting after the 'small dig' in the spring. Hope that's some use xxx.

ivyleaf

Oh Lyn If you mean me and what I said, I'm really sorry if it came across as talking down to you - I just don't want you or anyone else on the thread to be worrying unnecessarily, and some of the tabloids are of course well known for not always letting the facts get in the way of a good story

Karmacat

Yes it is, thank you, exactly what I was thinking of - what to take out, what to put in, and why. Snipping through.

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

was going to prune out the roses which were looking dead and seemed not worth their place in the garden.....and then it rained and they have all sprouted luxuriant new leaves and some even have buds on! so they get a second chance but I will have to give them a good old haircut when they DO loose their leaves.

I have a couple of roses at the back, and several more at the front - they flower and produce hips at very different times. Never done anything with the produce yet

We've also taken out the conifer that had a wasps nest in just outside the french doors into the kitchen as it was virtually dead.

I don't understand why people put such big stuff right by the house. I'm continually having to hack back the huge plants that surround my back door - ivy, the quince that I'm going to have to hack back *severely*, Japanese anemones all down the side border, and half a dozen rhodedendrons - three of them, I've cut back to ground level, literally, to try to kill them, they drive me crazy, but one is a tree, and the other is manageable.
No wasps nests :eek:

I'm putting in some hardy herbs so Bay, Rosemary, Sage, chives I've had already from DD1 and I shall put in parsley, winter Savoury, Tarragon, mint in the spring and we'll grow parsley and oregano in the greenhouse we've been given when it's installed and warmer next year.

Aha! I bought a couple of bay plants from ebay years ago, but they never did well. I'll try again next year. Rosemary isn't a good shape, but is growing powerfully. Sage is still in a pot Pots of mint, and one of fennel, bought recently. The fennel will have to stay in a pot, a bigger one, as the soil here is deathly to fennel. Winter savory, oregano, chives and self sown thyme are doing well. The savory's going to suffer when I dig up the brambles in the middle of it

Hopefully we'll have the allotment by then and be producing as we were in Hampshire, I know we'll have to re-plant fruit bushes and it will be a little time before we get a decent crop but the future needs looking after as well as the 'now'. In the garden back south at this time of year we'd have cleared all the beds, spread the compost heap over them and given a top dressing of all purpose fertilizer. When the rain had washed that in we'd have covered any that weren't still part filled with standing veg with either old carpet or black plastic as weed suppressant. He Who Knows would have done the 'big dig' before any of this happened and then we'd be set for planting after the 'small dig' in the spring. Hope that's some use xxx.

Wow. Just wow. That's so impressive, the looking after of the fertility and the future that you do. That's what gets me out there now, wanting my garden to be something that I can do that with - I made quite a few steps today, but there's a marathon in front of me.

Thank you!

[Deleted User]

Definitely NOT you either Ivyleaf, general 'dismissal' because it's in one of the rags rather than mainstream 'proper' papers. I'm just being prickly as I'm a little on edge over Brexit, not Brexit, Brexit if the politicians can agree (flying pigs), Brexit if the EU will let us, non Brexit if the remainers can hold force a second vote (or third, fourth, fifth etc until they get the result they want) and I'm aware that anything else on top of all that uncertainty could make me REALLY cross so I flag up things that crop up and on occasion have been slightly shot down in flames and slightly patronised, patted on the head and told not to worry. I'm NOT worried, I'm prepared but I do worry that although the thread title is about preparedness we slightly have taken the foot off the pedal and are coasting as though all in the garden was lovely which it most certainly is NOT!

Karmacat

dND wrote: »

Capella, I feel for you. As someone living in France for the last 11 years and hoping to sell up and return, I can understand the the loneliness and isolation you must have felt. :A

dND, so sorry to hear that this is your current situation. Hope it gets resolved soon. A couple of times in my life, I've had no one to speak English to, just for a few months at a time, and I found it incredibly stressful by the end.

Thinking of you.

thriftwizard

MrsLW, abject apologies from me too if I came over as condescending. Didn't mean to cause upset in the least, just to say that volcanoes rarely do what people expect! Which doesn't make them any less of a problem, of course...

Still battling with my store-cupboard issues here. I thought our little visitor had been safely dealt with, but I'm sure I could hear munching in there again this morning. Worryingly, the bigger-but-dafter of the two kittens was also in the room, and didn't seem to hear it at all...

ivyleaf

thriftwizard Sorry to hear you're another one with unwanted visitors (and possibly a hard-of-hearing kitten ) We have a new kitten too, only about 13 weeks old but he caught a mouse a few days ago! So proud of him! OH has bought some ultrasonic repellers now so we'll see if they do the trick. They seemed to work when we had a mouse problem some years ago, so fingers crossed.

Lyn When you get your allotment, will you have to plant things and reap your crops a little later than in Hampshire?

[Deleted User]

If DD1s veg plot is anything to go by then we're going to be about 4 weeks later than we were down south and the season will be 'compressed' but it's much wetter here so the growth rate will be much faster than it was in Hampshire. DD1 is still harvesting ripe tomatoes from her greenhouse and ours were over before we moved at the end of August. Some things will do better here and some things are just not going to be hardy enough but life's a learning curve and we'll adapt and find what does and doesn't do well.