The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

thriftwizard

What a smashing poppy, DawnW!

Somewhat knackered here - a load of half-bricks delivered to the allotment, to lay along the field fence so the site manager & gamekeepers can have line of sight in their attempts to keep the exploding rabbit population from devouring yet more of my runner beans. Not to mention everyone else's runners, and all my carrots, many of my young brassicas - even my peas (mangetout, standard & carlin) have been grazed to the ground a couple of times. Frustrating... On returning home, I set about turning two old bunk beds into a raised bed. It's not going to win any awards, but it also hasn't cost us anything except a bit of butterfly netting & some hard work. I'll post a pic when I've planted it up; it's our fallback winter veg supply, if push comes to shove & we get fully locked down & can't get to the allotment. Or if the rabbits have eaten everything... I have a cunning plan; if it does well, & we're still here, we buy some sleepers (we have one of the country's main suppliers a few miles away) and do it properly next year!

Butterfly_Brain

Just came in from the garden, soaking wet but the cherries are just starting to ripen so I will be picking them in the next couple of days the strawberries have gone mental! every day I am picking two bowl fulls so I am making jam today
Picked some more salad leaves and some peas, beans are not quite ready, but they won't be long especially as we have had some much needed rain and the rain barrels are full again yay.
 
Won't be long before I start thinking of winter planting, half way through the year already aaargh, we will be thinking of Christmas soon! Shhh..........I start in January in the sales, I suppose it is prepping LOL
Lockdown has got me knitting again  so my wool stash has come in handy, just started knitting some shark beer bottle covers they will go into the offsprings stockings this year, they love quirky things.
If any one wants the link to the pattern it is here:
https://intheloopknitting.com/shark-knitting-patterns

DigForVictory

Much smitten with shark bottle cosies!
Alas, far beyond my abilities to knit (I can knit a scarf & a beanie - after that? Another scarf!) but well within my range to admire.

mothernerd

Don't mention the 'C' word. Father 'C' has to shoot an elf every time someone mentions the 'C' word before November. A lot of mine is sorted but it's back at my house and no idea if I will be able to access it or  get it to the people concerned.
I have been water harvesting - all the buckets and a couple of old kitchen bins plus any large bottle holders that don't yet have plants in them are out in the middle of the yard (had to move some items like feet for pots into plant pots to free them up. I asked mum yesterday if we should get more water butts as it's still early in the season). I think there's room for 2 more behind the shed (some things have to go where mum doesn't have to look at them) but I've just put a mini raised bed there. I asked again today and said one could go in the polytunnel (this side of the shed) and be filled by the same pipe - saves lots of my energy filling up round the back of the shed, then carrying heavy buckets of water round the shed and polytunnel to get to the entrance

greenbee

Finding water butts will be your issue @mothernerd - I need a couple more and only the stupidly expensive ones seem to be available now. 

thriftwizard

One small & very new raised bed being inspected by Missy & Norma! Everything was done with stuff we already had, apart from the lining, butterfly netting & a bit of commercial compost to top it off, over home-made & reclaimed compost. It won't last long, but it doesn't have to; it's just a fall-back. The plants seem happy enough, after a good soaking from an enthusiastic thunderstorm. They're probably relieved to get into the ground; they should have been replacing my first early spuds up at the 'lottie, but those were knocked back quite severely by the late frosts so the space isn't clear yet.

Must pop up there tomorrow or we'll have marrows. At the current rate of growth, I'll be in need of a number of ways of using/preserving courgettes...

-taff

Have a look on FB marketplace, freecycle or freegle for water butts. People are still getting rid of them. I got a pretty much brand new one for 15 about 5 months ago.

elaine241

Totally frustrating day!! My old desktop computer kept blue screening so I lost the plot and wiped it totally clean , right back to when I first got the thing about 12 years ago!! It was a top of the range job then costing about 1200, but it has done us well. Busy reloading windows 7 which is the only disk I have, plus office which I swiped from work before I left! Updated the browser, anti virus and a few other bits and pieces but if the damn thing goes blue screen again its going out the window. (so far so good). It has been raining all day here in sunny south Wales and I am so glad that lock down for the most part was not like this. I would have been out of my mind in a very few hours if it had rained constantly and I couldn't garden, walk etc If it decides to do a repeat of the dismal weather tomorrow I may be forced to actually sew a whole pile of fabric face masks for the whole family. 
I tried to sort out the pantry the other day, it seems I am buried alive in plastic "useful" containers which I know will come in useful but atm are just cluttering up the joint! I bagged all those that had a lid and took them to the shed next to my hoard of jars and useful xmas chocolate tins. I need to take a full inventory of all my dried goods and see where there are holes that need filling. Anyone got any suggestions for dry goods I can stock up on? I have a vacuum sealer and spare freezer so I could build up quite a store before winter. I am growing fresh herbs that i hope to dry in the microwave and store for winter. I have a dehydrator but I find herbs go a bit grey when dried in there.
Today I collected the two lambs I took to slaughter the other week (still feeling guilty!). They were neatly cut up, bagged and weighed about 50kg between them which is a lot of lamb that I can now feed my family. British lamb is so expensive in the shops that I never buy it unless it is reduced; which is ridiculous when we actually produce the stuff. Picked my first courgettes today plus fresh Dill which I used for chicken , lemon and dill. Cant wait for the garden to start producing in earnest. 

mothernerd

I bought (well it's mum's money) two water butts from Will ko website. They only had two types in stock, a 250 l like the existing one and the slimline 100 l one. Two slimline ones cost £17 each making them a £1 cheaper than the big one. Not bought bases as I'm going to put one inside the polytunnel and stand it on one of the small filing cabinets from the shed (has old toys in for when young visitors come) and I think I can still squeeze the other behind the shed in the gap between the back of the shed and the new little raised bed - it will be a dead end but I'm hoping to run a hose from it between the shed and polytunnel to buckets standing near where I'm going to need them. If not slim one is a lot less for mum to complain about. I may buy some guttering and run it along the top of the fence for extra water collecting (if they will deliver it).

Still hunting for a varied list of garden/ household items including green mesh (Will Ko have it but it's in store only, b'n'q have steel mesh fencing which would last longer and may be more environmentally friendly but not sure if I can handle a 6' x 20 m roll), hanging basket liners (b'n'q normally stock them but are running with fewer product lines to keep core products in store, b'n'm had some that were ok but not available for delivery).  Mum doesn't want the coir ones as the birds have stolen most of them for lining their nests. She didn't want them when I bought them but she decided she wanted them two weeks after most of the stores packed away the garden stuff for the winter and they were the only ones I could find. Staples for my staple gun are another thing.

Had a delivery this evening but mostly non-food. With limited availability and limits on what you can buy and then the hit and miss of whether it will actually arrive, I'm currently putting in the next order once an order arrives. I finally got an arseda order which is coming on Sunday but then mum started telling me about random items I 'hadn't bought', so this order started out addressing that list but it's mostly toiletries, otc meds and cleaning supplies with some drinks (juice is getting low) and some ice cream cones and lollies (hardly any were available last time).

elaine I'm going to do an inventory of spices next. We have a local zero waste shop which has only been open a few months but have set up to take home delivery orders since April. It's a shop I want to stay open and support. I'm doing a lot more cooking now and would like to build up my spices and try different combinations and curry blends (I brought what I had as mum is a 'jar of sauce' cook, but recently it's dwindled to the few I use all the time). Cereal deliveries seem to be a bit hit and miss and of course pasta was one of the first things to disappear after toilet roll. I had intended doing a virtual stroll down the 'world foods' aisle but ran over the 85 item limit before I got that far. 

cornishchick

greenbee said:

Finding water butts will be your issue @mothernerd - I need a couple more and only the stupidly expensive ones seem to be available now. 

the only one I could find was a 210 l one from Agoose ...53 squid delivered with base.