The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

euronorris

Grateful for some pre prepped freezer meals this week.

My other bit of prep is that I am finally eligible for jab, so got it booked last night. Getting jabbed on Tuesday. DH gets his first jab this morning.

I actually braved putting out a few tomatoes last weekend and they are very happy, despite the rain and wind. Temps not dropping below 8 here now, so took the chance. Got some more to get out this weekend. The mange tout has been out for a few weeks now, and the cut and come again lettuce. I also planted up the geraniums and petunias that I got from morrisons which have added some attraction for the pollinators and a lovely splash of colour to the garden (petunias already flowering). They were a bargain at 2 trays of 6 for £3. I am behind with sowing everything else and really need to get a wriggle on.

[Deleted User]

1 x full load of kiln dried, barn stored logs ordered yesterday...being delivered and dropped under the car port this afternoon at 3! means we can dodge the showers transporting them up the steps to the back garden and they'll stay dry in the showery weather we currently have.  Nice feeling knowing most of next years fire wood is stacked and ready to go in May.

thriftwizard

Don't fret if you haven't got all your seeds in yet; this is a really long, slow spring, but stuff will catch up when we finally get some warmth. At least it's not so horribly cold & dry now. I was beginning to feel completely useless as so few of my sowings have come up, and those that have are still fairly tiny, when my sister-in-law posted on FB that she also has a greenhouse full of very tiny seedlings. She has a 12' centrally-heated greenhouse - yes, running off the house central heating, the previous owner of the house was a professional orchid grower - & has done umpteen RHS courses, so if hers are still tiny, it's not surprising that mine, in a 6' unheated greenhouse, are too.

Also, despite the fabulously warm & sunny April last year, I lost my runner beans, French beans & potato tops to a sharp frost on 23rd May. And I'm as far south as you can get without either going properly west or falling into the Channel. But the last sowing, after that incident, gave us its last crop of decent beans (i.e. not hard or stringy) on 2nd November. So all is not lost... every year is different; some things will do well, and others not so well, in any given year. And every plot is different, too; the soil, the aspect, the drainage, the various influences of nearby trees, pests, wildlife & neighbouring gardeners. Every gardener is different in their likes & dislikes; there's no point growing tons of spinach, however popular with everyone else, if you don't like it! One size does not fit all...

[Deleted User]

That late frost caught our new potatoes and did for our runner beans too last year and neither one of them ever came to much in fact we had to do like you did and re-sow the beans as they just stopped growing and were very unhappy, the potatoes did recover a bit but the yield was tiny.

Wraithlady

Must be said, it's not been warm enough to put anything tender out.
I did plant some leaf beet, which seems to have survived being frozen and drowned (so far) and the peas I started indoors are doing ok (the ones I planted in situ did nothing), and the summer savory is small but determined. The courgettes aren't too sure, I hope they make it through.
My windowsills are full of tomato plants, squash plants and 2 chilli plants - I'm just hoping for consistently warm weather so I can put them out

[Deleted User]

We've got some germination in the rows of parsnips sown on the plots but it's patchy and they've been a long time in the ground.  We put in broad beans in the autumn and they're flowering but again they're not as far on or as robust as they should be.  We've got more planted out that we started this spring and they're already ahead of the autumn sown ones in terms of height and leafing up but not in flower yet. The fruit bushes (blackberry, loganberry and raspberry) are leafing up but no blossom as yet and the raspberry canes we ordered from one of the big horticultural companies last autumn have failed altogether and their replacements have only 3 of the 10 supplies leafing up it's looking like a really hit and miss harvest in prospect this year. We got in a huge load of well rotted manure at the beginning of the year and have got that spread and dug in well so the plots ought to be producing well but the weather is so cold and wet that it's holding everything up.  Thank goodness for the rhubarb crop even if we're both getting a bit fed up with eating it! at least it's fresh and free!

3secondmemory

A watched pot never boils as  they say 😃 Having returned from 5 days away, I was delighted to see lovely rows of seedlings germinating. It’s definitely been a slow start this year. We are forecast rain for the next week but the temperatures are very mild, 7° at night so I will be planting out and building supports this week. I’ve kept my climbing strawberries in a makeshift glasshouse and managed to make 12 plantables from the generous 5 plugs I got on offer in the spring. 

I’ve got some nice colour going on – there are night stocks in the borders from last year which have started to flower and my chives kept going over the winter, so they’re flowering also. My runner beans are a dead loss but I have several other dwarf beans and lots of peas. 

I’m not going to bother with any root vegetables – they are relatively cheap in the shops and not worth the effort. I’m going to concentrate on all the salad extras that I love – hopefully I’ll get lots of variety and be able to plan to get continuous yields. 

I’m also working on a plan to pull down the old shed at the end of the garden and build a patio sun terrace with a small greenhouse.
As affordable, hassle free holidays abroad aren’t on the cards for the time being, I think I’d rather invest in my little piece of England 😃

[Deleted User]

Now that's the most sensible thing I've read in quite a while!

MingVase

We're doing the same thing here re giving up veg and all the work/hassle that comes with it. A nice gravelled area with comfy seats, plus flower borders everywhere and an apple tree. Perfect for our old age

VJsmum

I think i'm the same.  While i really love the idea of an allotment, and applaud all who have one, I don't think it suits my lifestyle at all.  I'd sooner be up a hill on a nice day and definitely don't want to be at an allotment on a not nice day.  We have some beautiful ones near us that i often walk by just to have a nose.  But, goodness, the work that's gone into it. In 'normal' times, we spend a lot of summer away from home so it's not conducive.

As i've said before, the garden veg patch has been largely taken over by a wood store which is a different sort of prepping - we get most of our wood for free but need somewhere to season it so it takes a lot of space. OH asked if i wanted to turn another part of the garden into a veg patch but i have lost the heart.  My little patch will grow some runner beans and a few salady bits.

LOL - we seem to have turned into a gardening thread!  And i don't really garden 🤣
In other prepping news I am running down my stores a little.  They were built up with both COVID and Brexit in mind but i've lost a bit of control over what i've got. So i'm running things down (5 boxes of breadsticks, anyone? 😁) to enable a bit of stock taking by the autumn.