Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

@Makingabobor2 - Yes, you do need to remove side shoots unless you are growing the bush/tumbler-type tomatoes. All 3 varieties I am growing this year are upright types tied into a cane as they grow, so I have ben doing that regularly. If you haven't been removing side shoots & you have also been feeding them before any fruits have set, I think you have encouraged lush greenery at the expense of any urgency to fruit. Feeding should be weekly, but only once you can see tiny tomatoes forming. I wouldn't go chopping random bits off, apart from obvious side shoots but I think this is likely to be the problem. Also, bear in mind that it is still quite early in the UK tomato season & we had a dark dismal Spring. So far, I have only picked one ripe tomato from my greenhouse plants & a small bowlful from the cherry variety outdoors. The other outdoor variety has plenty of fruits coming but nothing remotely ripe yet. It's perfectly normal for tomato plants still to be producing fruit into September.
F x

Makingabobor2

Thanks everybody for the tomato tips and sorry to have hijacked your diary FG. x   I have certainly learnt a lot from here. 

foxgloves

Greetings Friday Frugalistas,
Lovely to see some proper sunshine for the more tropical veg plants, but the temperatures are above 'Foxglove wilting' levels for me, so I made a nice early start on jobs to take advantage of it being cooler. Not done a great deal in the way of physical activity, except cleaning the bathroom, kitchen & emptying all the bins. And that's the way it's staying for today. Budget-helping bits have been as follows:
*Watered all the veg.
*Today's garden pickings: Lettuce, spring onions & a small posy for my flower bottle.
*Sourdough loaf currently baking in the oven.
*Updated my diary with some concert dates - as a planner, I do like to be organised & it does save money in the long run. In this instance, it will remind me either to budget for eating out on those dates or to take a picnic, for example, as well as giving me a nudge that we will need to pay expensive city centre car parking.
*Entered 2 competitions.
*Did a few surveys. This month's PA earnings now over £30, so will keep going to see if I can hit my target of £40.
*Stood baskets of drying shallots & garlic outside again to benefit from the sunshine.
*Updated Spreadsheet 1 (bills/regular DDs) with the new VM amount & no, it is NOT the obscene price rise they stated in their letter. Mr F got onto live-chat straight away last night as soon as I had worked out the actual % increase. He said he wasn't at all happy with the new price & the assistant apparently said "Can I ask why not?" He pointed out that UK inflation is currently a little over 2% but that VM seem to think that 108% is a fair price increase. He wouldn't budge & said that while changing supplier would doubtless mean getting a BT line installed, that we would be prepared to do this on principle because a 108% increase is just such blatant p*ss-taking. He came away with a price increase of £10 instead of the proposed increase of nearly £30 but she did say at the end of the call that this would be for 18 months (new contract) & that the price would go up to £60 after that. Well, it won't, as we will be making the same intervention & be prepared to leave if necessary. £60 a month for broadband is just ridiculous. So many families won't be able to afford that. I could afford it, but won't pay it on principle that 108% price increases are essentially legal robbery. I actually think basic fast speed broadband should be free to all households to facilitate essentials like homework, banking, etc, & then it should go up in incrementally rising bands depending on how much is used. I have the same view on energy bills - I think there should be a basic quota of free units per household then the next units usage band would be paid, then the more used, the higher the unit cost for that household. It would encourage lower use at a time when we all need to be greener & I would apply it to all households except where there is specialist medical equipment - I remember how much my Dad's oxygen tanks cost to run 24/7. Anyway, I digress......I just think it's time to look at things differently, I suppose, seeing as how we just seem to rumble on with the same old capitalist crap!
Well, that is the money saving bits of my day. I am just going to see if the bread's ready to come out of the oven, then I think  I will try to progress an idea I had months ago for turning a disused metal arch trellis on the courtyard into something a bit crafty-looking. Could be a fail, but no spend required so worth a try, I reckon!
Cheers all,
F x

badmemory

I think we are reaching the stage where water, electricity & now at least basic internet is a requirement & not a luxury. 

Certainly if government bodies are insisting that we have contact only by internet & that children should be able to access homework etc on line.  Perhaps also time to have classes which teach about internet usage & keeping yourself secure on line even with some element of enforcement.  Too many people don't know what they are doing online & I include myself but are forced.  As the saying goes I'm alright Jack as I have DS in residence but many people don't have that.

Anyone in doubt about my uselessness should have heard me shouting at the screen because one of my banks has changed its system & I needed to move money cos I spent a few K earlier this week.

foxgloves

@badmemory - There are often good free sessions in public libraries for internet beginners & improvers and I think one of the good things about using the public IT there is that there will be staff to help beginners with technical issues if the arise. Honestly, the times I have read that people get more right-wing as they get older. I seem to be going the other way. I have honestly come to the conclusion (remember I've still been a spendy money-waster for more years than I've been a budgeting money-saver) that everything being absolutely fundamentally rooted in money is the core of the problem. We can't take it with us, I will continue to save for greater security in my later decades, but I just can't feel anything but bafflement & yes, disgust, at the wealthiest minority who continue to add to their millions & billions when they too will turn to ash & bone like the rest of us. What a soulless life it must be, underneath the glitz of owning superyachts & mega-condos in far flung places. I think I would feel as though I were made of plastic, so out of touch with the rest of the planet.
I do think that free basic broadband will need to be introduced at some point. I'm not talking anything super mega-fast or la-di-dah fancypants, just something to address the inequality which has opened up between the information rich & poor. In my fairer universe, people who want to play high functionality online games or want the extra ooomph for plenty of streaming, of course that should be reflected in a banded charging structure, but the basics so that children from struggling families don't fall behind & that folk can do the banking, online appointment bookings & all the other things organisations are pushing them towards....well that should be free. After all, we all have a letterbox (well, of course except for all the poor sods who don't even have a room to call home), so the old 'analogue' comms system is universal, but if people have neither broadband or the technical skills, then they are disfranchised. My parents had no interest in using the internet. I tried to explain how they were falling out of the loop & being overcharged for things because they couldn't compare prices or get cheaper bookings for places, but there was no reasoning with them. Dad did once complain that people like them were being left out but couldn't see that he had effectively chosen to do this as any of us could have helped him buy a laptop & helped him use it. They were not excluded because of cost but by lack of engagement & failure to realise just how quickly the everyday business of life would move online.
Well, @badmemory - that's us putting the world to rights for today.
F x

marionmgcars

what a great idea, to have a low standard charge for both internet and electric/gas supplies to make more people aware of the cost of their excesses.   Now that I’m retired from full time work I am more conscious of these things, also because my income has decreased dramatically.  I’m lucky that I like to cook from scratch and make use of Olio and other free food supplies.  I now find that when I do buy a luxury food it really feels like a treat to savour, and not an everyday occurrence.  

cbsexec

I don’t believe you become more right winged as you get older.  I think most older people realise by then that all the money in the world can’t buy happiness or health and despair that lessons are never learned.   

Suffolk_lass

I'm with you @foxgloves; and water is the most ridiculous nationalised utility. No choice and no hope when all the investment pot is being paid to shareholders as dividends, while they continue to bleat on about the cost of upgrading aging infrastructure.

As for tomatoes (sorry...) they do fruit at different times too, depending on the variety. For example St Pierre, Cuor die Bue and other Mediterranean field grown varieties do crop later, with much bigger fruits, designed for culinary use. If you water a little less too, it puts the plant under pressure to reproduce too. Twice a week is usually enough.

By the way @foxgloves, our big river subscription, which includes cat wet and dry food - (I make sure there are five things when we get them, to receive 15% discount) the royal stuff was £25.41 for two boxes of 40 chicken in jelly stuff this week. Stealth cat (called this because she wedges her bell to one side and creeps silently up to any glass of cold water to steal it) likes being fed at the same time as dog (first, to reinforce the pecking order), but eats only a little wet food, then snacks or the pure 11+ stuff the rest of the time. I make a sachet do four small bowls, including the reinforcing strokes she needs...

ladyholly

I take great delight in telling companies I dont have internet and they will have to use RM or similar. As for giving random companies who want my email to send me a receipt - not a chance. However I agree there must be a basic internet for our youngsters. There were too many children from more deprive families trying to do home schooling on their parents ancient phone. I know in my area their was a family with 4 children and one phone and I am sure that wasnt the worst. Fortunately our local TV ran a scheme for people to hand in devices they werent using or werent working and they had a team repairing and distibuting them. Of course that doesnt help with internet charges which along with much else needs sorting.

badmemory

I tell most people I don't have internet access.  But have you tried telling anyone you don't have a mobile phone.  When someone hit my car a few years ago my insurance co wouldn't deal with it without a mobile number.  I'd had that number for over 15 years & never had a duff call.  A month later they just kept coming & still do.