What Preps are you doing this week? Part 8.

[bobble]

Decided to get some more hens as my old 'ex batt' hens are not laying anymore (egged out!) So I've made up a new hen house from parts of an old garden shed ready to house my new girlies.

[diamond lil]

Wish I still had chickens still miss them. Garden very nice now but tiny and ornamental only, no food any more.
Preps here are once again about health. Getting bloods done, chasing results, interpreting results, and buy my own supplements. Think NHS is struggling too much now for the complicated stuff like me, so going for DIY
Also running down the Brexit/winter stash and will restock in Sept. Finding out how many things you can make soup with !

[Jerseyspud]

Buying flour, tins of chilli and rice this week

All the important stuff

[peejay]

Annoyed this evening - I've realised that my two best "chilli" plants are not chillies at all but appear to be tomatoes!!!!

I have loads of bloody tomato plants almost ready for planting out/potting up already, I don't need any more, but I WAS looking forward to my chillies! No idea how the hell I managed it

[Medusa]

I split up a supermarket basil into 4 separate pots to see if i can make the thing survive. My tomatoes haven't died yet, but there's still time

I cant grow basil either. Ive read up on all of the tips but nope! I grew a whole load of tomatoes from seed in the spare room and they were amazing until they got blight. Ended up getting rid of them and buying some instead. I did manage to trade some bell pepper plants for some tomato plants too. Also not quite sure what I am going to do with the harvest of 26 chilli plants as Im still using the frozen chillis which I grew 2 years ago, but hey ho!

[GillyBee]

I usually grow basil by splitting supermarket plants too. trying to grow from seed never seems to work well for me for this plant.
I feel your pain for the tomato blight. I grow a mix of varieties each year both outdoors and in the greenhouse. I have now given up on some of the late varieties as they get hit before they can produce anything. One year I got a single Skykomish tomato despite Real Seeds claiming this was blight resistant. Meanwhile Legend and Galina both perform well for me outdoors. I save my own seed so have not tested any of the newer F1 varieties with blight resistant claims but will consider moving to these if I do get hit too often and too early by blight.

[grenfell]

Tomorrow I am doing one of the most important seasonal jobs in my calendar: Sweeping the chimneys.It’s not a job I relish,but I have done it for so many years now,that I have it down to a fine art. From fetching the kit out of the workshop,to having a shower,takes me two and a half hours.

Out of interest do you do anything with the soot. I think you burn coal so the answer might be to chuck it but when we swep our woodburner chimney i keep the soot as a soil dressing and dig it in. It's basically carbon and is said to help store nutrients and increase fertility . Evidently the black soil of the Amazon were areas where the indigenous peoples would dump their waste of all sorts.

[jansman]

Tomorrow I am doing one of the most important seasonal jobs in my calendar: Sweeping the chimneys.It’s not a job I relish,but I have done it for so many years now,that I have it down to a fine art. From fetching the kit out of the workshop,to having a shower,takes me two and a half hours.

Out of interest do you do anything with the soot. I think you burn coal so the answer might be to chuck it but when we swep our woodburner chimney i keep the soot as a soil dressing and dig it in. It's basically carbon and is said to help store nutrients and increase fertility . Evidently the black soil of the Amazon were areas where the indigenous peoples would dump their waste of all sorts.

No,I sling it.Father in law used to take it,but being coal,I always thought it toxic.Does that make sense?

[grenfell]

Yeah i always thought it was. What did your father in law do with it ? I have seen paths made using coal ash and clinker and possibly the soot too although i'm not sure but that was always older properties and couldn't frankly see many doing that nowadays even if they had access to coal ash.

[Arzosah]

Cor ... this lot say it *can* be put on the garden, but to wait 3 months: http://oakbrookchimneyservices.co.uk/so ... %20maggots.

Recyclng website (recyclethis, I think) says wait a year.

Me ... my bought in herbs are doing well, they weren't killed by the hail, and I've gone back to little and often to clear the ordinary weeds from the garden. I'll have to get the incinerator going soon.