PowerSwitch

Fringe suppliers such as flower growers will fade away one by one as their costs mount.

http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?S ... TM=47871.7

I suspect that we will see an ever reducing choice in the markets until we are down to "Utility Products" at the end of the day.

UTILITY FURNITURE WW2

Furniture makers had to produce exact designs to meet the requirements of the plans dawn up by the government committee. Furniture makers also had to be licensed to produce the items.

Any deviation from the designs laid down by the government, or to produce furniture without a permit, could lead to imprisonment.

.. and you wonder why I dread the increasing nosiness and bossiness we will inevitably see from jumped up civil servants ...

Yip, thats why I've collect thousands of wookwork plans to make all kids of stuff Also reading that article, its ironic, me and the misses said today how much food as shot up, and its not even good fresh food! Now it makes you think hmmmm lost of variety of seeds thats crazy.

Vortex wrote:Fringe suppliers such as flower growers will fade away one by one as their costs mount.

Who needs flowers when you can grow fractals and eat them?

We'll all get a lot poorer in the future, the only question is at what level of poverty?

you will get more things made by hand so you will get variety things will be unique

jonny2mad wrote:you will get more things made by hand so you will get variety things will be unique

Too right. Also I'd swap that utility style furnature you have in that leaflet for any amount of the current Ikea/MFI crap. We got a free wardrobe from Freecycle last year. Decent hard woods, proper dove tail joints, and rock solid. Because it's dark wood (i.e. good quality stuff) it's worthless. Amazing eh? Yet the flat pack stuff really can't be moved more than two or three times before all the metal quick fit joints start becoming loose and the whole thing falls to bits.

No florists?? How about...

Cornish Flower Train

Not to mention the Dutch chap who comes across on the ferry with his flowers for sale at York railway station every day (they really cheer me up )

RenewableCandy wrote:No florists?? How about...

Cornish Flower Train

Not to mention the Dutch chap who comes across on the ferry with his flowers for sale at York railway station every day (they really cheer me up )

We'll all have more time to grow flowers. And there will be more bio-diversity.

Planet Earth has a natural tendency to produce diversity.

Our fading ability to suppress this natural diversity will result in more diversity, not less - the only difference will be that nature will choose what we have to enjoy, rather than our own manufacturing processes.

jonny2mad wrote:you will get more things made by hand so you will get variety things will be unique

Good point and you can kind of see that happening already. If you go to somewhere not-well-off like Hull there are still lots more little local shops and far fewer chainstores. Also people keep stuff for longer and that too makes for greater variety.

Many people like me are collecting seeds for a seed bank of non hybrid heirloom varieties of vegetables. Instead of a few varieties available in supermarkets, there will be an array of vegetables with better flavour than what' s available now.

Dinor wrote:Many people like me are collecting seeds for a seed bank of non hybrid heirloom varieties of vegetables. Instead of a few varieties available in supermarkets, there will be an array of vegetables with better flavour than what' s available now.

I've got a load of these types of seeds from realseeds.co.uk.

There's also a stall on Ramsbottom Market selling locally produced vegetable seeds, ideal for the Lancashire climate and soils.

Andy Hunt wrote:

Dinor wrote:Many people like me are collecting seeds for a seed bank of non hybrid heirloom varieties of vegetables. Instead of a few varieties available in supermarkets, there will be an array of vegetables with better flavour than what' s available now.

I've got a load of these types of seeds from realseeds.co.uk.

There's also a stall on Ramsbottom Market selling locally produced vegetable seeds, ideal for the Lancashire climate and soils.

Andy, do you grow the out and re-harvest every so often? Seeds will only last what, three years or so in good conditions? I haven't used real seeds yet, but intend to very soon. I have also used HDRA's (now garden organic) heritage seed library (great tomatoes), and Garden Organic, both of which produce non hybrid seeds.

The market stall sounds fantastic!

SunnyJim wrote:Andy, do you grow the out and re-harvest every so often? Seeds will only last what, three years or so in good conditions?

I haven't done yet, but I bought realseeds' book on home seed-saving. I tried saving a few patio tomato seeds this year from a plant I got from B&Q, not sure if it is F1 though so will have to see what happens to them next year.

I thought seeds would last for years and years though, if kept properly?

There is an old rhyme about seeds. Some save better than others. Parsnip only keep a year. You need to keep them very dry and in a cool or cold climate. Tupaware in the fridge is good apparently.

See here for a list of seed lifetimes;

http://www.allotment.org.uk/vegetables_ ... d_Life.php

I let some rocket go to see this year, and it was incredibly easy to harvest the seeds. I now have LOADS of rocket seeds. Next year I'm going to try to save seeds from as many different plant types as possible. I'm thinking of trying to start a local seed saving community too. Much easier if everyone is growing and saving different seeds, but each individual has only 3-4 seed types to worry about.