To think a lot of people are buying stuff they have no idea what to do with.

[Hurricane10]

I've just been looking for vegetable seeds online. All the sites I've looked either have delays or are not currently taking orders.

I've been GYO for years, I had an allotment till a couple of years ago when I gave it up cos I changed jobs and couldn't get to it so often. I still grow as much as I can in containers at home.

Now my Broad beans are coming on nicely, my onion sets are sprouting and I will be planting potatoes in buckets next week but I wanted some squash and brassica seeds.

I suspect that many people ordering GYO stuff have no clue what they're doing, just like I suspect many of the people buying flour have never made a loaf in their life and the seeds, if sown, will never bear fruit as they think you just need to stick the seed in some compost and harvest a crop a few weeks later.

I noticed tomato seeds are all out of stock, unless you're in the far south it's too late to sow tomatoes and get a crop before September.

What a grumpy post!

People have panic bought gluten free flour too which is next to useless if your inexperienced

If people are buying up lots of stuff just to leave it sitting in a cupboard then that's selfish.
Deciding to start GYO or baking and following it through is fine though. There's going to be a lot less money around after this and people going to have to become more resourceful and self sufficient.
Are people who normally sew going to start complaining that newbies are buying up all the thread and darning needles?

Oh and I've made bread using plain flour and self raising flour. Both have worked fine for me.

If this leads to more people learning to bake their own bread or grow their own seeds, I think that is a great thing.

I think most people who buy seeds will plant them and if they are not successful they will learn from that. Most of mine failed the first year I tried GYO.

What would be a real shame is if people buying the flour and yeast never tried baking but left it in the back of the cupboard "just in case" and then threw it out when this is over or it reached its use by date.

About 5 of my friends are now baking with sourdough starters which I think is briliant.

If however, people

Yes, I think it would be best if the government restricted the sale of yeast, bread flour, chickpeas, risotto rice, vegetable seeds and things of that sort; entirely to middle class people, who know what to do with them.
The lower orders can just buy vans and potato waffles!

I’ve seen lots of snobbish threads and poets on social media about people buying flour. Is it really that much of a stretch to think people will be baking with their kids and bought it partly as an activity as well as food? Flour isn’t exactly a niche item.

Lots of people know how to grow veg, they just don’t normally bother be they haven’t felt they needed too. Could just be that.

Think it must be the same with knitting.
I cant get a particular shade of Aran Yarn from the online retailers I normally use. So all you fuckers who have depleted stocks- to start making your own socks...stop being so selfish and let us experienced knitters carry on!
^
JOKING ASIDE
I am an experienced knitter so if there are any novices that need a bit of a hand to get started send us a message and I'll try and help. :)

Have tried to find hobbies section to post as someone else has done in gardening but cant seem to find one!

Sargass0 here it is:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/arts_and_crafts

FoolsAssassin

Thank you so much. I've never ventured over there but looks really interesting. Thanks again!

Absolutely Billy there's a really nasty class snobbery behind threads like this. Oh the plebs took all the chickpeas, how will I make my homemade falafals and hummus? It's so unfair that the national trust are letting people without memberships enjoy the countryside in a time of national emergency. I can't get the right kind of squash for my allotment, waaaaah. Those fast food eaters are trying to bake their own bread, they probably don't even know you need yeast, hahaha.

Sorry to break your heart OP but growing veg and baking bread really isn't that hard. It's not some special secret skill that only the middle classes have - even the kind of people who live in gardenless flats and eat fastfood can figure it out.

There's a real undertone on threads like this of sneering at anyone who isn't MC having ideas above their station.

Lots of people are doing things at home they would ordinarily not have the time to do, because they are at home for weeks and weeks and weeks....

I've been saying for years that bread making isnt some mystifying science. Follow the recipe, watch some videos so you can judge the consistency it needs to be and have patience. I will love if we turn into a nation of bread makers and gardeners.

The thing is, you're not more entitled to something just because you've been buying it for longer.

If people want to buy seeds and try and grow their own food, that's a good thing, surely?

It might be a grumpy post but it’s true! Loads of fb posts celebrating their seedlings all crammed into one pot. Separate them ffs!

I’m picturing some spindly interwoven carrots and tomatoes the size of beans everywhere.

I’m a big grow your own type. We have a nice kitchen garden but have been slow on the tomato’s this year.

Every novice should grow salad.

And dh is a chef who makes amazing bread

There loads of seeds in my local Lidl the other day.

Just ordered cabbage and cauliflower seeds from Marshalls, £1.49 each , free p&p on seeds

I have been baking for many years and I still receive odd looks in the shops when I go out and buy flour and yeast, likely because I look about half my age and people do seem to assume that younger generations cannot hold their own in the kitchen.

I've bought a bit more these last few months, simply because the pizza counters have shut and we used to buy ready-made pizza once a week as our weekly treat, so I've made my own for the last few weeks, which I would typically make maybe once every 3 months otherwise. I don't normally have the time, because I work out of the home for around 11 hours and then some more when I'm home and making pizza from scratch takes around 4 hours.

We also had around two weeks of finding it difficult to get hold of bread. So, again, I had to buy more flour and yeast. Normally, I'd make rolls once every half a year or so, now I make it more often (seeded, too).

Seeds I didn't bother with, mainly because we still had some leftovers from last year and for the rest I extracted seeds from the veg I wanted to grow - I have some chillies, tomatoes, spinach, garlic and a shedload of herbs growing that way. Some are more hardy than others - the chives and garlic pretty much grow themselves - some will likely fail (I just planted my rather large tomato plants outside, but the stems were quite fragile and I don't expect them to survive; the parsley doesn't look too healthy, either), but it's the first year I have time to spend on gardening, so it's a learning curve.

Not everyone is panic buying, but there may be genuine reasons why some stuff is flying off the shelves more than usual right now.

My hope is that people develop some new skills and learn how to lead a more sustainable life.

I'm at bread baking, vegetable growing, knitting etc being middle class activities... My parents learnt their skills in a mining town in the Midlands and on a Hebridean island growing up. These are skills the 'workers' used to survive.

My Dad still has a thriving allotment. We attempt to grow stuff, with mixed results, most years. Unfortunately constrained by the gardens in our various Military quarters (current one has massive flowerbeds.... But don't know soil quality!) Baking... We do everywhere. Knitting... Never did get the hang of it. Sewing... No seeing machine, bit I'm handy with a needle and thread, and DDs are learning. I'm probably seen as a stereotypical middle class mother...

DP loves to garden and grow veg and has always done it. This year he’s placed one big seed order, much more than he usually would, for a few reasons; one, he usually potters around a few shops and garden centres looking for the OST interesting varieties and best offers. No more. Two, he’s planting more types of veg with an eye to actually feeding us over a longer period of time instead of the veg he grows being a nice top-up. Three, he’s digging up more of the garden to turn into a veg patch so we’ll have a bigger crop, and because he has more time to spend tending them.

None of that counts as panic buying to me - in fact it’s very sensible and if he can grow more that’s helping to take the burden off the supermarkets later in the year.

You have a very low view of people OP - why not assume that these people are going to learn how to grow their own veg etc. After all you managed to learn so why shouldn't they? A possible positive effect of this lockdown is that people are trying to learn new skills. My husband made his first ever loaf of bread yesterday - should he have not done so as he has shown no interest in baking up until now? People evolve and learn all the time, why be sneery about it?

As of yesterday, marshals were still send seeds out, including salad potato tubers.

I've planted peppers for the first time ever as we use a lot (I had planned to try it before this all kicked off fully!). I am not expecting much from them TBH :) I've planted them according to the instructions though and am hoping for the best. I'll plant the other half of the packet in a few days so they re a week or so behind the first.

My parents used to grow loads - harvesting potatoes is a fond childhood memory of mine!