Soggy soil
The weather is really against me at the moment. What I want is mild spring-like days; not too hot and certainly no rain as I’ve a lot to get done before the 15th May; our official planting-out date for anything frost intolerant (that’ll be almost everything then!). But what I’m actually looking out the window at is rain, rain, and a bit more rain. Yesterday we had hail and storms, and bolts of lightning which sent Ian into a spin (he’s storm-phobic).
There’s so much digging to do, I just despair of ever getting it done. I would prefer to use sheet-mulching and thus avoid digging altogether, but it hasn’t worked well in this garden. I’ve marked out a new veg plot which I sheet-mulched last year and subsequently become invaded by vicious perennial weeds which thrived under the cover of card and straw which I so kindly provided! So I must now dig over all the ground and remove the weed roots before the crops go in.
Unfortunately we have managed to buy a house on the worst plot of soil in Normandy. When I dig down there is approximately 3 inches of fairly uninspiring soil followed by a layer of solid clay and then limestone that seems to go down to the depths of hell. Last year’s test veg of beans and courgettes really didn’t go a bundle on such pathetic conditions, so I am fairly concerned that this year’s harvest will be puny!I’m trying to loosen the soil a little by adding some sand and also chucking on a little sawdust from the local sawmill. The sawdust is totally product-free and from soft-wood like pine.
Lots of people advise against adding lots of sawdust to soil as it steals Nitrogen, but I’m just adding a little and will later be adding urine to try and even up the levels. All this is because I’m still waiting for my compost to mature… I have four ‘normal’ heaps, plus one from the compost loo in the B&B, but unfortunately they are not yet rotted down and we have no money for buying in compost. If I ever move house I think I’ll go and live next door to a mushroom farm!
Deborah said,
April 30, 2008 @ 8:33 am
It’s the same here down south. There’s been sufficient and continued rain to make the clay based soil unworkable. Thankfully I have very little in pots due to no greenhouse so will be direct sowing a lot of stuff, although I’ve planted a few bits last week in the hope I will have soil for them..
Everything I had in pots last year suffered from hanging around too long waiting to be able to get on the land.
Your compost bins are looking good. I will be making some this year and move the compost heaps into them.
Stuart & Gabrielle said,
April 30, 2008 @ 8:40 pm
Top prize for good looking, solid compost bins. We, like you, are having some doubts about the permaculture staples of mulching with cardboard and straw. The straw is just too good a habitat for slugs, so the experiment goes on.
We don’t add sawdust direct to the soil, for your aforementioned reasons, but mix it with urine first (I have an outside pee bucket) and empty the resulting carbon/nitrogen mix into the compost heap … be patient!
Scarlet said,
May 1, 2008 @ 8:25 am
Thanks! Though they’re not well built, they’re just manky pallets tied together with baler twine (it’s all in the camera angle!). I’ve seen somewhere a photo of Stonehead next to some STUNNING compost bins, but can’t seem to find the link now - that’s what I would like in a perfect world.
I had very good results in my previous garden with sheet mulching, and not too many slugs… so I think it just depends on what your land is like as well as the other variables you may be able to introduce (eg. free-roaming ducks to counteract the slugs, etc). The main thing is to try out lots of techniques and ideas and then adapt to suit your situation.