No-till gardening.
- To:
- Subject: No-till gardening.
- From: b* m*
- Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 09:10:44 -0000
When we moved we discovered that our garden was twice the size we thought,
our bonus was a piece of ground that had been used as a sort of builders
tip for over 40 years. We had to initiate procedures with a visit from a
JCB to level things out a bit, then get rid of bags of concrete that had
gone solid, broken cement sills, metal window frames, rusty sheets of
corrugated iron etc. There are some patches of good soil but they were
infested
with shoulder high nettles - in fact we have a Jack Russell who is an
enthusiastic Nettle Hound, she digs furiously and pulls at the roots with
her teeth! The rest was (is) blue or yellow clay of such vileness, we
used to take huge
lumps of it and cut it up to mix it with organic matter. In desperation
we cut holes in it and planted roses like pot plants in soil taken from the
de-nettled loam - then mulched a couple of feet deep with farmyard manure,
rotting bales of straw and the contents of two huge compost bins. The
holes filled up with water the first winter. Its working now - you can
even dig - but we're not -just adding more mulch. The roses are doing
well.
