Re: Good sandy loam

Mark wrote "We can all make wonderful soil".

Good for you. Contact with the soil would be so much less precious if we all had the recommended 3' deep loam. In the west of Ireland we enjoy gardening on rock. The aran islanders make a business of providing the country's earliest daffodils, and had no soil until a smart islander started piling seaweed and sand from the shoreline to grow her spuds in. This transported in creels by donkey, and collected after specific annual tides.
Here on the Galway mainland I have at best an average of ten inches of soil over limestone bedrock . It's wonderful stuff, nuetral ph, light and fertile and free draining, and precious. Where it runs shallower (e.g. 3") I'm making myself another inch or two using Tom Clothier's method for making soil using Christmas trees, kindly shredded for me by the Galway corporation who are not keen on them hurtling around the streets of the city (pop 50,000) in mid January's gales. Not much soil in a thousand trees, but how can I moan when my next door neighbour helps the process with a tractor forklift load of "finest connamara pony manure" (who'd have ordinary horse manure when one can have thoroughbred ?) dropped over our loose stone wall, a kindly reminder of the industrious people of harder times.

Mark Speakman
Annaghdown, Ireland
Where, oo, look, we have 1/10 inch of snow ....first this year !


 

Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index