Fw: Good sandy loam
- To: "Perennials at mallorn" <perennials@mallorn.com>
- Subject: Fw: Good sandy loam
- From: "* S* <m*@iol.ie>
- Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 16:37:28 +0100
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 !
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@mallorn.com with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE PERENNIALS
