How Does Your Garden Grow?

[DAPPH]

Who'd have thought slinging rotten vegetables in a trench could be so therapeutic!

https://flic.kr/p/2qBsuso

Keep filling it , then by the time you are about to pot sow your beans stop filing it and cover it with six inches of soil .. it will sink down as the material rots down .

 

[Greeves246]

Tip. Don’t use grass cuttings in your compost if you use weed and feed on your lawn/grass.

 

[Onoff]

No need to wash egg shells the disinfectant & alkaline content in the soap will kill the bacteria that will grow on the proteins on the inside of the egg shells worm eggs & baby worms thrive on it .

I'm quite happy tbh with eggshell in the soil. Monkey nut shells too that SWMBO insists on putting in the black refuse sack. Looking in the compost from years ago in the bin I just emptied, it was well rotted down albeit dry & rock hard. I lifted the bin off like a jelly mould and had to take a mattock to the heap to break it up. Did find a few plastic milk bottle foil lids, labels off of fruit and even those small white sticks from boiled sweet type lollies. SWMBO has this "system" where we have a plastic tub on the counter into which teabags, the milk foil lids, eggshells, peelings, wrappers off cheese, butter etc go into and it gets sorted after??? I try and sort as I go.

The eggshell bits in the old compost are quite soft now.

Tbh we waste so much bought fruit and veg it's an absolute joke. I keep on at SWMBO about it. Suggested yesterday we have Tesco deliver straight to the bean trench "I thought you were going to eat it!" she says.

"I thought you were going to cook it!" I say.

 

[Greeves246]

Made several raised bed s from pallet collars for an area that gets waterlogged being on clay. The double one will have new potatoes in , one for flowers and one for onions, perhaps rhubarb.

 

[Jelly_Sheffield]

Tip. Don’t use grass cuttings in your compost if you use weed and feed on your lawn/grass.

Depends on the components.

If you used a product with pre-emergent herbicides targeting broadleaf plants (2,4D, dicamba, mecoprop and MCPA being common) then it will persist for minimum 2 years in a conventional anaerobic compost heap/bin, but that goes down to between 2-9 months in one that is well aerated and has good microbial activity (as per commercial IVC and windrow composting operations).

However, increasingly you see cheaper "weed and feed" products that are just iron sulphate/phosphate (as mosskiller) combined with a heavy dose of high nitrogen fertiliser (because grass can utilise nitrogen at much higher levels than common weed species will even tolerate).

So with those products if you blending with low nitrogen sources of organic carbon (like woodchip), and allowing to fully digest, then it should result in a quite acceptable compost at the end.

 

[Onoff]

Keep filling it , then by the time you are about to pot sow your beans stop filing it and cover it with six inches of soil .. it will sink down as the material rots down .

You're saying leaving the trenches open?

Right or wrong, my intent was a layer of compost at the bottom, a layer of cherry leaves, some manure then backfill with dirt.

Then cover the whole patch in breathable & porous weed fabric until bean planting time.

 

[Pigeon_Droppings2]

On the allotment I cover the plot over the winter...remove covers in early spring and dig over to get rid of weeds...then recover.

When it's time to plant I dig a large hole...stick manure pellets in the hole and back fill with compost and plant into that.

I have use trenches in the past but that was to bury cough grass...deep enough to kill it off.

 

[droopsnoot]

My compost heap never seems to rot down, I don't know whether it's just too sheltered in the corner between two conifer hedges. I've tried to make sure they're cut back (though not this year) so the rain can get on there. Last time I dug down to the bottom of the pile it just seemed like dried stuff.

 

[Onoff]

My compost heap never seems to rot down, I don't know whether it's just too sheltered in the corner between two conifer hedges. I've tried to make sure they're cut back (though not this year) so the rain can get on there. Last time I dug down to the bottom of the pile it just seemed like dried stuff.

Our 3 bins are behind a tall conifer hedge so always shaded. Two don't have lids on even. Chuck out a few spuds that are passed their best and we get potato plants in there.

 

[Onoff]

Well the Roughneck, sharp edged post hole digger works better than my traditional wooden handled one.

https://flic.kr/p/2qBEWuD

Still hard going in this clay heavy soil though.

 

[Greeves246]

My compost heap never seems to rot down, I don't know whether it's just too sheltered in the corner between two conifer hedges. I've tried to make sure they're cut back (though not this year) so the rain can get on there. Last time I dug down to the bottom of the pile it just seemed like dried stuff.

Keep it moist, a watering can every now and then and loosen it up with a fork to get air into it.

 

[DAPPH]

You're saying leaving the trenches open?

Right or wrong, my intent was a layer of compost at the bottom, a layer of cherry leaves, some manure then backfill with dirt.

Then cover the whole patch in breathable & porous weed fabric until bean planting time.

When I was flat earth gardening I used to continually fill the open trench for several months before sowing potted bean plants . Heaping up the spill soil in a ridge a foot or so high and 18 inches wide by the length of the trench a few days before planting out the pots of beans .

The deeper the hot or wet is bed the better it is as the more consistent temp and moisture below the surface of the soil is the key to great harvests .

Back in 1987 I managed to grow four foot long soft delicious parsnips at 11 inches across the crown top , had to break them off at the two inches thick growth below the four foot level . I also grew no end of other fantastic high quality stuff including a nine foot tall sunflower with a five inch thick stalk .
My growing beds were flat earth stuff , 3 foot wide with a six inch thick 30 inch wide path in a grid 34 feet long , hand dug to four feet deep down to an old dew pond bed level t6hat was there in 1946 till it got covered over in four foot of soil for council houses . my trenches were back filled with the sifted light soil and four or so tons of seven year old cow byre & turkey shed muck & wheat straw . The straw was put in Dalek compost bins stuffed as full as I could then power washed to wet it every three days to drop it down into a fine fibre then mixed in with the composted manure .

 

[DAPPH]

Keep it moist, a watering can every now and then and loosen it up with a fork to get air into it.

Once you decide to stop adding material , then is the time to turn the heap to a new place close by putting the outside material into the new middle and the old middle going on the new outside .
Do not under any circumstance add any more fresh stuff or it will never end up rotting down sufficiently & become a decent compost . Turn the heap at least five times in that manner to aeriate it ( oxygenating it helps feeds beneficial fungi & bacteria
OR
If you have one use a garden claw once a week to stir up the heap sufficiently to get it aeriated , cover the heap to keep heat and moisture in as well as any ammonia ..all of which go to help making food for beneficial moulds & bacteria's which produce humus for the plants fine hair root system to take in .

 

[DAPPH]

My compost heap never seems to rot down, I don't know whether it's just too sheltered in the corner between two conifer hedges. I've tried to make sure they're cut back (though not this year) so the rain can get on there. Last time I dug down to the bottom of the pile it just seemed like dried stuff.

Place your heap on several thick layers of polyethene on some patio slabs or similar , the conifers fine hair roots are drinking the heap dry as well as taking all the nutrients .

 

[DAPPH]

Our 3 bins are behind a tall conifer hedge so always shaded. Two don't have lids on even. Chuck out a few spuds that are passed their best and we get potato plants in there.

Cut the good part of the spuds in half , dip the clean cut halves in lime and if there are any eyes left in the spuds the cuts will callus over and produce potatoes in each part .

During WW 2 & s for years after my uncle Jack who medically was unfit for any of the armed forces due to sever Parkinson's disease became a " Garthman " aka herdsman ( he looked after the cattle herd ) on a big farm .

He used to follow the Germans & Italians ( till about 1954 ) along the lines of plantings correcting things when most either wanted to stay over here or were eventually repatriated .
Initially there were many who were hell bent of killing the country by planting failure crops /spuds , leaving the ones they intentionally planted upside down as they do grow into decent plants quite well on their own . But he would dip the broken in halves ( quite a lot of them apparently ) in lime so they callused over the break and grew into decent productive potato plants .

I also learnt years later that in the 1920 's & 1930's when things were tight financially that it was common practice to half the seed potatoes , lime them on the cut faces so you could get double the amount of potatoes for the price of a bag of seed potatoes.

 

[DAPPH]

On the allotment I cover the plot over the winter...remove covers in early spring and dig over to get rid of weeds...then recover.

When it's time to plant I dig a large hole...stick manure pellets in the hole and back fill with compost and plant into that.

I have use trenches in the past but that was to bury cough grass...deep enough to kill it off.

That must have been some deep hole for couch grass roots can go down 8 inches or so .
Back in 1981 I dug a 4X5 X 6 foot long grave for the scrap metals , glass, and pottery etc I dug out my back garden as well as two unused .303 rounds that were also buried in the top soil by the house , I nestled it on a very thick bed of couch grass & roots . Pleased to say it never came back that I know of .

 

[DAPPH]

Made several raised bed s from pallet collars for an area that gets waterlogged being on clay. The double one will have new potatoes in , one for flowers and one for onions, perhaps rhubarb.
View attachment 477607

The raised beds would be better off on a double thickness weed control blanket as the tree hair roots in the vicinity will creep in close or even invade the bed and drain them of water & nutrients leaving you with a poor crop. Doing that and tripling or quadrupling the depth of the lifts will give you amazing depth of raised begs that are at a much better height for working on without too much much back bending .

 

[johnny7]

Mine used to be nice to sit out of a sunny day but now there's stuff all over it like swings, Rocking chairs, Tables etc but all of them are filled with Bonsai trees now!, Also, the grass is almost non existent and there are no leaves on the hedges, I hate winter!!

It's more like this now but with Bonsai trees trees everywhere! (Minus the grass and hedge foliage at the moment!!)

John

 

[droopsnoot]

I turned some parts of my compost heap over this afternoon, and it's a bit compost-y at the bottom so might not be quite such a waste of space as I thought. I also watered it a bit, to try to help. Let's see what happens. I've been trying to drop the level in the water butts so I can put an overflow pipe in one of them, and this is better than just pouring it down the drain. I'll have to see if I can empty it to put plastic down at some point, maybe if it rots down a bit.

 

[Onoff]

Mine used to be nice to sit out of a sunny day but now there's stuff all over it like swings, Rocking chairs, Tables etc but all of them are filled with Bonsai trees now!, Also, the grass is almost non existent and there are no leaves on the hedges, I hate winter!!

It's more like this now but with Bonsai trees trees everywhere! (Minus the grass and hedge foliage at the moment!!)

John

Space for a trampoline there...