peds

Sharp as a cue ball.

I could have a look for them if you want?

My own observations have mostly been made in Ireland, where we are famous for how often we get washed down. You might want to rinse some of the salt off the seaweed before using too much in one spot if it hasn't already been fairly scrubbed by the elements. Edit, whoops, sorry I didn't register how well scrubbed your seaweed char was. I agree, you absolutely need to keep an eye on salt levels, particularly if a regular drought is set to become a feature of our growing systems in the future. Let's wait and see if the ocean is even still making seaweed in the future! Ha ha... Anyway, I've just added tonight's ingredients to the compost heap, which consist of a bag of lawn clippings from an uncle-in-law; the same volume of hay covered with chicken manure from the nest boxes; the bucket of kitchen scraps and all shredded paper and card from the house; a bucket of grounds from a coffee shop I'm friendly with; and a bucket of rotten seaweed, previously steeped in water for three months to make seaweed extract, upon which the tomatoes and courgettes are being fed now. The extract was poured into a 200l barrel and diluted to the colour of weak tea, and everything flowering or fruiting gets a drink of it every second watering, to keep the soil fertility topped up. The now-empty bucket will be filled with the first cut of comfrey (I'm late), drowned, and left to brew for a month or so, before being added to the barrel.

Re: grass clippings Too much fresh grass around delicate stems will absolutely burn them, it's pure nitrogen and a thick enough layer will boil a mug of tea. Leave a good gap. Hot mulching grass like this can be a useful tool in the fight against bindweed.

Excellent, best of luck with it. A major part of the No Dig approach, and a decent philosophy to adhere to with gardening and horticulture in general, is to let the plants roots do the work for you. Potatoes are an excellent first crop to plant in new or reclaimed ground. After that, the idea is just to not compress the soil again. Walk on established pathways and carefully placed planks of wood, and never tread where you grow. If the air channels in the soil aren't squashed, the myriad of organisms in the soil biota can all do their job efficiently, and nutrient transfer to your plants is more effective. FYI, the best parsnips are grown without digging over the soil... just drive a wrecking bar or digging stick into the ground, backfill with compost, and either sow direct or transplant plugs into each hole. Championship parsnips guaranteed. If you are near the coast, the single greatest mulch or soil amendment for general use is rotten seaweed, not just for the boost of NPK, but for the bouquet of micronutrients, released gradually, as the seaweed breaks down. It is impossible to apply too much. Remember: look after your soil, because it isn't yours. You're just borrowing it from whoever needs to grow in it in the future.

I mean, there's nothing stopping you from googling "potatoes no dig", if you were really that interested. A few guys and I were doing some experiments on no dig potatoes at a well-known organic growery. Yields were identical, labour greatly reduced.

Rather handily, the planet has been asking the same questions lately, and it'll not be an issue in a generation or twos' time. Protip: switch to organic and regenerative practices early and avoid the rush! Either adapt to the food production systems of the future, or... don't!

Cripes, I had no idea. Good thing you mentioned that, you've probably saved me from all sorts of awkward situations in the future. Cheers Trig.

I'll keep you posted for sure, I've got a thread on it somewhere. Slow going so far, but we'll get there.

Rhododendron is doing brilliantly over here, not sure it's a worthy replacement for the oak and ash woodland it's destroying, but never mind. Is this red band needle blight the thing that is destroying absolutely huge numbers of various conifers over here on the west coast of Ireland? And are things, once they've got it bad enough, generally screwed? Huge amounts of damage over here.

Not sure why anyone would waste their time digging these days. Anyway, it's possible you took my comments about salad out of context. Not sure where you got any kind of sexual meaning from.

West coast of Ireland, we've been sitting on the site for a couple of years now, but we were finally approved for a mortgage a few days ago, so hopefully this summer will be a busy one.

Not much, it's about 20m by 30m, and appearances can be deceiving, it's an utter hole. We are renting from a wing of the wife's family whilst we build our own home, and this small patch of land was a rubbish heap for decades. Old tractor parts, silage plastic, baling twine, broken glass, remains of burnt bags of household waste, you name it, we've got it. I've done what I can with the place, but it's disgusting out there. Hopefully we'll be moved out by Christmas, and I can start properly, on around 1.2 acres, of much better land. Established woodland, stream coming off the mountain, 150m laneway from the road... and no bloody shreds of plastic coming out of the ground.

This isn't the 13th century, you don't have to prepare a tithe for the local Bishop, you don't have to yoke your oxen for an exciting afternoon of furrow and ploughshare. Your soil, and especially the perennials in this instance you intend to drop into it, would thank you if you stop tearing it apart. There's a case to be made for breaking the ground open for something like carrots or parsnips (although that's a fairly weak case and all) but strawberries or raspberries won't thank you for the extra labour, and soil is healthier and more productive the less you dick about with its structure. Leave it alone, and it will uncompact itself. No weeds, you say? I wonder how long that will continue once you've dredged a few decades of the seedbank up to the surface for germination. Enjoy your new pets! If you are just after some pointless busy work to keep idle hands from becoming the Devil's plaything, go ahead, play with your wee rotobater, but that is time you could spend doing a thousand other more useful things.

Those dalek ones I think are best for doing things like leafmold, just filling them with leaves and water and ignoring them for three years, topping them up with leaves as they shrink; or some other fairly homogeneous self-composting material like chicken bedding (I mean, you need to piss on it, of course). Anything else tends to need tossing about a bit, and you just need some space to work. Hard to beat the cubic meter of a pallet bin. The tumbler will be loosely modelled on something like this:

What kind of compost bin? I'm building a kind of treadmill tumbler this summer, more for the novelty of it and to give the kids something to play on, rather than as a replacement for the traditional 3-bay slow system, which really can't be beat. I'd like to have a propagation table heated by the burning vent gas of a bokashi system one day, once I have a bit more space to set up in.

I've got 5 little chicks that survived, from 6 hatched, of 8 eggs sat on. Hoping for mostly girls, but at least we can eat the boys. They are around 7 weeks old now. Their mother, Mother Clucker, suddenly lost interest in them at around 5 and a half weeks, after doing a great job of raising them, so they fend for themselves now, and mum has gone back to hanging with the other six girls. The father, Harry, is a mean and spiteful bird, and he's doing a great job. It'll be sad to replace him later in the summer, but at least we'll have a spare bird available to honour the arrival of any cherished guests.

Protect your soil, No Dig it. Cover the ground with cardboard, compost, and seaweed mulch, then just plant directly into slits in the ground. Your soil doesn't need to be tossed like you did with that gentleman's salad in a petrol station lav the other day, just feed it and your soil will do the rest.

Yo, all Partridge references are directed at you I'm afraid, buddy. Not yer man Mull there. Just FYI.

I've fired several rifles, at fun fairs, and won prizes. But I've never fired one in anger. Or at a cat.

It's only going to get worse as well...

Whoops, duplicate. Fat finger.

Ah, sorry Mandy, I guess I don't have as much invested emotionally in our conversation as you do. Honestly, I'm only here as a spectator, I'm not trying to convince you of anything, I'm just interested to hear your point of view. Sometimes, when reading your posts, I get the vague feeling that they were written as a work of satire; it's as if they are specifically lampooning, but with an unbelievable degree of subtlety, the very character that you portray; as though your posts came in fact from the pen of the likes of Armando Ianucci for an episode of The Thick Of It, but with fewer words in the title. It's entertaining stuff, so cheers for that.

I'm just really happy that the couple in picture 2 have found a mutual hobby that they clearly both enjoy and can share time together whilst doing it. At least it's not bloody golf.