The soil around here is mostly clay with a lot of lias but my veg patch is made up of dredging's from when we re-linked an old arm back to the canal. It is very silty and fertile, it does pan out in heavy rain and drys well in the sun but I have found that when dry it is only the top couple of cm's and it is still wet underneath, I don't need to water everyday.
Basically clay but under improvement in the small back garden. As ever in a line of small houses backing on to badly kept social housing grass, just so much you can do. But am doing.
ps my current soil is a long project and more than a bit worm workers
the birds and mice help
some "ingredients" i buy in as i started from a concrete slab, i am very selective about food composting but there are plenty of shellfish remains along with assorted other things in the various mixes
ps you cannot add enough manure to clay or "dust" but you can try
it works and gives crops while the soil is improved
Slim
Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 6667 Location: New England (In the US of A)
Posted: Sat Mar 15, 25 4:47 pm Post subject:
Fun to see a thread pop up that hadn't been touched for 13 years. Which means that I never shared that I'm now on fine sandy loam, which is just what I'd ever want and is beautiful, but only where you can get to it in between the boulders and stumps!
Making gardens tillable has been a long process...... Also impossible to add too much manure to my soil if I had access to it
My FIL made their garden with clay soil a far better texture by adding leaf mould. Plenty of worm action in it I would think. My father used to slab up the clay in autumn and let the weather help. Of course manure is the best.
uncomposted fresh manure can be used with the right crops or topped off with cardboard to both soil improve and eliminate most "weeds"
i using stable manure for bulk fibre ensure the "bedding" was organic. biocide dehydrated crop stems might be fine for horse bedding but they produce a toxic compost
for bulk fibre, "rotten" straw can often be had for the price of shifting it, lay it thick, poke a few holes to plant curcubits in fermented compost which can be fed with mixture while the worms sort your soil
see mixture
ps mob stocked strip grazing is rather good for improving soils
gruntavators are ace at removing perennial"weeds"
etc, maybe not in a domestic setting, but guinea pigs are a good domestic munch and manure crew
Someone I worked with mowed his lawns with guinea pigs; he had them in a moveable run and moved it round the lawn. Some farmers not too far from us use pigs on a field for a few years, then plant crops.
Slim
Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 6667 Location: New England (In the US of A)
Posted: Mon Mar 17, 25 8:58 pm Post subject:
Be very careful when considering pigs on soil that you want to one day crop again, and doubly so on clay soil!
Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 6667 Location: New England (In the US of A)
Posted: Tue Mar 18, 25 9:42 am Post subject:
Rooting and wallowing pigs can severely damage soil structure, and when you've got a heavier soil, healthy soil structure is often the difference between arable and not.
i using stable manure for bulk fibre ensure the "bedding" was organic. biocide dehydrated crop stems might be fine for horse bedding but they produce a toxic compost
It is quite commonplace to use glyphosate pre-harvest in cereal crops, officially to clean it and ease harvesting, in practice to reduce drying costs by speeding senescence. But glyphosate is not much of a concern compared to pyralid weedkillers, which are used for broad leaved weeds like docks in grassland, but survive passage through a horse. I imagine horse manure carries the greatest risk ?
Back to the original question - I have a Bedfordshire clay allotment, and a garden which varies between clay and sand. The garden veg plot has had greenhouse spoil emptied onto it over the years so it is greatly higher than the surrounding garden, and like dust in summer. It grows OK broad beans, salad and first early potatoes (with the aid of a good dose of compost). I'm beginning to think I may have to remove some soil to bring the level back under control - need to find somewhere else to build a small hill !
Slim
Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 6667 Location: New England (In the US of A)
Posted: Tue Mar 18, 25 10:00 pm Post subject:
Yes, horse manure and probably golf course grass clippings have the greatest risks for persistent herbicides. (Very low tolerance for anything but grass!)
Thanks Slim. They seem to do no harm to lighter, alluvial soils judging by the crops I have seen in the fields sometimes used for pigs. Think they have a rotation of 1-2 year pig, then a couple of years cropping.
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