In Which I Stop Planning And Start Doing Something…

Actually, I have been doing something already – all bloody winter, in fact:

While most people will have been spending their winter weekends meeting friends, sharing food and big glasses of wine, swapping anecdotes round a pub table or snuggling up to loved ones in front of roaring fires, I have chosen to spend mine covering a bit of field with cardboard boxes and shovelling 15 tonnes of steaming compost on top of it.

Despite what it looks like (Mass grave? Outtake from Tremors? Bloody mess!) it’s actually my attempt at the No-Dig method. And this is what I’m basing my whole flower-growing thing – and future? — on. Hmm…

The Smallholders very kindly lent me this land, but I had no idea about how to go about cultivating it. It had just had sheep on it and the grass was thick and thistly. It was too hard to plough, too stony to de-turf. No-Dig had to be the way to go.  Ploughing or rotovating apparently not only chops up the worms but also destroys the beneficial fungi in the soil. The idea with No-Dig is that, instead of ploughing, you just dump organic stuff on top of the topsoil (or on top of the grass if you’re too lazy to de-turf it first) and let the worms do the churning-up for you.  It sounded a great idea  – easy! But that was before I was actually faced with the task of shovelling the compost (beautiful, crumbly, warm stuff from the local dump) into a wheelbarrow and laying it out in rows. Ooh, me aching back…

Anyway, it’s done now – and I have to say the first rows I laid out are full of worms and the cardboard has rotted down nicely, so we’ll see. Gonna plant out some of the biennials I’ve had festering at the bottom of the garden all winter this weekend, rain permitting. It will be interesting to see if their roots, pretty sturdy by now, manage to penetrate the pan of  stoney, yet strangely clay-like, soil below what was the grass. 

Will keep you posted. (Arf! Arf!) *

*Spot the new blogger. 

PS That’s my new van in the background!