Friday 26 August 2016

Blight resistant tomatoes

Mountain Magic blight resistant toms are certainly living up to expectations. They're very hardy and although slow to ripen are extending the season.

Friday 27 May 2016

Have covered a few more experimental beds but in these early stages I'm also scattering chicken manure pellets.
I'm hoping as the wood rots down and the soil balances, nutrients will occur naturally. I'm also hoping natural predators will increase to keep the pests at bay. Have read it'll probably take about three years.

 

Thursday 7 April 2016

Wood mulch

Last year we experimented with a few no-dig beds which were a success, however one of the main stumbling blocks is getting enough mulching material. We're unable to produce that much compost, don't trust municipal supplies and are keen to keep costs down. We bought two deliveries of stable muck but it came with loads of stones (scraped from the stable yard), weed seeds (of types of weeds we didn't have before) and it didn't go very far.
As we have free deliveries to the site I've been looking into using wood chippings .



Tuesday 5 April 2016

Change of direction

Have been noticing of late that despite getting a fair amount of organic matter back into the soil it's soon flattened by the rain and readily compacts.
The rotovator  has now been sold.