the daydream fund challenge thread

choille

We are very bad for midges, but I was told by someone who is a professor ( who specialises in virology though) that he doubted that the type of midge we had here spread this disease (something to do with vectors which I couldn't understand). Seems like sledge hammers to crack nuts again. Bit like the Foot & Mouth fiasco when thousands of cattle were slaughtered.

I use my own dung - well the sheeps! (although I did used to live somewhere where I had a dry toilet) I do use seaweed some years, but won't collect it where the drift from the fish farm has washed over it. When you see what fish farms use on their fish, you don't want that in your ground.
Maybe small growers need to carefully source their manure - even horse manure would be less likely to have contamination, but I don't know.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

hi all....

well its raining again here, so cant really do anything outside:mad: as i must admit it does look very neglected out there...lol..:cool:

i must admit i havent added any manue or anything on my garden for years, as up until a year or so my chickens were free to wonder around my garden, but the above comments have made me wonder about what is in the food i am giving them...which could be passed through into their poo, and then into the ground..

i feed them

layers pellets

mixed corn

crushed oats

wheat.

the amount of food that we go through its expensive now, so i dont think i could swop to organic food.

but on saying that, the only place i put the chicken bedding now apart from a heap....lol... is some around my rhueburb plant around about this time of the year...plus about 2 - 3 foot away from the plant i have my house compost bin, which is the type that has no bottom,

so no wonder my rhueburb is like a trifid in the summer...lol..


going to try and have a surge and list a few things on ebay tomorrow.


Davesnave.... last year i planted a sold a few veg plants at the farm auctions, but next year rather than put htem through the auctions i am going to sell then along side the clothes etc....

was just wondering, with the broad beans, i know you can plant them about this time of the year in a garden, would they be ok to plant in plant trays ( 9 plant ones) this time of the year too? or am i better off leaving them to early spring? was just wondering, as i thought it might give me more time in the spring to concentrate on other plants/seeds.

choille

I think - on the whole that chicken feed, sheep feed has little that would contaminate ground & therefore your veg/fruit crops.

When you read what big growers spray on soft fruits, veg etc home grown is less chemical laden & much fresher.

Good luck with the ebay.

Rummer

So fed up of my messy garden! It just seems to be raining all the time when it gets to the wknd. I am tempted to just cover the beds in thick plastic over the winter to kill off the weeds that have taken over. Do you think that would work?

choille

Probably.

It's quite cold here, but dry, although the ground is a bog. Been forking out some brambles on the bottom for a couple of hours this afternoon. It'll take me years to clear it. Just back in as it's getting dark.

Rummer

What do others do with their raised beds over the winter? I know many of you will have them filled with winter crops but my winter crops were eaten by caterpillars.

Davesnave

There's been a lot going on here while I've been away doing other stuff!

Firstly, choille, I'm sorry to hear about your lamb. It is a blow when an animal you've become attached to dies, but when that happens I just focus on their happy life, however short, and that helps. Years ago, our kids had three kittens in rapid succession, because the first two turned-out to have incurable congenital defects. They lost three pets in six months, as the first kitten was to replace our elderly cat, but it taught them not to take pets, or life, for granted. Both agree now as adults, that having the young cats, even though losing them was distressing, was still better than never knowing them at all

A lot of folk take their countryside for granted. They often don't think that the 'natural' moorland, or even the meadows, wouldn't exist like that at all without someone farming it. I know it's hard to make sheep pay, and that regulations on meat production favour the big boys, but it will be sad if all the 'little people,' like you, give up. I still have fond memories of our town butcher leading or driving animals up through the cobbled courtyard behind the market and in through the back door of his premises. That would never happen nowadays, more's the pity. I'm still searching for a hog's pudding to match the ones he made!

Rummer, the toughest ground cover material is sold as Mypex or Phormisol and it lasts for years. It breathes a bit and the water gets through, so it could be used to cover beds, but don't think it would kill the weeds in the time frame of a single winter. I say this because we put down Phormisol heavy duty in early August, before we began off-loading our plants here, and we just lifted it today, having now re-located all of them. Thats about three months, and although the grass is very weak underneath, it's still alive, and so are the docks and dandelions! I think I'd go for the cheaper option of old carpet & cardboard.

CTC, I'd not bother with sowing broad beans now, as there would be little to gain, and you could lose them in trays if we have a cold winter. You could get going in a polytunnel late January using a tough variety like 'Aquadulce Claudia.'

The weather is rubbish here tonight too, but I was in my shirt sleeves till lunchtime. Must go....DW is Strictly watching, so I'm on the station run....and cooking!:mad:

choille

If you have a frost, or when you have frost forecast use a hoe.
I hand weed them & just take a hoe over every so often. You can clear ground & then use card board to suppress any weeds. I have a big area under wreaked poly tunnell to clear & maybe I'll try covering the ground with plastic just now as I don't have time to deal with it.

JayneC

Oh my goodness just wrote a whole reply and it disappeared. How annoying:mad:

Anyway just saying hello.

Sorry to hear about your lamb choille, and also really feel for you with all the regs you have to abide by. Must be so frustrating!

Rummer I've just been reading about a method of planting 'through' weeds in my new permaculture book. You apparently need to cover the weeds with a thick layer of something that will decompose such as cardboard or thick newspapers and then cover with a mulch which will keep in the moisture. The weeds will just die down and you can leave the ground undisturbed. You just braek through the whole thing in the spots you need to plant. It recommends planting transplants rather than seedlings which may get 'lost ' in the mulch. Let me know if you try it and how it goes...

Not really done anything in my garden for last week or so as was DD1s wedding yesterday so just been stressing about that really...

Anyway good to hear from you all,

Jayne x

rhiwfield

Vaguely satisfying morning. Spent 3 hours lining and filling the internal path (18' x 2') in the last raised bed area. The filler was the chipped leylandii taken down 2 weeks back so it did have a use after all . Liner was half price at Wickes, the beds are starting to take shape and the driveway is tidy again

Of the 160 sq ft of raised bed growing area, just 60 sq ft has been filled using the stripped turves, and these will be covered shortly to kill the weeds and for planting thru in the spring. Once the remaining beds are dug/weeded I'll need about 50 cu ft of compost to finish the job. Time to have a chat with my neighbour to see if he will let me raid his compost heap again .

One of the empty beds is 8' x 2' and I'm going to try a slightly different version of the veg peelings trench as it will be first used for runner beans. A few raids on the giveaway box at homebase should give a good supply of cardboard to be screwed-up to line the bed to about 6" deep. With about six months to go to planting I'm hoping that regular addition of peelings + urine + a bit of soil will give a water retentive partly rotted compost, the urine helping to make sure the cardboard rots and doesnt denude the soil of nitrogen. Ah well, thats the theory.