Preparedness for when

greenbee

... and I thought the worms were my friends

dreaming

nuatha wrote: »

Its the worms I tell you, its the worms.
(A hysterical nuatha runs off down the street, wailing and sobbing)
Excuse the outburst.

Hmm - you may be right. When I first moved in here (6 years ago) all I had was straggly grass with a 6inch border round it. Nothing grew except for the swathes of grape hyacinth - not even weeds. I first dug out a wider border and started on my new hobby of soil sieving, thinking that doing the job right first time would pay dividends later. I also noted that there were NO WORMS. I filled the border with some begged plants from my SIL and a few bought ones and found that under the top dusty (stony) layer was clay. Every year since, as I have extended the border, or moved plants round, I seem to take away 3 or 4 compost-bagfuls of stones (plus the half bricks I often have to dig out) but there are now worms (and slugs and snails grrr!). Mind you, they must be super worms judging by the size of the stones I have picked up this weekend! To be honest it doesn't matter too much in the ornamental border but for the veg. patch I am using raised beds with imported top-soil.

nuatha

greenbee wrote: »

... and I thought the worms were my friends

They are, and they bring you presents .

dreaming wrote: »

Hmm - you may be right. When I first moved in here (6 years ago) all I had was straggly grass with a 6inch border round it. Nothing grew except for the swathes of grape hyacinth - not even weeds. I first dug out a wider border and started on my new hobby of soil sieving, thinking that doing the job right first time would pay dividends later. I also noted that there were NO WORMS. I filled the border with some begged plants from my SIL and a few bought ones and found that under the top dusty (stony) layer was clay. Every year since, as I have extended the border, or moved plants round, I seem to take away 3 or 4 compost-bagfuls of stones (plus the half bricks I often have to dig out) but there are now worms (and slugs and snails grrr!). Mind you, they must be super worms judging by the size of the stones I have picked up this weekend! To be honest it doesn't matter too much in the ornamental border but for the veg. patch I am using raised beds with imported top-soil.

I've got two raised beds that are 30 inches high (or deep) I filled two of them with finest loam, sieved as it went into the beds (1/4 inch sieve). The other two raised beds were filled with soil from my in-laws garden as it was being dug out and paved. (Soil isn't cheap, filling two 6' by 3' beds at 30 inches deep was eye-watering. That soil was sieved as it was bagged but with a 3/4" grid. All 4 beds contain stones, some a couple of inches across.

Unfortunately they also contain slugs and snails (not found a puppy dogs tail yet). These are (supposedly) the veg and fruit beds, various flowers have been heeled in by Herself while they wait for new homes, I now get complaints when I say I'm going to empty the beds for crops.

GreyQueen

Glad it's not just me having funny old geology. I don't bother removing the flints as I'd do nothing but (and you're not supposed to take the stones off the allotments).

I do remove bits of brick, of tile, of flowerpots and the occasional bit of slate which is rubbish as we've no natural slate anywhere around here, we're in pan tile and thatch country, historically speaking.

When I took on this allotment in March 2008, it was waist high in counch grass, very uneven and with plenty of buried objects (pallets, whole windows, old steel pipes, tarps, fragments of slab, barbed wire supports, barbed wire, chicken wire, pig netting, carpet underlay, lino, carpets). What I noticed was what was missing - worms.

I'd never seen soil so impoverished. My Dad, a good old country boy who baulks at nothing and brought his very own extremely sharp S & J spade, couldn't even drive it through the soil, and that was with starting at the least-worst spot.

I literally had to hack my way through to the soil with a mattock, walloping great chunks of couch grass out (one tuft memorably filled the wheelbarrow all on its own :eek:).

What happened next was instructive. Liberated of the burden of sour couch grass, as well as freed from the detritus of decades, the worms started appearing in quantity. Especially after I started manuring. Got gadzillions of them now, which is probably where all the brick bits came from.:rotfl:

Gorgeous photos of beaches. I saw some brilliant ones on the Outer Hebrides. Anyone else seen the cows sunbathing on Barra's beaches? I swear I am not making this up, I have seen this with my very own eyes.

Mojisola

GreyQueen wrote: »

Soil is funny old stuff. I'm in the 9th year with this particular plot and some areas of it get cultivated multiple times each season, with foriegn materials like pottery, glass and nails diligently removed each time.

So why, after 8 years, did little bits of broken bricks never before seen start to surface everywhere? Today, I weeded one of the teenage strawberry beds and came up with two horseshoe nails and 4 pieces of glass.

Granular convection! Think of a container of mixed nuts - shake it and all the big brazil nuts rise to the top.

(And worms disturbing the soil)

GreyQueen

Mojisola wrote: »

Granular convection! Think of a container of mixed nuts - shake it and all the big brazil nuts rise to the top.

(And worms disturbing the soil)

:j Thank you! I always wondered about that and now I can name it to impress the easily-impressible.

Err, what are the probabilities of the worms fetching me something more worthwhile than the shattered offerings of the brickkilns? Could I put in for anglo-saxon treasure? Roman coins? I've always fancied myself in a torc, are worms capable of hefting the noble metals? Do they respond to lobbying (I know slugs do, pace Westminster any day of the week)?

I'll be up there in an hour or so, perhaps if I do some cultivation, they will have brought me a special gift.

Dear Worms,

I would like to draw your attention to my exceptional generosity to you. Particularly the 5 tonnes of horse manure, the 5 tonnes of mixed cow and pig manure and the countless tonnes of spent barley grains from the organic brewery. Most of which was hefted by me in wheelbarrows and some of which even cost me hard-earned money.

Not to mention the household compost (I even take the tea leaves out of the tea bags!) and the fact that I dig with a fork not a spade, so haven't hardly ever killed any of you.

Basically, I'm owed something better than a button off someone's overalls. I'd like a triple unite (not sure exactly what these are but they're gold and very valuable to collectors).

Yrs (in expectation) GreyQueen.

ETA; I looked up the triple unite I'd heard coin collectors discussing and one of them would do nicely - they're the price of a decent house these days, apparently. Worms, do yer stuff!

greenbee

GreyQueen wrote: »

:j Thank you! I always wondered about that and now I can name it to impress the easily-impressible.

Err, what are the probabilities of the worms fetching me something more worthwhile than the shattered offerings of the brickkilns? Could I put in for anglo-saxon treasure? Roman coins? I've always fancied myself in a torc, are worms capable of hefting the noble metals? Do they respond to lobbying (I know slugs do, pace Westminster any day of the week)?

I'll be up there in an hour or so, perhaps if I do some cultivation, they will have brought me a special gift.

Dear Worms,

I would like to draw your attention to my exceptional generosity to you. Particularly the 5 tonnes of horse manure, the 5 tonnes of mixed cow and pig manure and the countless tonnes of spent barley grains from the organic brewery. Most of which was hefted by me in wheelbarrows and some of which even cost me hard-earned money.

Not to mention the household compost (I even take the tea leaves out of the tea bags!) and the fact that I dig with a fork not a spade, so haven't hardly ever killed any of you.

Basically, I'm owed something better than a button off someone's overalls. I'd like a triple unite (not sure exactly what these are but they're gold and very valuable to collectors).

Yrs (in expectation) GreyQueen.

ETA; I looked up the triple unite I'd heard coin collectors discussing and one of them would do nicely - they're the price of a decent house these days, apparently. Worms, do yer stuff!

You need Superworm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rIaH7jqYnA

jk0

Did you see GQ that there will soon be some new Zimbabwe notes for your collection?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-06/zimbabwe-print-its-own-us-dollars-amid-severe-cash-shortage

[Deleted User]

I've got a $100,000,000,000,00 note.

NewShadow

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

I've got a $100,000,000,000,00 note.

Has it got your face on it?