Kiwi Phil
Commander
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2003
- Messages
- 2,182
This section deals with clay and heavy stikky soils.<br /><br />If you have a very heavy clay soil then that's the reason why I dig this pale looking stuff in.<br /><br /> It's gypsum and it helps to break it up. But, look, this stuff here is only one of the many ingredients you can use to make soil fertile.<br /><br /> I've got quite a range of them. You've got mushroom compost, blood and bone, pelletised chook manure, and even sheep manure and dolomite limestone, and they all work marvellously. But how do they work individually? I'll tell you.<br /><br />The reason why mushroom compost is so marvellous, it's the best of all the fertilisers, it's absolutely neutral. <br />It can be used round just about any plant at all and, in fact, it can be dug in. You can get them in bags . This is what you do. Put it down. Turn it upside down, and you'll find there is a slimy lot of stuff on the top. Get rid of that. It's stinky stuff and it will break down later.<br /><br /> All that happens now is, just simply spread it around , ready to be dug in later because there is something else. <br /><br />It's your favourite and it's mine and it's blood and blooming bone and it's a fantastic fertiliser. Do you know why it's so good? Because in the blood meal is lots of slow release nitrogen, and in the other stuff, in the bone meal, it's full of calcium and phosphorus as well. <br /><br />But there is one thing that this stuff lacks; it doesn't have any potash in it. That means I can use it, Sulphate of Potash.About that much for a bucketful, about two cups. Mx it in. By the way, I'm not afraid of handling this stuff at all. To distribute it, at the rate of a good fistful, or a bit more, for every square metre, over the whole area. And over the other stuff as well. It can be dug in later. <br />So what's the next lot? Let's have a look. <br /><br />Now this is one of the best organic fertilisers I've ever used. In fact it is a complete fertiliser. The great thing about this, even though it looks like pelletised chook manure, it doesn't really stink. It's not bad, in fact. What is it? It's an all purpose organic fertiliser, containing seaweed concentrate, it also contains blood and bone, fish manure, the whole range of things, as well as lots of chook manure as well. to distribute it<br /> around, it's no big deal. Look, a good handful all over the place. <br />It breaks down those pellets. As soon as they get wet, they crumble up and all those lovely nutrients go down. <br />You can see how the layers are building up. There is one more, I can't resist it. There it is, it's sheep manure. But you can use horse manure or cow manure, they're all about roughly the same. <br />All you do with this stuff, rake it over the surface. Just rake it in. I's a brilliant soil conditioner. It does the most wonderful things, even with clay soil, and it helps to break it up and makes it lovely and friable. In fact, I can already feel the ground throbbing happily beneath my feet. <br />But there is something else, and it's the dolomite. <br />Now, look, you use dolomite only if you've got acidic soil and you need to sweeten it. Dolomite is not a fertiliser, it's a soil unlocker, and it's nothing more than calcium and magnesium. It even helps to break up this clay soil as well. The great thing about dolomite limestone is that because it's so slow acting, it doesn't react against any of these old, well decayed manures. Put it on very, very generously. All I have to do now is dig it in. The whole lot.<br /><br />The marvellous thing you is, you can actually sow straight away.<br /><br />Cheers<br />Phillip
<br />One thing I did learn though was that the old clay miners used to rub the clay onto (not into) cuts and found that they healed quicker: I didn't believe it until I tried it and it made one heck of a difference!<br />I'm sure we ended up using grit and horse manure to break it up then planted spuds for the first year: after that it wasn't so bad but there was one area of the garden that couldn't be broken, it claimed three forks in our attempts so that's where we put the rockery