Kitchen Garden Forum

Been some hard graft going on there gentlemen, congratulations

Primrose wrote:..I'm envious of your soil Peter. It looks as if there are hardly any stones in it..

It's full of them up to nearly brick sized flints, basically London Clay. Not visible in turned clods or freshly minced by the rotovator, but by July they're on the surface.

I want to know if the depth stones are at at the beginning of each season contributes to the success they have in growing during the season.

I swear stones on plots do the opposite of those on beaches or cliffs, which wear away under climatic conditions.

Plot stones grow !!!

Wow! Lots of hard - amazing what can be achieved!

I started digging out the old compost bin (made from pallets) at the weekend. Great compost but it's like a tardis! I don't seem to have made a dent in it - can't believe how much they hold.

Broad beans and potatoes in! Tomatoes growing on the windowsill.

Beginning to feel a bit like spring. Nice.

Pawty

Gosh, look at all that hard work. Having just planted all our hedging plants, I'm planning a nice rest from digging for a while.

Pa snip it must be all the manure you have shipped in,that will make anything grow

I'm exhausted just looking at those pics

Very quiet on here today, everyone been busy outdoors in the pleasant spring day gardening?

i was cleaning my window frames yesterday....does that count?

Went to an Open Garden yesterday so had a day off physical labour.
Saw several examples of Summer Snowflake (lookalike jumbo snowdrops) in huge clusters so could see what my future potted plant gift of them will grow into.
Also saw contrasting fritillaries - some very short ones growing in meadow conditions and others which had been planted in borders which had been enriched with compost over the years. If ever there was an example of how enriching the soil can improve and change the appearance of plants this was it as the border fritillaries were about 18 - 24 inches high and really spectacular.

Hi Pa Snip,
Here we have quite a variation of soil depths which range from virtually zero being almost solid limestone with about an inch of soil to four feet of topsoil and reasonable quality soil below. I live on a hillside and put the differences to erosion over many thousand of years.
We have many flat slabs of rock that appear annually and the biggest to date was a little more than a slab which when dug out measured nearly six foot by two foot which was buried less than a spit below the surface and the plot had been dug the previous autumn. I had prepared the bed for some new Raspberries and when I came to plant the Raspberries I simply couldn't. I really would know the science of this so if anybody knows I would be most grateful for the information.
JB.

Sounds a mystery Johnbiy that such a large piece should possibly edge its way up closer to the surface if that's what it has actually done. I was wondering about the possibility of hidden underground streams whixh might possibly have disturbed layers of soil but that sounds unlikely. Perhaps we have some geologists on here who have a better suggestion. I imagine heavy rain could erode surface soil over a period of time.

Johnny, as I think I have mentioned before, our allotment is on the Craven Fault, a geological fault line which is constantly on the move. Over the more than 30 years we have had the allotment, we have collected heaps of stones which are rising to the surface all the time (not a slab like yours but certainly up to football size). The top soil does not appear stony and is very fertile but it's the ground below which sheds the stones which then "float' up through the soil.
Over the last few years, a large pond has appeared in a pasture near us and another small one is now growing. The village cricket ground often finds hollow which have to be filled in with soil. Interesting.

A link to upwardly mobile rocks.

http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentof ... ur-garden/

If that's true why don't coffins Finnish up on the surface ?