Digging for victory

Blue bin chic

I am a Digging Goddess. I was not always a digging goddess. I was actually quite useless. In fact i had no upper body strength. I still don't not really. However, over the past few months i have had the opportunity to develop my digging technique and today it finally came into its own when i dug in the paving slabs that will be the base of the centre of the garden for our garden chairs.

What i found out about the lawn when i dug it. It is completely compacted. I was able to jump on the spade, and go right in, slicing it like a cake, but when i turned the sod up, anything two inches below the soil was completely airless. Which made me think about the sheet mulching. I don't have any conclusion yet, but i will think about it. When we were in Ballybay, we had the chance to look at some soil in cross section and we saw it was very compacted too. If you keep using the prep will the roots be able to get into the rest of the soil? Will it change? Become more filled with life. Yes, was the answer.

Interesting. Must try that.

I have also been looking at permaculture - and observing the weeds. The weeds are interesting. If you pull out the thistles root, you will see that it is very long and tapering and it goes right into the soil. Interesting. The roots of the dandelion do the same thing. And dock. Not the buttercup. The buttercup like the nettle runs horizontally. I think it may even be a rhizome. All the sod i dug up i filled in the holes in the garden. So now, give it a few weeks, the garden will be evened out. I also threw away all the seed pots that never did anything, I have learnt thus far...

You cannot sow seeds in any old compost. My compost was not fine enough and did not have enough water retaining material. I don't know if i would raise anything from seed again. I think my garden is not big enough for that. Just buy the plants which have been brought on from garden centres. It's much more handy for small gardens.

That said, HALF my seeds made it. I also threw away the propagating trays. I did manage to salvage ten plants from it. Not bad considering i just neglected them and gave up after awhile. However they are now part of ,my experiment with the new supercompost. I figure that if these guys made it they deserve a fighting chance.

I don't understand pricking out seeds. Why throw away seedlings when they all could have had a chance to survive? What has survived are three artichoke plants. So that will be very exciting. I am planting them out after this. Full of questions.

After this a cup of tea and then i will continue reading the Agri lectres and making notes. I was telling a friend i read the lectures once and it blew my mind and then i realised that i remembered nothing. So i have to go back a make notes about them. Feck. It sucks being sanguine, However i have a strong suspicion that i am also dreadfully choleric. Only a choleric could have dug up all that lawn in one morning.

Yesterday i saw a wood pigeon drinking from the pond and this morning a robin bathed in the glass bird bath i left out for the birds. It was soooo happy.

Yes. Life is good.