Sallygarden Smallholding - The Forum For Sustainable Living

I rented a rotavator last weekend to get a nice tilth on our new patch. The grass had already been removed, but the rotavator just bumped along the surface. I have roughly dug a 4' X 40' bed by hand and made the immediate 6" diameter around the seed have a finer tilth for the sweetcorn and sunflowers. I hope it works. I just had a baby two months ago and my body doesn't seem to want to cooperate with what my mind wants to do. The no dig options look great right about now but I have no compost as this is just the begining of our adventure into self suffiencey. Any suggestions?

When I was growing up in the US my parents had a ride on lawn mower with a tilling attachment. When I asked about it in Ireland the tractor suppliers looked at me like I had made up the idea myself. After the third dealer I called my mother to make sure I hadn't. Now they are importing garden tractors but 17,000-30,000 euros is hard to justify for vegetables.

What kind of soil is it? Clay? It may just be too dry now. What about hosing it down, or trying after a nights rain (shouldn't have to wait too long for that!).

We are on clay, it's hard work to get it going but after the first year it's a lot nicer to work with. Can you find horse manure anywhere to put down? They are normally happy for you to take what you need free of charge.

How are you getting all this time to do these huge jobs with a little baby too!I bet he/she will love the sunflowers.

my neighbours had a similar problem - I think in the end they asked a local man with a small tractor to come round and paid him to till over their plot. Would this be an option ?

oh - and hi (waves)

I didn't realize that I had replies. Thanks for your advice. I started out buying a one ton bag of topsoil and a few days after shoveling it off the trailer I couldn't walk. Related? I hope not as I could have bought plenty of veg for the 500 euros I spent at the chiropractor, but Thank God I can walk much better now.

While I was out of the garden the pasture surrounding my garden went to seed and with the Cavan winds my bare patch reseeded itself. The cow parsley (large parsley like leaves that cows like, I assume its cow parsley) is particularly stubborn and I am not so sure it reeeded or just had long roots.

Anyway with the wet weather the ground is easier to dig. I did think about asking the farmer to plough, but he doesn't actually grow anything but grass and silage and I feel a bit awkward asking. Though I love helping others out. Fortunately I have been presented with a new solution thanks to the ground crew working on the house. They have left a huge ridge of top soil about 100 feet away from my garden so I rake the dark crumbly stuff down and wheel it over to the garden. I have turned over most of the grasses and pulled the weeds before plonking down 4 inches of topsoil on top.

It is slow going between the kids and the weather, but that is probably better for me. I have a 4x40 foot row of potatoes and I am working on one for onions now.

Leitrim must be even wetter than Cavan. Cavan folk call this weather...liquid sunshine!