We had a beautiful afternoon sun to work under on Sunday which put us all in good spirits. The first thing we noticed was that the tulips had shot up since last week. A large row along the outside of the gate are in leaf now, though no buds to be seen as of yet.
Single-digging
We decided it was high time that we tried out a bit of good old fashioned digging and made our first single-dug bed. ‘Single digging’ refers to a cultivation technique whereby the bed is dug over down to the depth of one spade-head, or a ‘spit’, in order to break up and aerate the soil and dig in some organic matter, such as compost. (‘Double digging’ involves going down two spits, and with the Oxford Clay we’re sat on, this is something we’re putting off trying out for the moment!). The first step is to dig a trench along the width of one end of your bed. This soil goes into a barrow and is kept to one side for the moment. Then you add some compost to the bottom of this trench before ‘backfilling’ the trench with the soil in front, so that a new trench is established in a line running just in front of where the first just lay. Compost is added to this trench, then backfilled… and so on. When you reach the other side, the last trench is filled with the soil taken out to make the first trench. What a satisfying circularity hey.
There’s lots written about the advantages and disadvantages of ‘Dig’ vs ‘No Dig’. One immediate disadvantage was apparent though – it certainly took more labour hours to complete, compared with some of our no-dig beds (see entries below). However, one immediate advantage was also apparent in how good a tilth was established on this bed compared to our others. ‘Tilth’ refers to the presence of a fine crumb stucture on the surface of the soil, which is the most sensible thing to sow small seeds into. It also looks neat and tidy.
Backfilling with s t y l e
‘Wildflower’ meadow
We thought it’d be nice to add a bit of colour for this Summer, so we’ve began sowing seeds to create a ‘wildflower meadow’ effect in the centre of the patch. “Why the inverted commas?” I hear you ask. Well, because we’re planting from bought packets of seed in actual fact. Poppies, californian poppies, cornflowers, foxgloves to name a few.
To sow the seed we’ve been preparing patches dotted here and there by quite aggressively scraping out the grass using a rake. This creates enough of a seed bed. We mixed all the different seed up and sprinkled fairly liberally, and after treading them in slightly, gave them a water using a watering can with a rose. It’s a bit of an experiment, but let’s see what comes up!
Spud Roulette
We planted a few rows of potatoes, first earlies. We’re planting the potatoes in some of our no-dig beds made from stacked turf (see previous entries) and cardboard, and making use of their stocky, bullyish nature to break that up. Most veg wouldn’t be that happy growing in this situation, but we’re hoping that the potatoes will do some magic as they grow and leave us with a nice bed for sowing winter veg in at the end of the season.
As the turf layers haven’t yet broken down much at all yet, digging planting holes for the seed potatoes was a bit tricky so we decided to plant some rows 12cm down (which was tough work) and some we planted nearer the surface and then added a layer of compost on top. We’ll see if this has an effect. My money’s on there being no difference at all!
Some of you may well be worrying at this point: “What? Planting potatoes at this time of year? But surely you should wait until the risk of frost has passed?? – Madmen!”. And frankly you’d be quite justified. But here at OxGrow we like to live dangerously and experiment in the name of community food science! We discussed the issue at the session and decided not to go mad and plant all our potatoes, but to plant some and see what happens. The thinking behind the action is that it’ll take the potatoes a couple weeks to sprout and emerge. Till then they’ll be nuzzled in a warm bed of turfy compost to protect them from frost. And hopefully by the time they do emerge we’ll be past risk of frost and well on our way to the very earliest of earlies. Some may call it reckless. Foolish even. Only time will tell…
With all this excitement and the sleepy sun pressing down on us, by 3.30 a few were to be seen taking some time out…
Lazing on a sunny afternoon
Joe
OxGrow 