The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Introduce yourself => Topic started by: covebeech on June 21, 2013, 03:35:12 pm
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Just to introduce myself. I live on Anglesey with partner, Jack Russell and 2 hens. I've 2 polytunnels, a large kitchen garden, a herb garden, a large fruit cage and about 1 acre of wild meadow, 2 field up and back from the sea, and can see the mountains of the Isle of Man on a good day.
Soil is fairly deep loam on top of yellow clay, which means it's potential is great (living up to the legend of Mon being the breadbasket of wales - Mam Cymru) with incorporation of loads of organic material.
The problem is the waterlogging, as we live at the foot of a high escarpment and the rain falls on the plain at the top and seeps down to issue out at the level of our garden and house - we never suffer a water shortage, and we don't have mains water, but in winter we can't walk in the garden without sliding in the wet soil.
To counter this I've cultivated deep(ish) beds and, given the horrible weather we've been having, and look like continuing to have if all the pundits are correct, I decided this year to put half my kitchen garden under plastic - hence the polytunnels.
As the daughter of head gardener and a mother and aunts and uncles who worked in garden nurseries, I hated gardens, but when my eldest daughter was born I started gardening (and have never stopped) and found I'd imbibed unconsciously many techniques from just growing up with my parents -AND being made every year to help pricking out and potting on, etc etc - oh the grind at age 11! I didn't learn about liming the soil as we lived on the Berkshire Downs which are chalk! So I tend not to bother and hope that additions of compost and grass clippings and sand, and seaweed etc, balances the soil - it must do as I don't have a lot of failures.
The failures consist of slugs and cabbage whites, rats, mice, pheasants, rabbits, pigeons, magpies, blackbirds.....oh well. The forest of equisetum telmatei that grows on sections of this land I now see as a quaint eccentricity, imparting a rather prehistoric atmosphere - which I like. And I boil them down and make a fungicide which seems to help against botrytis.....
Nice to meet you all.
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:wave: Hello - your life and location sound lovely, if a little wet. :raining:
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Hello and welcome from Carmarthenshire :wave:
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Hi :wave: From Lennoxtown (north of Glasgow)
Your surroundings and outlook sound great
Eck :thumbsup:
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:wave: and welcome from :sunshine: Shropshire, sounds like a wonderful place to live. Like you I grew up with gardening parents (not professional though) who, in their turn, came from gardening families. Somewhere back is a lot of market gardeners so maybe genetics come into it. ;)
I only have a reasonable sized garden but grow veggies and fruit and keep two goats. Also have three dogs.
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Morning Covebeech,
Welcome to TAS :wave: Good luck with the polytunnels - they are a great addition to any smallholding. It is amazing how warm they are inside, even if it is pouring with rain outside.
I hope you are going to post in the G[size=78%]ardening and Fruit and Veg sections. It sounds like all that stored up knowledge will be very useful for the rest of us. Any idea how to control aphids in a p[/size][/size][size=78%]olytunnel[/size] :innocent: [/size][size=78%]? [/size]
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Hello and welcome from Carnoustie :wave: