Emrys Davies wrote:
I hope that you have got a spade, which is a gardener's main tool.
You cannot do without it. It enables you to doubledig, slice,
break-up and remove soil, whereas the fork has considerable limits in
its use. In fact the fork is rarely used in the garden for digging
purposes.

Regards,
Emrys Davies.

Indeed we have! It was the first tool i bought.... to take the turf off.
I find a fork much better to dig with in stoney ground though. The tines
penetrating much better than a spade. Plus, one spade depth is enough if you
use lots of deep rich mulch. A sort of semi "no dig" method.
Anyway, to this end i am now the proud owner of a stainless steel fork
( only £12! ) and 240 litres of multi purpose compost ( special offer at
Homebase ) to serve as a soil conditioner. It'll be a leaf mulch and
homemade compost over winter, but I can't wait that long!
After this afternoons orgy of digging, the first seeds sown will be
some Pappaver Somniferum taken from a decorative bunch of dried pods bought
for an arrangement a few years ago. The pods contained several thousand
seeds so even if germination is patchy we should get a few plants out of it.
Looking around on the web it gives the germination to flowering time as 60
days. So there should be plenty of time left to finally find out what they
look like. I already have some giant Echiums sown, and some tamarind seeds
( you never know! ), and some pepper plants ready for planting out.
Waffle, Waffle..... ok, on with the digging.......

Les


wrote in message
...
Hi All,
Bored with container and grow bag gardening we asked the
landord for permission to dig a border in the back lawn. This
granted, we have now cut the turf away to reveal a patch of sandy,
dark soil that seems typical here in Folkestone. The border has a 8'
wall behind it and faces SW, but has a four storey building 30' away
to the SW and is open ( except for a low, sheltering 4' wall )
either side. Almost a "sunken" garden in effect. Today,
we're off to buy a fork to dig it over, remove any stones
and perhaps buy one of those huge bags of multi purpose compost from
Homebase to improve the soil quality as I don't think it's been
touched since the war.
The question is, what to grow? Considering the time of
year, position etc. Plus, it has to be from seed. At some point we
will move on and I don't want to invest large sums of money on
something we will leave behind eventually.
You'll glean something of our interests from earlier posts.
Giant echiums, pawlonia tormentosa, vegetables, exotic or exotic
looking plants. Oddities, tropical, edible, the strange or just
downright huge. Any ideas anyone?

anyway, time to buy a fork...........

les ) ( happy to be a gardener again.......)

--
http://www.stuffmongers.com

"Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission
natural selection, the force that made us.... Soon we must look deep
within ourselves and decide what we wish to become."
Edward O. Wilson
Consilience, The Unity of Knowledge

Remove frontal lobes to reply from a NG



--
http://www.stuffmongers.com

"Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission
natural selection, the force that made us.... Soon we must look deep
within ourselves and decide what we wish to become." Edward O. Wilson
Consilience, The Unity of Knowledge

Remove frontal lobes to reply from a NG