"Janet Baraclough" wrote after...
"Bob Hobden" wrote
Had to mark out the plot ourselves, 12.5 metres by 20 metres, and it will
need rabbit fencing, about £140.

The cheapest place to buy rabbit netting, or stobs to support it, is
a fencing contractor. I paid something like £30 quid for a 50 metre
roll, 1 metre high, the year before last.

The cheapest place we have found here is in Ascot, Beaumont Forest, who are
wood and fencing specialists. The 4ft tall wire is about £39 + vat for 25
metres. But then everything seems a lot dearer down south.


Went down there to start digging properly today and the soil is like rock
below a few inches, I can just get the fork into it, the rotovator won't
touch it due to the large stones we keep finding. Whoever had the plot
before obviously didn't dig a spit deep, ever; and why did they not
remove
the large flint stones to make it easier the next time they dug, strange.

The other day, our gardening club had a talk by someone whose family
farm potatoes in Ayrshire. He said his father was particularly proud of
a potato field from which he had never cleared the vast number of
stones. It produced crops three weeks earlier than the cleared fields
all around, worth a lot of money in spring when he could sell new
potatoes at the highest possible price. He reckoned the stones kept the
potatoes warmer :-) I've heard of people in warm climates laying stones
on the soil surface around plants, to absorb heat, stop the soil
parching, and release it at night, while also condensing any available
dew moisture.


Could well do but the problem down here of late has been too much
heat/dryness. I still intend to remove the large stones if only to aid
digging/rotovating.

Still it will be nice when it done and the soil looks good. Somewhere to
grow stuff again, joy. :-)

Good luck with it. Have you brought any plants with you from the last
one?


Thanks. Not yet but I do intend to transfer my Tall Bearded Irises, some of
which I bred myself, and our Dahlias and Glads. The soft fruit I will
replace with new idc.

--
Regards
Bob
In Runnymede, 17 miles West of London