On 16/01/2014 9:07 AM, David Hare-Scott wrote:
Brooklyn1 wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:

I've been away for more than a month, and although Himself did a lot
of watering, there are some places where the soil has dried out to
such an extent that it's now baked and water repellant and all
attempts at normal watering (ie hoses and sprinklers) are proving
fruitless.

How have others coped with this other than puddling and making mud
pies? This does seem to work, but I'm sure there will be some reason
why I shouldn't do this even though it can't be because of soil
structure since where there is none to begin with once it's as dry
as a chip. I also do not like using soil wetting agents since I've
never been able to find out what it does to earth worms and I know
they will return eventually, once it rains or the winter comes and
the weather cools.

Not enough details (climate, area size, growing?) but it's really a
no-brainer... the best way to improve adobe-like soil is to till in
organic matter and rich topsoil... invest in a Mantis tiller, a
truckload of good topsoil, many bags of peat moss,

Peat moss! Far too expensive. Why use an expensive limited resource
like peat that must be transported long distances (Fran is Southern
highlands NSW and the nearest peat bogs are in Tasmania)

:-)) I wish I WAS in the Southern Highlands of NSW.

That is where I was when my garden dried out despite Himself's good
efforts.

We live even further south than the Highlands. We live in the
Tablelands and I am pea green with envy at the growing conditions in the
Southern Highlands. They have basalt soil and regular rainfall and, to
put the icing on the cake, nighttime mists in summer. Not only do they
have moist growing conditions in great soil but it's also cool enough to
sleep at night. Lucky sods, but then they do pay for it given the price
of all the real estate round there.


when some other
local source of organic material will do as well and be much cheaper.
Peat moss is not available cheaply around the world, stop being so
parochical.


and begin a
composting program... over watering hard soil will just make a mess
and when it dries it'll make your soil even harder. There's no magic
bullet... you need to WORK at it... standing there with a garden hose
only demonstrates gross laziness.

Why is it that even when seeming to be helpful you must put your strange
insulting slant on everything. You know nothing about people but offer
them gratuitious insult anyway.

I've read and responded to posts from Sheldon in various newsgroups for
about 15 years - maybe more. In one of the previous newsgroups we both
used to post to (misc.rural), I wrote quite often about our farm and our
animals and other aspects of my life. Sheldon obviously doesn't
remember that.

In contrast, I have paid some attention and still possess some retentive
memory so I know that Sheldon cooks for himself (but nothing that I
would consider to be challenging or out of the ordinary), lives on a
nice, neatly kept piece of land, that he lives fairly quietly on his
land, that he regularly attends to maintenance tasks and seems to enjoy
doing so, that he is not lazy, that he is interested in birds and
wildlife, takes nice pics quite often and posts them for others to see
also quite often, that he likes to own and use PTO driven devices to
help keep his land neat and that we've never thought we would ever need
even though we live in a place that is officially recognised by the Tax
Office as a being a real, money earning 'farm'.

I also know from having read him for so long that he regularly makes
gratuitously offensive sexual references that most men I know would also
find offensive. He's a curmudgeon. He seems to go out of his way to
try to be insulting and frequently insists that others need to do things
his way and that others need to possess all the tools and boy's toys he
feels the need to own.

He's never been the least bit subtle in his insults and so, in my
opinion, is not very effective because of his transparency.

If Fran is anything like the farming
women I know round here she has been working from daylight til dark
these last 50 years and is only now slowing down as her body just can't
do it any more.

:-)) Well in many ways (chooks, food growing/preserving, garden,
cooking, cattle work, fencing, shelter belt planting) I am like many
farm wives. But I also went out to full time work and earned very good
money for many years. We both did, which of course is why we can still
manage to live on cattle producing land in retirement.