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#16
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water repellant spoil
Brooklyn1 wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jan 2014 09:07:31 +1100, "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) 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. 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. regardless of the that you are such an ignorant, boorish oaf. Come back when you can be civil. David STFU, invalid! Back in the bozobin for you. |
#17
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water repellant spoil
On 15/01/2014 10:06 AM, songbird 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. i asked some other folks what they would do and i have gotten several different replies: - mixing water and molasses at 10-20:1 ratio. Now that sounds interesting. I'm wondering if they suggested molasses because it would help with keeping/fostering biota????? I have a massive drum of molasses in the shearing shed which is a left over from when there were horses here. I'll hunt it out and give it a try. - adding compost and mixing it with the top layer of soil. i suspect adding moist compost would be even better. - using more compost to cover the gardens once it is moist again to keep the moisture there from escaping easily. Both of those make good sense, The latter suggestion is similar to my 'mud pie' making tactics so I know that will work. - bentonite clay (not sure why anyone would add clay to dusty soil, but perhaps it would help make granules or clumps) That suggestion is interesting too but all I know about Bentonite is that it is traditionally used to stop leaks in dams ('ponds' in USian??) if a farm has a leaking dam, bags of bentonite are poured in to stop the leak. - which i think is what gypsum would do too for that type of soil but i've never had to deal with that myself so i can't speak from direct experience. how is it going? making progress? I'd say a tentative 'yes'. I've been gradually going round and paying close attention to spots within areas where he just applies a blanket watering. Working as a team seems to be a bit more effective in getting water to the really precious things but it's still just about survival and I'm not expecting things to do any thriving - that would be a bridge too far. We got a bit of rain yesterday (Hallellula!) and so that will help. Nothing, but nothing can ever replace the effectiveness of rain. I suspect the only thing to do from now on is to completely cover the more sensitive growing area (veg) with shade cloth in high summer and either never go away for more than a few days, or just admit that it's time to move to the burbs or bring in a bulldozer and get rid of the lot and then lay down pebbles. |
#18
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water repellant spoil
On 13/01/2014 11:06 AM, songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote: from what you wrote in the other response you have a lot of fine dust. that would be tough to get wetted again. Yep, dust is it. And anything vegetative mixed into the soil or on top of the soil is like it's been discovered in an ancient tomb so it's dry to the point of total desiccation. i'd still make sure there was mulch on top and then make sure to spray that mulch (not putting water through it) so that it can slowly drip down on the soil below. from your description you say the water goes right through the mulch and runs off the soil. to me that says you are using too much water and pouring it through the mulch. instead, use a fine mist to keep wetting the mulch. spray it several times a day. Tried both of those in the past with the exception of the 'several times a day' - it's morning and/or evening only in our summer conditions and even then unless it's overcast and there is no wind, microsprays are a very 'iffy' use of water - almost always a waste of time and for some reason mulch just adds to the problem when it's already dry under the mulch. I don't really understand why the mulch doesn't help but it doesn't until the soil is moist and then it can do it's traditional soil protecting job. We seem to be getting there slowly but progress is not fast. Mud pies making still seem to be the most effective method with the most threatened smaller plants but I am worried about some of the trees. |
#19
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water repellant spoil
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. |
#20
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water repellant spoil
Fran Farmer wrote:
songbird 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. i asked some other folks what they would do and i have gotten several different replies: - mixing water and molasses at 10-20:1 ratio. Now that sounds interesting. I'm wondering if they suggested molasses because it would help with keeping/fostering biota????? I have a massive drum of molasses in the shearing shed which is a left over from when there were horses here. I'll hunt it out and give it a try. let us know if it does seem to make any difference. i'm not sure what their reasoning was other than perhaps it would help as a wetting and clumping agent. encouraging biota would be the great side benefit. that you have it on hand is great. i'll be listening... this morning i was feeding the worm bins (nos 5 through 15) to get them ramped up for spring. i had stuff from garlic, and a whole bucket of chopped dried alfalfa and trefoil, along with the usual veggie scraps. after a bit i decided to take a few cups of the worm castings and put them on top of the potted plants i'd recently repotted, to give the potting soil a boost of bacteria, fungi and perhaps a few very tiny worms. after doing that and watering them well i was rinsing out the small container i used and was thinking of you down there trying to get very fine soil to wet and how nice those little worm castings were staying together even though they were soaking in water. so for the longer term, encourage worms however you can. they'll clump some of that dusty soil together. i also had someone post a short article about how some of what happen with superdry dusty soil is that the plant waxes coat the soil particles making it so tough to get wet and hold moisture again. another good reason to have worms as the passing of dirt through the gut of a worm will grind all those pieces together making it much easier to wet again. not counting all the other benefits. - adding compost and mixing it with the top layer of soil. i suspect adding moist compost would be even better. - using more compost to cover the gardens once it is moist again to keep the moisture there from escaping easily. Both of those make good sense, The latter suggestion is similar to my 'mud pie' making tactics so I know that will work. and when it rains, run out and pull some of the mulch back from your favorite plants or those in the most risk as then the water can reach the soil easier. then when it stops raining put the mulch back over. leave some mulch in the rain, of course, to protect the soil, but if you have a really deep layer it sure doesn't hurt to peel some of it back until you know you are getting plenty of rains again. - bentonite clay (not sure why anyone would add clay to dusty soil, but perhaps it would help make granules or clumps) That suggestion is interesting too but all I know about Bentonite is that it is traditionally used to stop leaks in dams ('ponds' in USian??) if a farm has a leaking dam, bags of bentonite are poured in to stop the leak. yes, we tend to call them ponds here, i think most people think of things like Hoover Dam when they hear the word dam being used. around here it is so flat that ponds are not in danger of leaking, they are just deepened spots in the property where it suits. this whole area used to be pretty much nothing but wooded swamps, and of course, ages ago an inland sea, glaciers, etc. - which i think is what gypsum would do too for that type of soil but i've never had to deal with that myself so i can't speak from direct experience. how is it going? making progress? I'd say a tentative 'yes'. I've been gradually going round and paying close attention to spots within areas where he just applies a blanket watering. Working as a team seems to be a bit more effective in getting water to the really precious things but it's still just about survival and I'm not expecting things to do any thriving - that would be a bridge too far. We got a bit of rain yesterday (Hallellula!) and so that will help. oh, that's great! yes, i know how that feels when it is so hot and dry and all you are hoping for is a decent long spell of nice gentle rains to soak everything down. i hope the weather continues to favor you there. Nothing, but nothing can ever replace the effectiveness of rain. yeah, things grow ok here with our well water, but they do much better with rain. trace nutrients and a bit of nitrogen come along with rains in our area. I suspect the only thing to do from now on is to completely cover the more sensitive growing area (veg) with shade cloth in high summer and either never go away for more than a few days, or just admit that it's time to move to the burbs or bring in a bulldozer and get rid of the lot and then lay down pebbles. i'm not sure what you already have in place, but things like shelter belts, and wind breaks can also help a lot. and interplanting with deep rooted perennials (chop some back every once in a while), they'll help keep things cooler, protect the soil from evaporation losses and bring up both moisture and nutrients from further down than most garden veggies will go. songbird |
#21
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water repellant spoil
Fran Farmer wrote:
songbird wrote: Fran Farmer wrote: from what you wrote in the other response you have a lot of fine dust. that would be tough to get wetted again. Yep, dust is it. And anything vegetative mixed into the soil or on top of the soil is like it's been discovered in an ancient tomb so it's dry to the point of total desiccation. yeah, i just used a bucket and a half of very similar material in the worm bins (dust from off the garlic that has been sitting out without any water since last summer). i wasn't going to mix it or wet it down, but i did layer it with other materials and will let the worms work at it. i figure it contains enough variety for them that they'll gradually get through it and mix it up for me. what i did do was make sure to soak down the surrounding layers well enough that eventually that moisture will get in there. one way or another... i'd still make sure there was mulch on top and then make sure to spray that mulch (not putting water through it) so that it can slowly drip down on the soil below. from your description you say the water goes right through the mulch and runs off the soil. to me that says you are using too much water and pouring it through the mulch. instead, use a fine mist to keep wetting the mulch. spray it several times a day. Tried both of those in the past with the exception of the 'several times a day' - it's morning and/or evening only in our summer conditions and even then unless it's overcast and there is no wind, microsprays are a very 'iffy' use of water - almost always a waste of time and for some reason mulch just adds to the problem when it's already dry under the mulch. I don't really understand why the mulch doesn't help but it doesn't until the soil is moist and then it can do it's traditional soil protecting job. no, i don't mean microspray, i just mean a finer mist than what some watering cans or sprayers put out. enough to make sure all of the mulch is wetted down instead of just bits of it. We seem to be getting there slowly but progress is not fast. Mud pies making still seem to be the most effective method with the most threatened smaller plants but I am worried about some of the trees. i hope they'll come through ok and keep the wishes for more rain going too. songbird |
#22
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water repellant spoil
In article ,
Fran Farmer wrote: 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. I see I'm late to the party, and probably don't know what's going on, but that has never stopped me before. Numero-uno: Sounds like you need more organic material in your soil. Numero-two-o: Anionic Surfactants are negatively charged, and enhance foaming and other spreading properties. For example, shampoo for hair contains sodium or ammonium laureth sulfate, which is the preferred anionic surfactant for hair. Using an anionic surfactant in the greenhouse can cause problems with sprayers that have an agitator, or any system where the foam could disrupt water flow or pump suction. http://www.caes.uga.edu/publications/pubDetail.cfm?pk_id=7678#SoWhyNot & http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3555348/ Numero-three-o: boil kitchen fat, and wood ash together, and then spread on garden. Numero-four-o: Siesta time. 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. -- Remember Rachel Corrie http://www.rachelcorrie.org/ Welcome to the New America. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg |
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