Soil Type?

[zazen999]

I'd take a sample from at least 3 places to get an overview of the plot; or do a separate test on each of the 3 distinct areas and see what you have. Then decide which needs organic added first.

On mine, I was talking to one of the old boys and he said 'clay, what clay?'....it seems that we are on a rare clay spot as nowhere round us has clay at all........I remember when we first got it someone saying that the chap who had the plot a few years back used to take home the good soil and bring back the soil from his garden to the lottie. I can't believe the whole site is made up of his garden soil; with no intervention it sets rock solid when we have no rain; and can turn into a mudbath when we do.

[Twinsane]

Blimey, who'd want to swap a whole plot of soil?!

Thanks for the advice. I'll try it later and see what we have. As the site hasn't been used for well over 10 years, I should imagine that most of it will need something adding to it. Some areas of the site (not my plot but the whole allotment site we are renovating) are still like a mudbath despite the recent lack of rain, others are like concrete. I'm not going to test the whole site though, lol, just my plot. I think I'll do try 3 seperate tests. In fact, I might just pull me boots on and nip across after me coffee...

[Alison]

Personally I've never bothered doing proper testing on my plot (other than looking and feeling the soil) and prefer to find out by trying to grow things. Sometimes I find that things that are supposed to do badly / well on a particular soil type seem to enjoy showing me otherwise!

[Twinsane]

That will probably be the case with me too Alison but I've got a new plot that I'm itching to do something with. I can do the soil testing until I can sow and then I can experiment too!

[Alison]

It's very exciting isn't it. I got my plot about this time of year last year and it was great that I had the autumn and winter to go at it and get some beds ready for spring when I planted my first stuff out. Have managed to get 12 10' by 4' formal beds going this year plus some fruit bushes and a load of random beds round the plot and it's been very exciting. Am now planning another 4 veg beds, another strawberry bed, an asparagus bed and a polytunnel for next year and that will pretty much fill the plot although I'm sure I'll be tweeking for years!

[Twinsane]

Yes it is! Good luck with yours - only 12 months on and you sound like a pro!

I've got most of ours sorted now - in my head at least . We need to cover it once it's been ploughed (thanks to a very kind volunteer) and the compost mulch added but I've not got much else to do with it for now. I'm going to visit some allotments in Sutton next week and I can't wait! I'm looking forward to seeing what they've done and asking questions As we are a new society renovating an abandoned site, we're all clueless lol We have a lot of work to do on the entire site (pathways and parking etc) so it will be great to see a successful site in action.

I'm on the scrounge for blue water pipe and scaffold tubes to make a polytunnel. I'd love one ut can't get the bigger pipe. I can buy it from ebay but with the price of the plastic cover and tubing, I can buy a tunnel for a little more and less effort form first tunnels!