buried treasure

[sewer rat]

Mandy
As Nicos says, you may have hit bedrock - as I recall your plot is overlooking a railway or a canal - you are possibly on top of a cutting where they have blasted out the rock to get through. How deep have you gone down ?
Rat

[mandyballantyne]

Hi,

I have dug down bettween 1 1/2 and 2 foot and think I will stop there. It could be bedrock as you say as the land is at the top of a canal. There are trees growing well and brambles growing VERY well until last week! the soil seems good, plan to but top soil down next week and raised beds for the veg.

How deep will the soil need to be to plant potato etc?

Thanks again,

Mandy

[Nicos]

A sunken garden with it's own micro-climate,protected from prevailing winds,peach and apricot espaliers on the south facing wall. Warm summer evenings surrounded by raised beds of strawberries, a bottle of chablis...sounds perfect to me!! Problem is...is your back up to all that digging??? Oh I think all this cold weather is getting to me

[mandyballantyne]

Hi Nicos,

Back has gone, the area has been completly dug twice! Warm weather, wine................ Bring it on!

[nick the grief]

If you've dug down 2' it will be ok to stop Mandy You only need a spade depth for spuds and then earthe them up when they're thru.

You didn't meet anyone with an Aussi accent did you

[Shortie]

As Lesley Jay finds pottery and I find glass in our soil , I wondered if anyone has found anything interesting whilst digging (or knows of someone who has!)? The guy in the plot next to ours found a couple of clay pipes on his! Smoking - not drainage!!! Some of you must live on battle sites etc.

Sorry picked this thread up late...

I have an anderson shelter in my back garden

Mind you I'm an bit paranoid about it as I was saying to my Dad that it'd be really fab to try and clean out the earth and try and make a feature out of it but he expected it to be quite unstable now... Thing is I'm really paranoid walking/cultivating the soil there as it's quite close to the surface...

Needless to say I have now planted some oriental grasses and bulbs in that area so I don't have to maintain it much!

Maybe the OH will pop into the garden one day to see where I've gone and find me struggling upside down in the collapsed shelter!

[Nicos]

shortie - how about converting it into a rhubarb distillery???

[Shortie]

Mmmmmm... you mean like a bootleg rhubarb Schnapps factory?...

Ooo... now there's an idea...

Could you imagine the damamge already done if the rhubard had been planted there? Don't think there would be much of the shelter left by now!

[JennieAtkinson]

We have a large air raid shelter (mostly above ground) in the garden. Our house was taken over as a hospital in the war (the house is not THAT big only the officers and staff stayed in the house, ordinary folk stayed in the wooden huts they built outside).

Currently a wood store, but I thought about growing mushrooms in it, its wonderfully dark and damp. But a schnapps factory ... hmmm....

[Jaxom]

We keep on digging up bones in our garden. The last owners used to have a large dog. If we were starting again from scratch a team of archaeologists would be a big help.
Jax

[Nicos]

Jax - they are probably dinosaur bones!!! we used to to do loads of pre-historic survaying in south wales!!! wish we had found the footprints though Used to pick up loads of 'devil's toe nails' on Southerndown after the storms ( a kettle box full exchanged us with a mammouth tooth and a 60 million yr old lobster!!! could be pet dog of course!!-- fantastic area for these finds!

[Jaxom]

Nicos, Southerndown is a wonderful beach to visit.
In respect of the bones I hope the dog buried them
The family also buried the dog after it died but we know where that grave is. We have now put so much work into the garden that if they are dinosaur bones then they can stay where they are until after I am gone then if someone wants to investigate they are welcome.
Jax

[adam connor]

I inherited a vegetable pacth. deep dug and raised bed system and find lots of bones but most worryingly, all seem to be the same bit - jaw bones with teeth in and fore-limbs/proximal (near to body) limb bones. ?sheep ?pig i know has been used as a farm in past but last owner was a little strange??

[Alice]

We find the clay smoking pipes too, and have an undreground Anderson shelter.It's dug into the banks of the burn which runs at the bottom of the garden and covered over with earth. I never walk there as frightened it might cave in. The property was a mill and we still have lots of the big stone structures which formed the laid and the sluices. We don't have the pond anymore as the first year we were here we had record breaking rain and the pond came over the top - fortunately at a point where it all went down the burn. The dam washed right down to bedrock and we now have a lovely series of waterfalls there. I'll take a piccy and post it for you. The area was a Roman Fort but we've never found anything Roman. Surprised at how little we find but maybe because we don't do much digging. Might be different when we start the kitchen garden.

[Squirrel]

Wow Alice, you place sounds lovely! Do put some piccys on so we can see!