Bimbling on different soils.

[Nice65]

I live in a valley just north of the South Downs in West Sussex. I love chalkland, it's flora and fauna, I grew up here. The soil type changes by driving only a few miles north. The change is dramatic.

Chalkland:

To the right is the tail end of Goodwood racecourse.

6 miles north to Midhurst, I'm spoilt for choice really.

The idiots, looking at me disdainfully because I pointed a camera at them and taking half the sofa doing it!

 

[Toddy]

Lovely to see

Interesting thread too. I grew up here on Lanarkshire's heavy clay soil. I'll see about getting some photos, but it's always damp, always, even in the depths of Winter, kind of lush.

 

[Nice65]

Yeah, that's the stuff. Loads of held water and masses of nutrients. It's not as boggy here, the water drains through the chalk and creates springs, but it sits low in places. Your picture is familiar to sites around here with the lush and water laden plants.

We used to live a bit further south, in flood plain, the clay needed a huge amount of deep turning and mixing with compost. A lot of effort, I only recently gave away the old rotavator, same one as Kev has. That thing started on every pull and has been running over 40 years, it was essential for getting into the deep stuff, the thing just wanted to burrow down into it.

 

[Zingmo]

As a young man I travelled the UK extensively for work. I kept a mental note of places that felt right; places I would be happy to settle in. Where the landscape felt like home.

Years later, I realised that I had apparently noted areas where the geology was sandstone.

Z

 

[Toddy]

Funny you should say that, because though we're 'on clay', the villages are built on sandstone outcrops and all the old houses are built of the sandstone too
Beautiful water that comes up from our old wells. It's filtered through the layers of clay, sand and sandstone, and it erupts as a line of springs right along the Main Street.

M