What to do with partially boggy land?

[Stew]

I assume if human waste is usable as that it would need a hot composting process first. Just trench digging it in isn’t going to achieve that!

 

[mrmike]

Thanks again!

Ah I am well familiar with making raised beds! Did that a lot when volunteering. It was also on a slope and was never that interested to ask why we did that. So that is their purpose? To allow drainage in otherwise poorly draining soil?

Where I was volunteering we would to three sided ones on the slope of the hill. Seems it would be the same here which is also sloped, though slightly less steeply.

Ok well if the land is poor and making use of everything at one's disposal then humanure is a valuable resource to dump right in there no? If I am the only one eating it then it is my own risk and if I can't be bothered to wait a year can I not just chuck it in there 'raw' mixed with some of the existing soil and it will mature right there with the crops in it?

There is a long history of that already isn't there in british culture? They took the night soil and used it right on the crops. Granted diseases were also rife then too but as long as I wash my hands thoroughly then shouldn't be any different than washing one's hands after doing their business no?

Having managed it a bit chucking it on an all in one compost pile I have not noticed a smell once it is mixed with leaves or other debris after a few days.

I did a 'trench compost' the other day after a month's worth of humanure and food waste formed a fair pile and wanting it out of the way of the rodents and just generally would prefer not see that literal pile of crap all the time. Didn't notice a smell when moving and burying it and just plonked a couple of willows right on top.

Could do the same for veges no? If they are going to be boiled then there shouldn't be a problem with contamination? Likewise how I sterilize water when used from the stream to cook.

Perhaps you may want to look into the reports regarding human waste in North Korea as fertiliser resulting in widespread parasitic worm infection. As found in a great many who found their way into South Korea.

 

[bushcraftlearner83729]

I agree with the above. The "humanure handbook" is a must if you want to use human waste as a fertilizer. There's also another book on compostign toilets but I cannot remember the title at the moment, I will need to dig out the book. But note that composting toilets use a "soak" for the solid waste to get the balance of woody-green right for aerobic composting. Sawdust or DRY earth was traditional, but coir is easier to obtain commercially and handles will.

I'm sure we also started out this whole thing talking about crops and being self sufficient in food.... and ended up at willow.....

As a vegan, you're a bit out of luck with growing your own food in Wales. Traditional "crops" would be cattle.... and pigs.... Just look at the Celtic legends- cattle raiding and pigs feature very strongly. Milk, cheese, butter, rye bread, oats, pork/ham, leeks/alliums would be staples, with "herbs" (we would say green veg), fruit/nuts, honey- all in season.

Fish was important too- Sewin was very traditional in Carmarthenshire (fished from coracles) and gathering cockles and laverbread in the Gower goes back a fair way. Cockels, laverbread (rolled in oattmeal) and bacon all fried together was a traditional Swansea breakfast.

In wetter parts of Europe (and no doubt UK), peasants ate rye bread (or barley and rye bread). Rye will grow in wetter conditions, but also gets Ergot so needs knowledgable growing and use. It works best in a Sourdough loaf.

Lots of types of "oatcake" all over UK. Staffordshire/Derbyshire oatcakes are more like pancakes (no eggs though) and would be filled with something- cheese for example. Usully made with a mix of oatmeal and wheat flour, but do work with just oatmeal.

Potatoes came much later and became the staple in the wetter half of the British isles- although even then you can have serious problems in a bad blight year. Going north in UK, you have oats and peas- pease pudding is a traditional Geordie dish (usually made with the water from cooking ham or a pig foot, and some ham added). There's Carlin peas in the NW ("parched peas" i.e. carlin peas in vinegar is a Lancashire dish), and "field beans" (fava beans) were another staple. They will grow in a range of conditions, and can be used as an overwinter greeen mulch.

If you look on Hedemedod's website you will see not only what they grow in UK, but also note whereabouts they grow it.

GC

Are there any books about the history of what our antecedents ate through the ages?

I am well aware of what the humanure and general wisdom is on humanure - only after a year but I want to take the short cut.

Yes there are some stories of contaimination but I tend to think that would be due to poor hygeine and/or not boiling the crops in question. I am yet to see a rational response as to why it is any different than boiling suspect water to sterilize it. Talk of parasites are notwithstanding if the food is being cooked which would destroy them at boiling temperatures.

Also it is not like normal compost is free of similar nasties. I had a friend who got worms from his interaction with compost just from vegetable waste. That was the most likely culprit he had thought it to be anyway.

So it just seems much of a muchness. I don't see the difference? Both are going to have parasites. Just wash hands thoroughly after handling and even wear a good mask and cook the crops. Seems no different as to the risks or practices whether rotting vegetables or raw sewage is used. Both are nasty and require careful handling.

As the soil is so poor and one produces a hearty load every week of this brown gold, it seems illogical to let it go to waste given the reasons against only seem a matter of changing attitude towards this time honoured practice.

There was talk of people dying in times of yore but it is not an equal comparison at all. They didn't know about hand washing and did not have access to modern medicine.

 

[bushcraftlearner83729]

Raised beds, lazy beds (traditional and anything but lazy to make, but it makes a raised bed that crops will grow in even in poor lands). Small patches in sunny spots were scattered around croft lands in the past.

I starter making a 'hurdle' type bed today then after putting up the posts, having not filled them in I suddenly thought what a terrible waste of my very limited wood supply!

I then started digging up the rushes and other detritus to clear a space for a lazy bed. Seems a much better way to go even if it takes more work!

I also found some lovely fluffy looking soil under the big willow tree. Don't know how it came to be but it is so bouncy like sponge. I stuck the spade in a few times and it is very airy stuff. Would this be some natural compost that has accumulated over years? The only thing is it is also rather red in lots of it. Is that iron and would that be an issue?

There are also two large piles of mixed brash several meters wide and half as much high. This is from the clearance of the land before sale and will be also a year old now. It is is various stages of decomposiiton with a lot of the top stuff still very much sticks and branches but deeper down there is some that seems like soil with smaller twigs. Would this be good to use on the beds?

If not on top perhaps on a lower layer as per the hugelkulter method, given it is mostly tree remnants? Also you mentioned leaves? Lots of those around.

Should I just throw everything onto the newly cleared patches? I don't have to wait 1 year plus? Just plant straight into them? I don't have a year to wait in any case!

 

[Stew]

Have a look at Charles Dowding and no-dig gardening.

 

[Glow_worm]

I am well aware of what the humanure and general wisdom is on humanure

No you're not, as evidenced by the rest of your post.

The answers to all the questions you have asked are in "The Humanure Handbook", which can be downloaded for free (the author's desire, to educate and promote good practice). Read it and understand it fully, do not potentially pollute watercourses and other people's land. People who do deserve to be prosecuted.

Once again I do question whether your posts are serious, or a wind up...

 

[mrmike]

I am well aware of what the humanure and general wisdom is on humanure - only after a year but I want to take the short cut.

Yes there are some stories of contaimination but I tend to think that would be due to poor hygeine and/or not boiling the crops in question. I am yet to see a rational response as to why it is any different than boiling suspect water to sterilize it. Talk of parasites are notwithstanding if the food is being cooked which would destroy them at boiling temperatures.

Ok, so compost of any sort is only of any value for it's nutritional content - you are adding nutrients to the ground in order to aid plant growth.

You say that you want to "take the short cut" and that if food is cooked at boiling temperatures that parasitic infection is not a problem.
In that case why not just take a decent dollop of your "brown gold" and mix it in with your evening meal and give it a good boiling up - removes the faffing about of spreading it on the land, less likely to get into watercourses, and nutrients direct to you.
Perfectly safe according to your logic.

 

[GreyCat]

I starter making a 'hurdle' type bed today then after putting up the posts, having not filled them in I suddenly thought what a terrible waste of my very limited wood supply!

I then started digging up the rushes and other detritus to clear a space for a lazy bed. Seems a much better way to go even if it takes more work!

I also found some lovely fluffy looking soil under the big willow tree. Don't know how it came to be but it is so bouncy like sponge. I stuck the spade in a few times and it is very airy stuff. Would this be some natural compost that has accumulated over years? The only thing is it is also rather red in lots of it. Is that iron and would that be an issue?

There are also two large piles of mixed brash several meters wide and half as much high. This is from the clearance of the land before sale and will be also a year old now. It is is various stages of decomposiiton with a lot of the top stuff still very much sticks and branches but deeper down there is some that seems like soil with smaller twigs. Would this be good to use on the beds?

If not on top perhaps on a lower layer as per the hugelkulter method, given it is mostly tree remnants? Also you mentioned leaves? Lots of those around.

Should I just throw everything onto the newly cleared patches? I don't have to wait 1 year plus? Just plant straight into them? I don't have a year to wait in any case!

@bushcraftlearner83729: whilst I share @Glow_worm 's reservations, nevertheless I will take you at face value and assume you are genuine not a wind-up.

I am wondering if you're naive or just not managing to take on board the range of excellent advice from experienced homesteaders on the forum (of which I am not one- I know my limitations).

Why the rush? You've only been on your plot 5 minutes and not yet seen it over a year. There's a lot of experience behind that recommendation of watching it for a year.

If we do get a dry spring/summer in 2025, have you worked out how you will water what you plant? Watering suddenly becomes a lot more difficult when you have to carry the water, and if you've not watched the land for a year you don't know what will happen to the stream come the summer.

If you were preparing "no dig" beds now then you would typically be looking to plant towards the second half of 2025- perhaps the first Brassica crop, maybe some field/broad beans to stand over the winter. It'll be March/April at the earliest before the air/ground warms up enough for some proper compost action to happen. No Dig works because the worms do the heavy lifting, and if you're putting a raised bed on soggy ground it'll take time (and warmth) to build up the worms and microbes that do the work. Especially given how incredibly wet the ground in S Wales is at the moment- and more rain on the way tomorrow. Even things that normally grow in clay will be reluctant to get going when everything is a morass.

This is traditionally the time of year to prepare the ground and read seed catalogues (I like to look at Read Seeds https://www.realseeds.co.uk/). Whether you're digging in organic matter to improve the soil or going "no dig." (Oh, and personally, I wouldn't dig up reed to make a bed as that indicates it's a boggy spot).

Patience and working with local conditions is the way to succeed.

I remember my first year on the allotment, took it on in the September and was impatient to get something growing. SO I dug the ground and put up my polytunnel. Then I got my tomatoes started early in the spring without realizing that putting the little plants into cold ground- even in a polytunnel- would lead to them sitting sulking, not growing. The following year I sowed much later (end of March), so didn't need to plant out until the ground had warmed up after the Beast from the East went through. And you know what, my tomatoes grew better and flowered earlier than those of the allotmenteers who had planted theirs out earlier. They caught up because they got away well.

If you can find the right conditions, then there are strains of quinoa which grow in UK- look at Real Seeds. I have had some success on the allotment with quinoa, but bear in mind that although it was clay soil, it was fairly well drained and I'd dug in a load of soil improver the previous year- they won't grow in a bog!

Brash: you need to shred it if it's to compost in anything like a useful timescale. Shred it, mix it with green waste (e.g. grass clippings) and tip the whole lot into a compost bin made with pallets-and-string. Wait several months (a year is better) and it will becomes compost- but you will only get half to a third volume of compost vs what you put in.

There's quite a bit of "living history" for food (Ruth Goodman- Tudor Farm TV series and book), and also a helps to have bit of understanding of UK regional culinary history. Ruth Goodman has also written a book about how the move from wood fires to coal fires influenced how we cooked.

Traditional local dishes tell you a lot about what grows locally since before the coming of the Railways (1840's onwards) almost all food was grown and eaten locally as bulk transport was difficult and expensive. Obviously some staple dishes from the 1700's/1800's relied on novel crops coming from the New World- such as corn, beans, squash (the "3 sisters" of central Americal cuisine), potatoces, (from the Andes) and tomatoes. In the late 19th century and 20th centruy, there was a lot of work to develop high yield strains, and of course from 1850's onwards the UK landraces of mixed population soft wheats and spelt being replaced by imported hard wheats (see the history about the repeal of the "Corn Laws").

has a bit about a medieval peasents food!

Oh, and fluffy soil under a deciduous tree will undoubtedly be natural leaf mould compost. Birch trees are known for being great as soil imrpovers- their leaves rot down realy easily.

Finally- I don't know where it was you worked in a market garden (was it even in the UK?) or how they grew- commercial practices can be a bit different- but you do seem to have some big gaps in your knowledge of basic processes fro growing food crops in the SW of the British Isles. I seem to recall that @Woody girl suggested you go on a permaculture course- I think that would be very wise.

GC

 

[GreyCat]

Just a thought to @bushcraftlearner83729 : you might want to join Garden Organic (formerly the Henry Doubleday Trust): https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/who-we-are

If you're a member you get access to lots of useful info sheets (e.g. a step by step guide to successful composting), and if you additionally subscribe to the Heritage Seed Library, you can have 6 varieties of rare heritage seed a year, all open pollinated varieties.

I am a member of both because I wanted to help maintain our heirloom open pollinated landraces of vegetables, the genetic variety is so important. The packets of seed are a bit of a winter perk, I enjoy picking my varieties every year and it's great to try something new.

GC