[jonewer]

Hi all,

I recently moved house and should be getting my new lottie in january. In the meantime, I have been assessing what I can do with the garden I have here at home.

Main problem is the soild looks really poor. Its a pale kind of browny orange colour and seems very sandy. Doesnt appear to hold water well at all, it looks dry on the surface within hours of watering or heavy rain.

Does anyone know of a good, quick, cheap, simple way of improving this type of soil?

Thanks.

[sunshineband]

Anything organic that you can dig in tbh -- manure, garden compost, spent mushroom compost, old grow bags, stuff like that.

[Trillium]

Dry, shredded leaves are also great and usually free. Old straw (not hay) will also help and if spoiled can be had free or very cheap. Check local stables for all the free manure you can carry.

[peterjf]

a few grows bags should do the trick,

[Jonajo]

before i had my plot I had a patch at home in the garden for veg and the soil was also bad, and things did not do well in there.

So I would simply throw all my veg peelings into it, mix it in, add to it with more a few days later and so on. It is amazing how much veg peelings and the like can be accumulated in a week, for instance.

After a while the soil became workable and gave some good produce.

[Christine]

There is no really quick way of improving soil. You can only take all the suggestions that people have made and use them. But it will still take more time than immediately to get the soil into really good shape.

If you have a read on how to make compost here, you will get lots of good ideas about what you can use for compost. When you start to look around your house you would be amazed at what you can find. You could also talk to neighbours and see if they have "stuff" that you can use.

The idea of digging vegetable peelings into a trench and covering to rot down is good and easy to do.

[jonewer]

Thanks all. I'm quite lucky in that the previous owner left quite a bit of compost behind.

Have already started to add organic waste to one of his daleks.

I'll be digging again fairly shortly!

Can wait to get my lottie though. Brand new site opening in Redhill in Jan! Hope the soil there is better than it is here.

[Salmo]

You could grow green manure to dig in. Phacelia or mustard can be sown now to give a quick bulky crop in a few weeks. Or sow a Winter mixture to dig in after Christmas.