What sort of slope can you mow with your mower? Maybe you can have more gentle/terraced swales and still mow them.
It sound like you have a Mediterranean climate, so you may find this thread of interest. I believe that by increasing the water content of the soil you can get a benefit in fire prevention too. Swales are just one way of going about that.
As regards grazing animals some are suggested here including borrowing grazing animals and using smaller animals like guinea pigs. Maybe others in the same situation will find it useful.
Sam Shade wrote: the yam bulbils are great for chickens.
I think chinese yams are one of the most underappreciated crops out there. Literal food falling from the sky plus buried treasure under ground.
What a great idea - as vines they could be planted outside a chicken run to be safe from the chooks pecking at the greenery, but drop the bulbils into the run for them to eat!
Brian White wrote: Hi, Nancy, Just the top couple of inches. I only divide it "like a pie" if it has several growing buds. If it has one, I just leave it as is. As far as I know, the root lower down doesn't regrow, just the top where the leaves come out. I have tried eating the leaves in the past but I didn't like the taste.
Thanks for the clarification - I'll bear that in mind.
The leaf taste may be a difference in our growing conditions as much as our taste buds perhaps.
After the anchor poles, the next step is fixing the base rails in position. This was fairly straightforwards. The bolts to fix the rails to the support brackets needed laying in the inside slots in the rails first. We greased them up with some coppergrease to protect the threads.
laying out support clips and hoop brackets
My husband seemed surprised that I wanted soil in my polytunnel, so the base rails are not along the rock on the lower side, but with a gap of about 18 inches to the ground!
levelling baserails lower side
Initially we fitted the baserail as a complete straight rail along the top side as well as the lower side, but soon realised that left too little pole above the rail for much engagement of the hoops at the Northern end, due to the slope of the rock. So I split the rail back up, and put a step in it as originally planned, using one of the lengths cut from the excess extrusion length from the baserails. Unfortunately the step length didn't match the right angle brackets perfectly (they should have two fixings on each side), so I bodged it by overlapping the brackets. Really the vertical is only to stop the plastic edge from flapping, so doesn't need to be very strong. I'll put a bit of anti-hotspot tape on the corner to stop the plastic tearing there.
step joint in base rail upper side
I'm now planning just to lay the guttering below the rail directly on the gound (supported as neccessary with rocks) rather than fitting it with brackets to some structure below the baserail. Although I do have a bit of UPVC cladding that might do to fix it to, it would need more support behind and it was all getting a bit complex and inelegant, so crude and simple it is! The guttering will feed the water in under the baserail near the joddle in the side rail. I'm hoping to store enough water inside the tunnel to use during dry spells of weather, but normally rely on overflow to automatically water the beds.
Then we had to work out how long to leave the upper hoops. I measured out all the base anchor poles compared to the baserails, the down hill hoops compared to the uphill hoops, the joddle in the upper baserail, and then worked out how much to cut off each tube. I then showed my working to my husband to double check, and he demonstrated again why I fell in love with him by spotting that the critical anchor height side to side was almost identical. So cutting the upper hoops to the same length as the already cutdown hoops for those on the higher step of the upper side, would actually be pretty much perfect. The longer hoops for the lower step just need to be about a foot longer.
my over-complicated working out summary
I hope he will cut the hoops down tomorrow morning, then I'll lay them out in order, assembled with the correct brackets and with anti-hotspot tape in the afternoon, and then we can have a go at lifting them into position !!!
I only left the oats another week before harvesting. They're now drying off in the spare bedroom with the other grains. So far so good.
I did do a microscope inspection of the soil in the growing beds. I'll post a bit about that below (wrong PC for the pictures) but long story short not much going on.
Last week I cut back the haulms on the potatoes ready to harvest at the end of the month. This year I don't seem to have much blight - just a few spots of damage, which may just be down to wind damage. However, it doesn't do any harm to be cautious, and by cutting the stalks back any blight is less likely to travel into the tubers and damage them. I collected potato berries from both the skye blue and the pink fir apple. Maybe next year I'll have a play with TPS, there is just so many fun things one can try!
I did dig up just a few of the skye blue to have with locally caught mackerel for dinner yesterday. There doesn't seem to be a very good yield, but I only dug two plants, and probably didn't get all the tubers from those. I'l reserve judgement until digging the rest of them
The big news is that I harvested some of my roots and .... I have achieved carrots!
vegetables grown from own saved seeds
The parsnip were very long and very thin (a couple split roots too), the neeps a bit small and rough, but the carrots were fantastic! There was a bit of a split at the top of the big carrot, but no sign of rot or nibbling of the roots. These just happened to be the first two in the row, so I don't know what the rest will be like (and whether I will regret eating these rather than saving them for seed!) However I'm feeling pretty chuffed - carrot, neeps and parsnip together with kale with a meat pie for my dinner today!
Like counting your chickens before they're hatched - Optimating how big your carrots are going to be before you dig them, or how big your apple harvest is going to be by the flower display in spring.
example:
"Judging by the foliage, I optimate that my parsnips are going to be huge this year."
Well they were very long, but turned out a bit thin!
Brian White wrote: When you harvest it, you can take the top chop off most of the leaves and leave an inch or 2 of root on it, replant it and it will regrow! You can even divide the top, and most likely the 2 or 3 pieces you have will regrow.
Ooh, that's good to know Brian! I've mainly been using the leaves, but I have got some scorzonera of various ages, so I may dig some up and experiment a bit with the roots.
Silly question perhaps - Do you divide the top like a pie to regrow it? Or will each length of root regrow like a dandelion?
Another thing that can help is giving them something else to eat. If they are striped armyworms, from the link Anna gave, they seem to eat a wide variety of plants, then a) your plants have a better chance of being missed and b) their predators may turn up and deal with them and the next generation for you.
It's amazing where trees manage to grow themselves! You'd have thought that the woodchips would be the least hospitable situation....
I find that the commonest place I find tree seedlings is in a hardpacked rock path. I suspect that the temperatures may be more consistent, or maybe there are fewer nibblers.
I like the idea of using the metal sheets as a weed suppressing mulch.
A graduate scientist turned automotive engineer, currently running a small shop and growing plants on Skye: turning a sheep field into a food forest.
