Restoring soil structure and simple farming in a wet climate

I've probably planted what I'm going to now in the growing area this year. I've decided to leave the 'roots' bed fallow and have heavily mulched it with hay cut from the treefield pathways. I'll try and dig out the dock and nettles if they manage to grow through it this summer. The peas and beans are sprouting - rather small as yet. Again I'm going to leave the other half of the bed fallow now. Question is whether to chop and drop and mulch it so save the weeds getting too great a hold on it....

The poor little TPS seedlings have now been planted too. Most of them now had little tubers forming - both red, white and bicolour as far as I can tell. I did lose a few tubers as I removed them from the seed snail. I definitely think they could have been transplanted and planted out earlier, but "I'll be more organised next year".....maybe!

TPS seedlings ready to plant out

I did the same as last year and dug a very deep trench and put all my saved dog bones in it, then back filled a little and planted the seedlings in the trench. The rain came the following day, so I never watered them in. I rejected a few seedlings as being rather strange in growth habit, or with extremely long stolons. I'm wondering if I'll regret making the trenches so deep on this occasion. It will make earthing up awkward if I chose to do so as the plants are so tiny. However the main reason for earthing up (as I understand it) is to stop the tubers greening. As I won't be eating them this year, just selecting promising ones to grow on for next year, if they do go a bit green it won't matter. The trenches will protect the little plants from the wind a bit I hope which will help.

TPS in trenches

I did a little assessment of the growth of my barley for the trials people. It looks like the control variety may be a good variety for this area. It is shorter, greener and is tillering more. Of course the proof will be in the harvest and there are as yet no ears forming. The silverweed is growing rather enthusiatically in this bed, so I did a bit of chop and drop on half the bed so as to try and give the barley a bit of room. It will be interesting to see if it makes any difference to the growth and yield. My suspicion is that it won't - the silverweed leaves supports the barley stems, so I think by cutting them back (as well as getting some casualties!) I may get some more lodging where the stems fall over.

barley bed progress - chop and drop in foreground half

I reaped one result from the barley project already  - they sent my soil results to me! Nice and comprehensive results and not quite what I was expecting. What I'm taking away from it at the moment is that my soil came back more sand and less silty than I expected, less acidic than I expected, higher in carbon, and OK in most nutrients except Phosphorus and some micronutrients. The biological activity level found was also gratifying (considering I still feel I've got way to go) I'll try and have another look with the microscope this summer.

physical and biological activity summary

nutrient analysis summary

These charts are the summaries from the report, which goes into a bit more detail. It sort of implies that the field hasn't been quite as defiled as I'd thought, or maybe that the soil was so peaty that there is still some organic residue left, or that I've managed to improve the soil more than I'd thought. I'm thinking that what I am doing - bringing in seaweed (for micronutrients) and bulky organic materials and charcoal (for CEC boosting) is still the right actions. It definitely looks more alive to me - the above ground animals appear more numerous, and the worms are more various and lively than the ones that were there before. So overall I'm quite pleased. I'm thinking it's a pity I don't have a 'before' test to reference against and wondering how expensive it would be to get a couple more samples tested in the same way - one from an undug area of the treefield which has just been allowed to recover by itself, and one from next door, which is still (appears to me) overgrazed by sheep.

All very exciting.  What dear little potato plants. And, yes, a 'before' test would be interesting.