Michael Cox

We treat our paths the same - barrows and barrows of wood chips each year. We get stuff dropped once or twice a year for use on paths, chickens and leave to rot down for mulch for various beds. A good application of woodchips marks otherwise muddy paths walkable year round.

I'm trying to understand what the exact problem is. Is it that the land between the ditches remains waterlogged, or are you concerned about the standing water in the ditches themselves?

I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that a ditch dries up the land down slope from the ditch. Many people find this counter intuitive, but essentially the ditch is intercepting the flow that would enter the downslope section thus allowing it to dry out. If your field is as waterlogged as you describe than you may have continual subsurface flows adding water to your ditches, which is why the appear to be not emptying.

Generally you want ditches to be close to horizontal in slope - they have much of a gradient then flowing water causes erosion problems.

I guess some photos of the arrangement would be helpful, as well as a clearer idea of what you are trying to achieve.

I'm a beekeeper. It's the very best thing to use when cleaning clothing or equipment that has propolis or beeswax staining. It saponifies the fats which then dissolve. One of my aims for this winter is to get a large enough plastic tub with a good lid so that I can whole beehive boxes (mine are polystyrene) so I can strip the residue back for a fresh coat of paint and reuse in the spring. I've not tried it before but my understanding is that they need about a week in a cold water bath, followed by a hose off to remove any final residue. The wash water can be used for multiple cycles.

We had a formal negotiation meeting at work this week between the union and the employer, discussing staff pay award for the coming year. This is the first of the meetings under the new framework we have in place.

What I really liked was how amicable and open the exchange was. Both parties are prepared to disagree of content/terms offered... but we have a really clear framework for the process, the framework covers what types of matter are and are not scope for this negotiation, and ultimately there is a dispute resolution system built into it.

There were lots of meta-discussions prior to the agreement being signed - working out some of the structural stuff about who is involved, what will be discussed when, etc... and some more of that in the first meeting as well. Our first agenda item was to discuss an edge case - does this particular issue fall within the remit of this meeting?

It was a genuinely uplifting meeting to be in despite the content being fairly challenging from a business perspective. But both sides had committed to it in spirit not just in token form, so it really worked.

Can I suggest that we are careful about the use of the medical term "antibiotic" when what I think you are talking about is "antiseptic". They act very differently and are used for different things.

Personally, my go to for treating superficial cuts and scrapes is a tincture of propolis, dissolved in alcohol. It has strong antiseptic properties and as the alcohol evaporates leaves a very fine skin of propolis over the scrape. It will burn like hell over open wound though, so best to use standard wound cleaning and dressings at least initially.

The permie way would be goats and/or pigs. Pigs will get the roots out.

Next step down is you manually removing them by hand, but this is a horrible job and likely to be futile if the roots go into rocky rubble.

Slightly less natural, but still a lot better than using sprays, is to put the whole area under thick black plastic weed barrier for 12 months or so. It's a super effective way, especially on awkward terrain that isn't well suit to other methods. You will still need to do some manual reduction initially to get the plastic to lay properly, but you won't need to get roots out. Even after 12 months you may find some very stubborn plants still alive, but you should be able to easily spot weed those few remaining ones. Avoid fabric weed barriers. The theory is they allow rain to percolate through, but in practice they degrade down to plastic fibres that end up polluting your soil for ever more. Proper thick black plastic will last decades and can be stored and used again as needed.

Christopher Weeks wrote:My only beef with that infographic is the false dichotomy between fermenting and pickling. To my experience pickles are preserved vegetables and in my house they're fermented, though I'm obviously aware that vinegar pickling exists.

Michael Cox wrote:Personally, I dislike measurements for ingredients...

Haha! I saw this and got jazzed because that's just how I feel -- I don't measure anything. But then the rest of the paragraph is all about how to be even more precise in one's measurements. Different strokes I suppose. :)

I teach maths, and am an engineer by training. If I'm aiming for a 2% salt concentration by weight then why on earth would I measure something like salt by "cups"? I find the concept genuinely baffling.

The scales live on the kitchen surface so using them is easy. And every batch has come out perfect, where as the unmeasured batches were all over the place.

The infographic for saurkraut was particularly bad... it mixed oz, litres, lbs and teaspoons... and still required kitchen scales!

I also love adding a few caraway seeds to my saurkraut. If you haven't previously tried it, give it a whirl.

I've always got a jar of saurkraut on the go at home. I'm the only one who eats it though, so a jar lasts me a long time.

I use a 2-litre jar with an airlock lid for the fermentation process. Buying a dedicated lid was a definite improvement over the various improvised arrangements I had previously, as I now get zero discolouration of the upper surface.

Personally, I dislike measurements for ingredients like salt in cups/tablespoons etc... There is way too much variability in terms of how dense your salt actually is. A tablespoon of sea salt flakes is quite different to a tablespoon of fine table salt. Instead, I aim for a salt concentration by weight.  I chop up whatever ingredients I am using and weigh them. I typically do about 2kg of cabbage at a time. Then I do 2% of that weight as salt.  eg if I end up with 1876g of cabbage I will weigh out 37g of whatever salt I am using (2% of the weight). Add it to a mixing bowl with the chopped cabbage and (with clean hands) vigorously mix it together, aiming to bruise the cabbage a bit. Transfer to the fermentation jar and add the glass weight to hold it down. If I need a bit more liquid then I mix up some salt water at the same concentration (20g salt to 1000ml of water) and top up as needed.

Before I got accurate scales, I was sort of guessing and had some batches that were way too salty.

As others have already said, organic matter and active root systems will be your friend in this project. I have two thought that might be useful.

1) Comfrey - It looks like your soil does a good job of holding moisture for long periods. My observations are that comfrey thrives in damp soils and produces far more growth than in dry soils. The difference I see between the comfrey I planted in my dry chalk soils at home, vrs my in-laws clay/silt garden with a high water table is amazing. The soil beneath their comfrey is black with organic matter, stays moist but not pooling, and the fruit trees around it a thriving. It gets slashed a couple of times per year and the leafy material left to break down where it falls.

2) This one is more climate dependent - vetiver grass.
It's a tall clumping grass that sends down deep DEEP root systems. The soil around the roots builds organic matter and opens pathways for water to drain down into the deeper soil levels. Again, the leafy material should be cut back each year to a couple of inches high, and forms great mulch. It is particularly well suited for sloping ground because hedges planted on contour stop surface flows of water and soil erosion, and the deep roots stabilise unstable ground. Two caveats are that it doesn't like shade, and can't tolerate deep winter freezes (shallow frosts are apparently fine).