Pallet wood Hydro-driver for 2018 season

[no_akira]

Blight is airborne ?

I'm no blight expert... but when I've seen it infect my plants and other holders plants it seems to first infect a plant on the windward side then they all seem to go down with it. This to me suggests an airborne fungal spore that settles on top layer of soil and then is wash down to roots by heavy rains or your over enthusiastic watering getting into the plants via its root system. The first plant then infects others via connected roots systems. Central to its spread is "High saturation moisture levels during warm months" in soil.

Woody plants

Basically anything that when you pull it up at the end of the year you observe a tough woody stem and a mini tree ball like root system such as Tomatos, Aubergines, Chilli plants, Okra (ladies fingers) is how I define woody plants. Sunflowers & JA's are similar.

I’d personally rather be on improved clay any day

"improved clay" implies a lot of back breaking effort which your millennial new starter will be easily disenchanted by.

Whenever I hear the question on GQT "Have you any advice for growing in heavy clay soil?" Lots of umming and ahing, superficial non answers quickly followed by "Next question please?"

Being the "lazy monkey brain" that I am I'm just trying to get the "most fruit" for the least effort.

[lottie dolly]

I haven't got a clue what it's supposed to do but, if it works for you then good luck

Same here...........................

[veggiechicken]

You seem to put an awful lot of effort into getting "the most fruit for the least effort"!

Charles Dowding, the "No-dig" guru has gardened on clay soil. Have you read any of his books?

[Greenleaves]

The fungal spores of blight overwinter in old potato tubers that remain in the ground or on the compost heap. These tubers may grow the following year to produce infected shoots. Fresh fungal spores of blight are then released on the wind to infect new crops. Spores may also be washed into the ground by heavy rainfall to infect tubers growing there.

I understand that your system will allow the water to pass through quickly but it will still deposit the spores in the soil.

[Snoop Puss]

I have very heavy clay but I obviously won't be using your system, no-akira, because I don't want to encourage water evaporation, quite the opposite.

That said, I'm not sure that you've properly defined the problems that you're trying to address. If you think you're trying to stop blight, you need to understand blight. See the biology section here for a brief intro:
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=217

Tall plants develop woody stems in a bid to become self-supporting. That's entirely natural. Look at trees.

Tomatoes and the like actually have quite deep roots. You may only see a mini root ball when you dig them up at the end of the season, but that's probably because lots of fine roots have been left behind. Either that or you haven't improved your soil enough by adding organic matter, so they've tried to spread but have been confined by the soil conditions. And even then, if your clay soil is moist enough, aubergines will be able to thread their roots through even hard clay. I mention aubergines because I dug some of last year's up yesterday and the roots were a good 30 cm long and well spread out.

It's possible that gardening programmes don't provide what you regard as a satisfactory answer to growing in clay soil because the answer is actually quite straight forward: add more organic matter and eventually it will become easier to work

And as far as I can see here, as well, there are plenty of new starters keen to do just that. Whether they're 'millennials' or not, I couldn't say.

For anyone looking for maximum fruit for minimum effort, the best approach is probably no-dig, with lots of mulch, muck, green manure and other ground cover. Choose the right things to grow for the first couple of years and then go gang-busters with whatever you fancy, because your top soil will be lovely because of all the organic matter you've added.

[Bluenowhere]

"improved clay" implies a lot of back breaking effort which your millennial new starter will be easily disenchanted by.

It is effort but I’d argue with the need for it to be ‘backbreaking’.

As a new starter to growing on an clay allotment but not a millennial but still a good twenty five years from retirement, I’d say that family and full time work commitments have more impact on time available than a millennial would face (assuming a millennial is 20 something).

All gardening is effort and I’m afraid that it’s like all hobbies there is no return unless you put some time in. However for most of us on here it is a form of relaxation, especially those of us with stressful jobs, rather than a chore.

Unfortunately if ‘millennials’ want a easy way to get veg I’m not sure an allotment is for them regardless of the type of soil. If a bit of digging in manure is a step too far they probably are going to lose heart when slugs eat all their cabbages and wonder why their crops die when they haven’t found time to water them for a week.

As VC says there are lots of methods of improvement. At our allotments people dig but not in the double digging sense (a few of old school who have lots of time on their hands do) but most use manure as a mulch over the winter and let worms who love clay do a fair proportion of the the work of improving the top layer. Then they dig it in over the season as they plant. A sort of middle ground mainly as we have many perennial weeds such as couch grass, horsetail and bindweed which on our site grow though many inches of mulch quite happily so digging is required to dig up their roots.

Until the soil has been improved enough yes it is a struggle to direct sow but I grew everything in modules first and did just fine in year one, even parsnips, and no they were not like aliens (perhaps luck that I didn’t disturb their roots too much when I planted them) - although going for the toilet roll route for them this year to not tempt fate.

I did put in a fair amount of time and effort but for a younger fit person it would be easier, and this year despite the poor weather I can see the benefits to the soil as well as the enjoyment of eating my own produce the whole time.

[veggiechicken]

Can anyone explain what a "millenial new starter" is and why no-akira thinks they can't cope with clay?
I seem to spend most of my time on this thread trying to understand the terms that are used, and that's before I even attempt to understand what a "pallet wood hydro driver" is supposed to do.
Is there any chance that it could be written in language that simple folk like me can understand please or is it deliberate obfuscation?

[no_akira]

A millennial newstarter

Its disparaging media speak for "youth of today", rockers & mods in the sixties that type of thing. If you ever travel on the London underground in the morning commute the carriages are full of them all obsessively staring into their phones. Basically "flakey" types.

The reason I post on GYO VC is to try and practise ways of explaining, what is a complicated idea to a wide age range of possibly not that technical audience.

[Greenleaves]

Any one born in the generation X era VC....I can't see what it has to do with it but as a Churchillian it's hardly surprising

[Greenleaves]

One question...is they tested science behind the idea or just your thought process.

if you drive the moisture out of clay don't you end up with something resembling brick? I thought the idea with clay was add matter to ease the compaction....why not just grow in a raised bed?

[veggiechicken]

Its disparaging media speak for "youth of today", rockers & mods in the sixties that type of thing. If you ever travel on the London underground in the morning commute the carriages are full of them all obsessively staring into their phones. Basically "flakey" types.

The reason I post on GYO VC is to try and practise ways of explaining what is a complicated idea & design to a wide age range of possible not that technical audience.

I'm certainly not technical so you have to try a lot harder to make your ideas simple to understand. Equally, I am not dismissive of other people, whatever their age. GYO appeals across the generations. I have no idea what age group you fall into, no-akira, and I'm not interested as its just not relevant.
As for "flakey" - that's pastry, not a commuter.

[Bluenowhere]

Sorry but as a fairly young and technically minded person it’s a complicated idea to try to solve the issues on clay which have far more to them than just waterlogging and to which there is a very simple solution, good old fashioned motivation and a little effort.

If a flaky person who wants instant gratification (potentially more common in the phone obsessed generation) wants to grow anything a ‘gadget’ of any form isn’t going to make it easier as nature doesn’t work like that.

Perhaps if a person of any age was given a little encouragement to put in normal amounts of effort rather than describing a task as backbreaking they wouldn’t get demoralised as quickly or be prone to seeing something that requires working at it as ‘too much effort’.

Now this device may have merit (I’m afraid VC my science Phd doesn’t help me grasp what it is either) but to say that it will encourage a millennial or anyone else for that matter to take on a clay allotment where otherwise they wouldn’t seems a stretch.

[Bluenowhere]

Equally, I am not dismissive of other people, whatever their age. GYO appeals across the generations.

Completely agree, the reason i like the vine is that we have a range of ages/experience levels and generally people don’t patronise each other unlike on other forums where some participants seem to think they are more intelligent than others and seek to prove it.

Sorry for the tangent.....

[Bluenowhere]

One question...is they tested science behind the idea or just your thought process.

if you drive the moisture out of clay don't you end up with something resembling brick?

Indeed you do, exactly what my brother and I achieved all those years ago by squeezing the water out of the dug up clay

[no_akira]

Charles Dowding, the "No-dig" guru has gardened on clay soil

I did have an email conversation a couple of years back with Charles Dowding, he was a positive person. He had enough on his plate with his own growing system without trying to understand mine... Also at that point I didn't fully understand my design.

He is in a similar situation as me in that he is trying to communicate a "non traditional" but complex idea to possibly a conservative and older generation. No easy task...

Where our ideas differ is he is trying to re-define our whole growing approach... he is trying for a one-system-fits all, as such.

My idea and approach is much narrower, simply "if you have heavy soggy clayish soil for most of the spring period and which limits your choice of plants to grow use this tool 'Pallet wood Hydro-driver' to drive off and moderate excessive moisture to improve your success rate. That's it.

His system reminds me a bit of the Irish growing Potatoes in Seaweed system, due to the thin soils, windswept and high bedrock on the West of Ireland.

My idea is a bit like a special tool (like a Wood Plane) that sits in the garage all year but when its needed is useful.