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Garden - dig a hole

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quelquod
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Re: Garden - dig a hole

#520178

Postby quelquod » August 5th, 2022, 6:22 pm

Kantwebefriends wrote:The way to dig heavy clay soil is to hire someone else.

I have heavy clay. Wet or dry a small rotavator makes pretty short work of it. Still a bit tiring on the arms mind you.

sg31
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Re: Garden - dig a hole

#520275

Postby sg31 » August 6th, 2022, 9:54 am

quelquod wrote:
Kantwebefriends wrote:The way to dig heavy clay soil is to hire someone else.

I have heavy clay. Wet or dry a small rotavator makes pretty short work of it. Still a bit tiring on the arms mind you.


There's heavy clay and then there's HEAVY clay. I used a big rotovator from one of the hire companies on mine. Over a weekend I flogged it to death and exhausted myself, I was physically fit and used to manual work, without a doubt the clay won. Because of the lie of the land there were dry bits that were like concrete and there were dampish bits that just turned to claggy mud.

Using a rotovator is always worth a try, relatively cheap and it could solve a problem in a small area if it's the right sort of clay. My issue was HHEAVY clay and about an acre to sort out. I resorted to drastic measures and I'm very glad I did. As with everything in gardening and landscaping, start with the easy solution first and progress through the options. I've been a builder for a long time and I live in a farming area so the decision to go agricultural was easy.

There is no way I could have installed sufficient land drains to deal with the wet areas and moved the many tons of sandy soil I used to lighted the clay.

Hallucigenia
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Re: Garden - dig a hole

#520301

Postby Hallucigenia » August 6th, 2022, 12:10 pm

quelquod wrote:
Kantwebefriends wrote:The way to dig heavy clay soil is to hire someone else.

I have heavy clay. Wet or dry a small rotavator makes pretty short work of it. Still a bit tiring on the arms mind you.


+1 to "depends on the clay" - and also what scale you're doing it on. We've got a former brickworks one way and a former tileworks the other way - it's safe to say we've got clay. And I know from experience that in current conditions a rotavator would just bounce off uncultivated areas here without a LOT of water going on it.

Depending on the size, self-hire of a Bobcat could be an option - mebbe £100 for a day? Takes a bit of getting the hang of but a relative got quite addicted to Bobcating his garden of a few acres with awkward geometry.

brightncheerful
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Re: Garden - dig a hole

#520751

Postby brightncheerful » August 8th, 2022, 3:05 pm

There is no way I could have installed sufficient land drains to deal with the wet areas and moved the many tons of sandy soil I used to lighted the clay.


When the 6th Earl of Coventry got Lancelot Brown to redo the Earl's parkland at Croome - https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/croome

it took 'Capability' some 10 years for his (Mr Brown) workmen to dig out by hand to create the 1¾ mile long river topped with a lake. To help maintain water level for the river Brown constructed several coverts to feed rainwater from adjoining land.

Mind you that's how Capability Brown made his fortune, the plans were akin to loss-leader: the big money was un the excavation and planting.

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Re: Garden - dig a hole

#521255

Postby stewamax » August 10th, 2022, 9:06 am

brightncheerful wrote:...it took 'Capability' some 10 years for his (Mr Brown) workmen to dig out by hand to create the 1¾ mile long river topped with a lake. To help maintain water level for the river Brown constructed several coverts to feed rainwater from adjoining land. Mind you that's how Capability Brown made his fortune, the plans were akin to loss-leader: the big money was un the excavation and planting.

coverts => culverts?
Brown did, of course, also plant woodland; the Coventry family were foxhunting chaps so some woods may also have been fox or game coverts.
Not quite so well known is that Brown also designed the Croome Court house itself.


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