...improve my land

[Povester]

Our land is clay, boggy, full of reeds and generally a bit rubbish.

We spent the weekend with the petrol strimmer and cleared a big space so that now in this glorious weather the boys have somewhere to run around but I'm sure it could be better.

I'm looking for a book on how to improve land. We would like to spend some time on it, we have been given lots of conflicting advice, roller it, don't roller it etc etc.

Can anyone recommend a good book?

Thanks

[boboff]

Drainage, sort that out if you can with at worst an open ditch,top and bottom, at best run drains at 90 degrees under the soil into the bottom one, John Seymours Book, the complete book of Self Sufficiency has a couple of pages on this.

If this isn't an option then whack in a load of willow to soak up some of the damp, use it wisely to provide cover and not block the sun.

Then you have to really consider what you are going to use the ground for, and what aspect it has, what you enjoy to eat, and do. If you want a nice lawn then I have no clue.

If you want to plant it with nice things, I would recommend NOT digging it, just cover bits at a time with old carpet or matting, leave for 6 months in the growing season and then plant densly with eaither annual ground cover with your other plants given a bit longer to establish, or use cardboard in between to keep down the weeds.

If you want to grow veggies, then consider raised beds.

This is only my way of doing things, having tried a few others. You could use Pigs to clear it up and dig it over, you could import a load of soil improvers, it just depends on what you want really, but what ever you do, trust me on the drainage... and sunscreen.

You could even dig a pond, make use of the water, great for wildlife, and as you would need a digger anyway for the trenches??

[diggernotdreamer]

We have the same here, loads of rushes, they were huge. Not sure how your land is, loads of rocks, stones etc. We set to and made raised beds and 3 years on the beds are doing great. We bought a lawn tractor and have just kept the rushes down by mowing, the rushes don't like the competition and now they are very sparse, clover and other grasses are now pushing the rushes apart and we have a good meadow which we cut for hay and turn by had. Boboff is right, you will probably need to dig drains, that is our next job when we have finished restoring our house, we have ditches either side of our field so we will drain into them. We have a lovely lawn now, it was rough meadow, we are on heavy clay here as well, so there is hope