Yet more chicken poo
This stuff is rich in nitrogen, from all the chicken piss (which is full of urea, and that molecule is full of nitrogen). Lots of molecules with nitrogen in them stick of piss, like ammonia. As I've already said, chicken poop is also full of the indescribable trace nutrients that makes for a rich tapestry of life. Compacted into pellets, it swells and turns to mush very quickly once wet, making homogenisation easy. I have already checked the soil with a nutrient stick, baton, wand, stick, meter, probe... whatever, and it's reading out at a puny 200ppm, which is about four or five times below the burn threshold of plants. To put it another way, 200ppm is the lowest reading on the meter; unsurprisingly, with this clay having been covered by glaciers for most of it's existence, it's pure mineral deposit. The pH has also bombed out to almost 8. With such a high pH, nutrients bind up into insoluble forms that the plant's roots can't access. I need to force it back down towards 6-5, at which point the nutrients will ionise and go into aqueous solution; in other words, dissolve in water. The present state is called nutrient lock up and, even though it seems like nothing to the amateur, it seriously hampers growth and health. This is happening because I limed the garden before checking it's pH and also because a large amount of hardcore from a local iron works was used in the ground when the house was built a century ago. Lime is used in making iron to cause impurities to form up as slag on the surface, so the clinker (or cooled and hardened slag) is reasonably basic; alkaline. There are a number of options for pushing the pH back to acidic, one is sulphur. Sulphates will also work. As will sulphuric acid, but you need to be incredibly careful with the measuring and dispensing so's not to blast it right out the other side of neutral deep into acidic. pH changes on this scale will always take a long time, and using sulphuric directly... you better water it down and be patient. You can easily water down battery acid (~37%) about a hundred times and still use it for pH down solution. Get it on your clothes neat, and don't wash it off, and it'll nibble holes through the cotton overnight, so you wake up wondering what the hell you got up to the night before. Sulphuric acid is fine in soil, you can drink the stuff; I have. It's what all the sulphur and sulphates will eventually turn into anyway once the bacteria get to work on them. Acids are a common method of dropping the pH in hydroponics since they're already in solution and don't take any time to dissolve; they do take a time to thoroughly mix and neutralise, a long time and lots of stirring! Don't tell anyone who likes plants I told you this. And don't even attempt to use acid directly unless you have some experience with large scale pH changes and hydroponics, you'll roast your garden - promised.
An interesting property of pH is that it drastically affects the types of plants you can grow in the soil. As it becomes more acidic, the fruits of the plants are generally more blue. Blueberry farms use a low pH, you need the same for blue azaleas and rhododendrons . But pink azaleas need a higher pH. Something to do with the ionization state of the dyes in the petals. If you've ever done any chemistry, you'll know that transition metals change colour depending on their oxidation state. So much so that they're used as the pigments in all the paints you buy. The raw pigments are unbelievably vibrant. Plants suck up metal ions to colour their petals for bees.
There are three acids that spring to mind. Hydrochloric, sulphuric and nitric. Well, chloric will add chlorine, which'll wipe out your plants for good; chlorine is the anthrax, cyanide and nuclear bomb of the plant world. And nitric is key to making explosives, so it's very hard to get. Sulphuric is ideal. There are alternatives, like citric, but that won't drop the pH as quickly, so you'll need to squeeze loads of Jiff lemon packs over the soil. Then there's acetic acid (vinegar); the pure form of which is a watched chemical due to it's use in drug labs. The latter two will both cost more than sulphuric, unless you're using the pure forms perhaps, and sulphuric is not harmful when it's diluted. Ignore all the wankery you read elsewhere about it being ?caustic? (since when was an acid caustic? :^/) and thick gooy acid that'll eat through bank vaults. You'll never find sulphuric at that concentration, and it's called vitriol (glass like). One of the first chemicals in the history of chemistry, purified by monks, ironically enough.
This stuff is rich in nitrogen, from all the chicken piss (which is full of urea, and that molecule is full of nitrogen). Lots of molecules with nitrogen in them stick of piss, like ammonia. As I've already said, chicken poop is also full of the indescribable trace nutrients that makes for a rich tapestry of life. Compacted into pellets, it swells and turns to mush very quickly once wet, making homogenisation easy. I have already checked the soil with a nutrient stick, baton, wand, stick, meter, probe... whatever, and it's reading out at a puny 200ppm, which is about four or five times below the burn threshold of plants. To put it another way, 200ppm is the lowest reading on the meter; unsurprisingly, with this clay having been covered by glaciers for most of it's existence, it's pure mineral deposit. The pH has also bombed out to almost 8. With such a high pH, nutrients bind up into insoluble forms that the plant's roots can't access. I need to force it back down towards 6-5, at which point the nutrients will ionise and go into aqueous solution; in other words, dissolve in water. The present state is called nutrient lock up and, even though it seems like nothing to the amateur, it seriously hampers growth and health. This is happening because I limed the garden before checking it's pH and also because a large amount of hardcore from a local iron works was used in the ground when the house was built a century ago. Lime is used in making iron to cause impurities to form up as slag on the surface, so the clinker (or cooled and hardened slag) is reasonably basic; alkaline. There are a number of options for pushing the pH back to acidic, one is sulphur. Sulphates will also work. As will sulphuric acid, but you need to be incredibly careful with the measuring and dispensing so's not to blast it right out the other side of neutral deep into acidic. pH changes on this scale will always take a long time, and using sulphuric directly... you better water it down and be patient. You can easily water down battery acid (~37%) about a hundred times and still use it for pH down solution. Get it on your clothes neat, and don't wash it off, and it'll nibble holes through the cotton overnight, so you wake up wondering what the hell you got up to the night before. Sulphuric acid is fine in soil, you can drink the stuff; I have. It's what all the sulphur and sulphates will eventually turn into anyway once the bacteria get to work on them. Acids are a common method of dropping the pH in hydroponics since they're already in solution and don't take any time to dissolve; they do take a time to thoroughly mix and neutralise, a long time and lots of stirring! Don't tell anyone who likes plants I told you this. And don't even attempt to use acid directly unless you have some experience with large scale pH changes and hydroponics, you'll roast your garden - promised.
An interesting property of pH is that it drastically affects the types of plants you can grow in the soil. As it becomes more acidic, the fruits of the plants are generally more blue. Blueberry farms use a low pH, you need the same for blue azaleas and rhododendrons . But pink azaleas need a higher pH. Something to do with the ionization state of the dyes in the petals. If you've ever done any chemistry, you'll know that transition metals change colour depending on their oxidation state. So much so that they're used as the pigments in all the paints you buy. The raw pigments are unbelievably vibrant. Plants suck up metal ions to colour their petals for bees.
There are three acids that spring to mind. Hydrochloric, sulphuric and nitric. Well, chloric will add chlorine, which'll wipe out your plants for good; chlorine is the anthrax, cyanide and nuclear bomb of the plant world. And nitric is key to making explosives, so it's very hard to get. Sulphuric is ideal. There are alternatives, like citric, but that won't drop the pH as quickly, so you'll need to squeeze loads of Jiff lemon packs over the soil. Then there's acetic acid (vinegar); the pure form of which is a watched chemical due to it's use in drug labs. The latter two will both cost more than sulphuric, unless you're using the pure forms perhaps, and sulphuric is not harmful when it's diluted. Ignore all the wankery you read elsewhere about it being ?caustic? (since when was an acid caustic? :^/) and thick gooy acid that'll eat through bank vaults. You'll never find sulphuric at that concentration, and it's called vitriol (glass like). One of the first chemicals in the history of chemistry, purified by monks, ironically enough.
Neither does sulphuric acid cause a temporary change. The changes these gardeners are seeing is called pH bounce. It's because the acid neutralises the base, then it the pH bounces back up again as the insufficient acid quantity expires. It'll drop when all of the base is gone. What you initially read on your pH probe is unreacted acid, causing you to think you've added enough. As it reacts, the pH rises again. It's not that the acid is being 'washed out', they just haven't added enough. This is very basic hydroponics, and gardeners that don't 'get it' don't understand what's going on with the soil chemistry.
That's what I'm talking about, gradient baby!
That's what I'm talking about, gradient baby!
Drain, capped. Unfortunately, this renders my amazing land drain useless. There goes two days of digging through clay, BY HAND! One mistake from a million isn't so bad. This needed doing as some of the drain was buried in the 'crete foundation we needed to dig up, and the section between this cap and the land drain took a hit. Clay pipes don't stand up so well. I could have reconnected it but it was more important to get the gradient set in the garden.
I've sprayed some markings on the soil with SurveyLine to help guide me when I'm on the digger. It's easier to see the high spots when I jump off and put my eye to the ground. The lines show me where I need to scrape some material off. Believe it or not, that's bright yellow paint. Bad camera, bad!
Ha ha, maybe a bit ambitious, 1mm in 1m.
I needed the fittings to cap the broken clay pipe, and I knew the land drain I'd put in just happened to have 'em. So up it came. I wasn't messing around with this one and simply ripped the entire pipe up without bothering to dig it out.
'It' sleeps, momentarily. I'm using the trenching bucket here to rip that land drain up. It was about a foot or two underground, but came up easy enough with 25hp of hp pulling on it
The digger went down today at around 2pm. I was pushing some dirty mess around when I noticed one or two drops of fluid on the soil. Almost immediately the digger 'shit itself' (as the Dig&Shift guys termed it), emptying it's entire load of hydaulic fluid onto the soil.
ALL of the hydraulics went down and I called for help straight away. When Bruce arrived from Dig&Shift, we spent a good while looking it over trying to find where all this all had come from. We knew it must have popped a pipe, but couldn't find anything obvious.
With the bonnet open, I'd poked at a coupling I'd thought was out of place. We kept looking, when ten minutes later Bruce found the hose that went onto that coupling. A hose clip on the return from the rams had decided to come loose, ditching the fluid.
We set about taking it apart and had it up and going again in a few hours from failure. Bruce gave me an extra day with the digger for the sake of it going down. Super thanks! I jet washed it as a matter of thanks.
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