How Does Your Garden Grow?

[Barking Mat]

Best get a decent power washer ( 150 bar ) that can handle a 20 mtr drain cleaner hose on the end of it's normal length of high pressure hose .
I had to run my hose & extension hose c/w cleaning head down 30 mtrs of 25 mm ID blue alkathene water pipe I'd inserted in the drain bit by bit with the washer running as the 100 mm diameter was too big for the cleaner head to pull itself along much past 20 mtrs to reach the blockage which was five feet back along my pipe run down a six foot deep manhole full of crap & a sanitary towel blocked exit ( thanks neighbours ) .


I didn't know until fairly recently that :- If a manhole serves two or more properties on utility owned drains the local water board here in Wales usually pressure wash it back to the main sewer for free .

I've rodding points everywhere, max length 10 meters between rodding points, six years + now no real issues, except once or twice when my disabled son blocked the loo, with a ridiculous amount of loo roll.

Easily sorted.

Touch wood. Any visitors, especially female, get the riot act explained....

 

[Onoff]

I'm currently experimenting using 10 mm carbon fibre rods araldited up ( several freecycle wins ) to make the pyramids . In the top pole I've araldited in a turned to fit the top sleeve bolt , then cut a 4" equilateral triangle and drilled it just over clearance . so the bolts go thorough it , putting on nylock nuts to hold the top end triangular . The only prob has been there were so many beans on the tripod that a strong wind pushed them over to one side . ....,had to make up guy ropes & use 20 inch stakes to set it back up & be wind resistant .

Could very easily print you "wigwam" tops. A conical top piece with 10mm holes underneath to push the rods into.

 

[Onoff]

Hmm, photos, give me time....

View attachment 346686View attachment 346687View attachment 346688View attachment 346689


I've more photos, but these are easy to find.

View attachment 346690

That's the hole the main tank went in.

Thinking about it the rest of the photos are probably on a phone still at the bottom of the Nantes / Brest canal.

Are the trenches part of the leach field?

 

[Onoff]

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Looking back I recall the pump out guy suggesting that prolonged heavy rain we had back then might have flooded into the tank, through the old crumbly lid.

This in turn lifted the solid layer and blocked the clay inlet pipe, shown below:

I recall he put the sucker pipe up the clay pipe in the photo above and at the manhole by the house. That cleared everything bar the wedged toothbrush with wrapped wet wipes etc.

 

[DAPPH]

Could very easily print you "wigwam" tops. A conical top piece with 10mm holes underneath to push the rods into.

I'll sleep on that , I've just realised I also have six or more 30 mm O/D 3 mtr alu poles from when I had a pond with a fully netted roof over it .. Sodding mink chewed through the bottom of the knitted Kevelar net and snaffled all my 20 or so Gloden Orfe .
Some which were a good ten inches long , then they moved from the back garden to the front raised flower beds where they shat out the scales & unwanted bits ...... BTDS!

 

[DAPPH]

Looking back I recall the pump out guy suggesting that prolonged heavy rain we had back then might have flooded into the tank, through the old crumbly lid.

This in turn lifted the solid layer and blocked the clay inlet pipe, shown below:

View attachment 346691

I recall he put the sucker pipe up the clay pipe in the photo above and at the manhole by the house. That cleared everything bar the wedged toothbrush with wrapped wet wipes etc.

Looking at the different mortar colours and chopped brick edge colours by the pipe , the pipe was put in a lot later than when the bottle was built .

How old is the house ? was it built in a similar position to an earlier one?
We had an old long drop 50 yards awaay forn the house house built in about 1780 . In about 1955 dad helped his farmer friend construct a circular block built septic tank about 12 in diameter it had a flat poured concrete floor


Brick built bottle wells were in use at The Keepers Cottage for rainwater holding when we lived there in 1995 .

One big problem of using a bottle well for toilet & sink waste is that the hole put in the bottom allows the active water to drain out too quickly thus letting undigested waste built up into solid matter which will eventually totally fill the void .
Another thing is that soil movement often cracks or unseats the salt glazed inlet pipes allowing shrub & tree roots to invade the pipe even through the finest of cracks as they search for water in dry periods .

 

[Onoff]

How old is the house ? was it built in a similar position to an earlier one?

The original house is I think around 1930 with the previous owner commissioning the pit circa 1950. It was dug by hand, by a local father and son team who did them all around here. Bricked up into a self supporting dome on top. Looks like a mix of red and yellow (London stocks?) to me which would fit as I've found similar construction in the house walls.

 

[Mikey D]

Me thinks you guys need a separate thread for septic tanks/waste disposal
Unless of course you have a new source of " manure "
And is therefore actually on topic

 

[DAPPH]

In the early 1950's my dad & Mr Melton ( from next door in the adjacent semi detached tied farm cottage ), used to empty the long drop pits at the rear of the house wall on a Sunday morning every Easter , so it could be used to fill the bottom two feet of their bean trenches . Using a foot diameter zinc protected scoop on a nine foot long pitchfork shaped ash shaft & barrowing it to their respective trenches .

The beans & peas that came from the mound above the filled in trenches were amazing , with runner beans over two feet long and not a single stringy one amongst them . The peas were a brand called " Telegraph " a common garden variety at that time that have now been mainly replaced by low growing easily harvestable commercial farm varieties & were able to attain 9 feet tall by the end of the year if you had the height of run & picked them regularly . Used to be available from the likes of , " Victorian Seeds " & IIRC , " The RHS seedbank " ( expensive in the RHS )

Humanure went out of fashion in the 1960's ( ???) when it was discovered that if not buried deep enough some plants picked up nasty human pathogens and passed them back into the food chain ....... strawberries & E.coli immediately come to mind .
In China in the big cities , farms using straw & humanure properly composted & tested for pathogens are used to grow most of the salad crops , many of which are exported around the world

 

[Mikey D]

The water companies , tip the processed sludge on farmland to be spread , actually it might be from their anaerobic digesters (producing gas to run generators =electricity ) , I'm not sure but united utilities and Severn Trent do it at least there the ones I've seen (8 wheeler bulk tippers )
I'm sure the details would be on their websites if your bothered to look ..
Cheers mike

 

[DAPPH]

In East Anglia in early spring it's common to see farm tankers getting filled at rail sidings with such liquids processed waste and then pumped to a massive tractor pulling a 6 inch hose & a two foot deep mole plough to put it deep down down in the the deep Fenland soils which are usually to grow spuds or onions , sugar beet , wheat & in the last year of the 4 yr fertilizing cycle carrots

 

[Mikey D]

Many moons ago well 30 ish years I worked as a maintaince engineer in an abattoir/meat processing plant ,there was a company called transorganics , they collected the blood in an artic tanker daily and that was taken off to farms to be injected direct into the farmland as you described Dave ,
Blood fish and bone is a good fertiliser is it not

 

[DAPPH]

One of the best but if applied as a top dressing , do not ever get it in the crooks or forks of growth on the main stem or skin cuts & abrasions or with bare hands as it can grow some nasty illnesses when wet or under your finger nails .

Never use it on salad crops or fruiting strawberries ( that don't get boiled sterile clean ) and eaten fresh or cold water washed for the same reason .

 

[Mikey D]

I got a 20 kg bag , I'm just gonna fork some into the veg bed b4 sowing/planting out and I've got some 10 metres or so of hedging that I just planted to top dress b4 mulching with wood chip to suppress the weeds,

 

[Onoff]

Chap nearly died from getting a cut when trimming his reed bed sewage treatment system. The company who designed it voluntarily stopped trading / promoting it thereafter. Seems the pathogens get taken up.

 

[DAPPH]

I got a 20 kg bag , I'm just gonna fork some into the veg bed b4 sowing/planting out and I've got some 10 metres or so of hedging that I just planted to top dress b4 mulching with wood chip to suppress the weeds,

Don't use it in root crop areas or you'll get parsnips & carrots that look like a cows udder with their multiple roots that comes from growing them in too rich nitrogen soils .

 

[Mikey D]

I like miss-shaped root vegetables tho

 

[Onoff]

I like miss-shaped root vegetables tho

Where?

 

[Mikey D]

Not inserted anywhere that's for sure

 

[Onoff]

42/50. Reckon I need to be planting these soon'ish. Haven't even done my sleeper surround yet! For now I think I'll just "fence" off the bean area:

Plan is burn off the rest of the conifers tonight then I'll have an area of "dead" ground I can haul the sleepers over to and sort them into light/heavy, straight etc. That'll free up the lawn where they're currently sat.

Incinerator loaded, conifers chopped into bite sized bits! 1 can British Bulldog, one of Spirit of Kent, I'm partially loaded: