This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
More coal than soil
Matthew Willars
Posts: 2
Hello, iv just moved into a house with a garden, whoooo! when i was digging out some beds i found a path and under the path seems to be more coal than soil. iv not dug a massive pit but was bringing up coal a full spade down and in all tests across about 4m x 1m area.
what should i do?
would green manures work/ be enough?
is it there too much coal?
is it best not to go too deep and disturb too much of it?
so many questions so thanks in advance,
Matt
P.S. i want to run my garden in a permaculture way so wont use anything not organic.
0
Posts
I don't think you have any other option than to dig it out completely. Coal won't support life of almost any kind other than scrubby stuff.
I have found the odd bit of coal but not a seam of it. My first thought is to build raised beds as this will avoid the coal.
thanks for the quick responses. if i were to make raised beds im guessing id still have to dig out some of the coal but maybe not so deep?
If it's actual coal then you need to remove as much as you can or make raised beds.
I have a friend whose entire garden is coal slag heap and have visited another with similar conditions in the Belgian Yellow Book. Both use masses of garden compost and well rotted manure applied every autumn to improve the soil structure and combat the otherwise fierce drainage and low fertility. Both have gorgeous gardens filled with interesting plants so it can be done.