(Picture: Rachel Billings and Monique Raaymakers carting away the weeds)
Dev Farm and Adam Pain’s plot experiments. I remember that each group had a designated plot to clear of all plants and weeds and it took hours to dig up all the couch grass. Adam Pain emphasised how important it was to eradicate the couch grass and especially not to break and leave any rhizomes as they would take root – and wickedly demonstrating this!
All the weeds and grass were carted away in sacks and once the plot was cleared, we conducted infiltration experiments (with Vivienne rescuing drowning insects in the process).
Later, we took soil samples and used the well-appointed Soil Labs to sieve the soils for particle soil analysis, and the ovens to calculate organic matter percentage.
