Sunday, 19th November, 2006

The whole family spent a good 2 hours at the Plot this afternoon. Weather was good, ground was not! It is just soooooo water logged it drives you up the wall (yes, I know it's winter, but just read on). P did an amazing dig over with the fork while I tried hard to get rid of some of the roots he'd dug up. At the moment it feels like a never-ending task, but I'm hoping it'll get better as the ground dries out. We decided to get rid of the carpet and cardboard (which was just so soggy) as it was flattening out the ground and not really helping with the airing side of things. Again, we compared our lumpy clay soil to the beautifully dug over, unlumpy soil of the plot next to us and felt like weeping!

As we were leaving, the couple who look after the adjoining plot turned up, so I begged him their secret of lovely soil. It appears he's been on his plot for 20 years and that ours does have poor soil due to people staying very short times on it and not really getting all the old roots and junk out of the ground.

Now the bad bit - he suggested we continue to dig and weed and turn over the ground until winter has really set in and then leave it for the frost and winter hardness to kill off anything in the soil. Continue to clear and dig for most of next year and then put on lots and lots of manure and compost (he'd used mushroom compost from a local mushroom factory), ready for planting 2008!

Now the good bit - if we do this, he guarantees our plot will be as lovely as his and the soil will allow an vegetables to be easily grown.

So, we plough on ....