Well I spent a couple of hours over the weekend “testing” the soil (read as: digging it over, but finding it really hard going!) and managed to dig over a section about 2 metres square, fully weeded and conditioned and ready for sowing my garlic (and whatever else I find that I can sow now)

It’s given me quite a sense of achievement having just that small section cleared, but it really was hard work. I had to clear the long grass (with shears) rake out as much of the moss as possible (can this be dug in?) and then dig it over and clear as much of the roots that were left as I could find. I adopted “a rake top layer into a pile and then sift it with my hands” approach! Ah well it worked for that 2 SQ metre patch… I’m hiring a rotovator for the rest, it was too back breaking. The rotovator won’t help me clear all the roots etc out – but that is less back breaking and a little more therapeutic…

I’ve laid a few SQ metres of weed fabric out to kill some of the weeds etc (starving of light etc) so I’ll see if that helps too…

On a plus side – after all this hard graft we found 5 slow worms in just that small patch – so there is a lot of wildlife about. I don’t really know if slow worms will do me good in an allotment (like frogs and hedgehogs) but all wildlife has got to be good to a point ;)

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