Glorious Day for Digging

A glorious day finds me catching up on the rough digging on plot 5

A glorious day, the sun shining from a blue sky! So to the plot to try to catch up.

Plot 29 is fine so decided to concentrate on rough digging on plot 5. The patch I was digging was quite revealing. Last year I dug trenches and filled them with leaves putting the soil from the succeeding trench onto the leaves.

Now its like a coal seam in the soil. The leaves have broken down but not as well as the leaves in the cage. Still, if you don’t try things you don’t know.

Having missed the bulk of the leaf deliveries my cage on plot 5 is only half full. Not much I can do about it. One thing gardening teaches is that when you miss the deadline you’ve missed it.

Dug over about 90 square feet – that’s enough for one go, the soil being wet and heavy and I’m not quite as fit as I once was.

Harvested a few carrots for tea and back as the sun was setting behind the trees. Predicting a cold night tonight (-4°).

Leaves in the Soil

Rather than rotting leaves down to leafmould in a cage, I tried putting a thick layer in the bottom of the trench when digging over last year. These leaves have compressed into a seam around 1″ to 3″ high and haven’t rotted down as well as the leaves in the cage

Leaves in Soil – Compressed to thin layer