Turning (& more destoning)

Yesterday and today were spent starting to turn all of the soil, while destoning and removing roots and weeds in the process. Fortunately there aren't that many weeds at present - the cover probably did its job; however there are lots of roots left over from the shrubs. Some are just bits of root that are free in the soil - but deeper down, and near the edges the original roots are still buried and clinging on. I'm keen to clear as far down as I can get them so that they aren't stealing water or nutrients from my soon to be veggies. So the turning was serving a few purposes.

In part it is an opportunity to break up and dry some of the soil - which also helps to break it up, so that I can end up with a nice "tilth" - basically a fine broken up soil that new seedlings will like.

For the lower bed I used a "single digging method" - aparently the depth of a spade is one depth, so single is to that depth, and "double digging" is to twice that depth. Nothing to do with how many times you do it. The books recommend digging a first trench and putting the soil in a wheelbarrow - which I don't have, so I put in on the other bed. I then dug from the wall of that trench and put it in the trench.


By working my way around I effectively turned the whole bed - and finished up putting the original soil back in. Hard work - lots of sweating - but its now not a thick dense mud, more of a broken up soil.


Today I started on the main bed, by first shovelling (why isn't there a word "spading"?) onto the lower bed, and then to elsewhere on the main bed.


For this I'm going to "double dig" as I will be planting things with long roots in these beds, and it also lets me get further down to dig out the remaining shrub roots.


I finished the day with about a 5th of the main bed done - I'm off to Somerset soon so want to get it all finished by end of tomorrow. We'll see. Yet more destoning along the way today - I'm now up to 4 buckets, and there are still plenty in the soil - but I know I've already got the worst out - and I'm sure some will help with drainage, or something.

This evening I plan on planting my first seeds to start growing in trays indoors. So off to the garden centre...