Digging and Weeding

I am a broken woman. No I'm not, obviously, but I can really feel the allotment in my muscles from what I did on the plot today. Lower back, obviously, glutes, wrists (for gods sake) and biceps. I should be looking like a toned honey by now at the rate I'm going. I do not, but I think that has much to do with the compensatory beer and carbs that I've been justifying to myself in return for all the hard work. Digging builds muscles, but that by itself won't burn off the extra calories I've been inhaling over the past week.

Dug over heavy clay soil

So I started on the fifth bed today, after realising this morning that I was growing far more plants than I was going to have room for. I think a five bed crop rotation system is the right thing, but then, of course, stuff like courgettes, spinach and herbs aren't accounted for. Instead of a raised bed, for speed, I thought I would go for two small terraced beds this time. I'm not sure, now I sit and think about it, that this was the best choice I could have made because the clay soil is like plasticine and is just sitting in huge clods where I've dug it up, and even though cutting it with the side of the spade has helped a little, there's no way that plants are going to thrive in that. I sought advice from google, as you do, for remedies for heavy clay soil,  and it seems like the best thing is soil improver made with gypsum which I can only find in huge bags (25kg) - transport is a big problem, as well as cost - or topping each bed with manure or compost to a depth of 6-8 inches (!?) before digging it in. So, I've bought a product called clay-breaker, which is  pretty costly, honestly, (but does appear to contain gypsum), and I also got some more compost. I had some chicken manure on the way anyway, so hopefully that combination will do the job. Apparently the clay breaker is supposed to go on in autumn, but will work this time of year. One can only hope. I know logically I should be patient and just work through the soil with compost and time, because that's much cheaper. But I actually would like to grow stuff on my allotment.

Back tomorrow for more digging (yay!), and some sawing for my next raised beds. I've still got a massive bag of soil left to fill them up with. Shovelling doesn't seem much easier than digging, at least to me, but at least they should be ready to use almost straight away. Also, now I know what I'm doing, they should take a lot less time to build, right? Right??