Shovelling horse poo really stinks. I'm talking the non-rotted stuff which is freshly bagged at point of dump, and then you are the first lucky person to split that bag open, which is exactly what happened in the back of my car....
Anyway, back to the plot... I'm making real progress, as I've now cleared the rubbish and started to prepare sections for soil conditioning. As you can see below, the bottom 2/5ths of the plot are now either ready for soil, or turned over. The section below has now been dug and broken up and is ready for some manure to be spread over it, and then left until spring.
Apparently by then the worms will have dragged most of it under and broken it all up, the dirty little beggars.
While I turned the soil over, I was keeping a vigilant eye out for bindweed roots. That stuff is all over this site and so with every single spade full I turned over, I broke up the sods of earth and extracted all of the fleshy roots I could find. In the small section alone there was 2 full wheelbarrows full of that bindweed root.
As you can see below, the section my spade is leaning against is rock hard clay, so I've broken it down leaving a ridge. Between this ridge and all the way around the blue barrels(up to the raised beds) I'll fill with woodchip to supress weeds. I measured it with a wheelbarrow to ensure that it could fit through, and there was the perfect amount of room.
So off to the giant poo bags. These badboys are heavy. There were approximately 20 or so, so I dropped one bag on top of the broken soil with roughly a 1.5 metres between each one, covering the whole surface.
Once the whole area had been covered, I split the bags open one by one covering the whole area and then raked it evenly over the whole top. the great thing about using un-rotted compost is that it will break down by spring, but it will also keep any bindweed / dandelion root I missed in check in the meantime as it's quite poisonous at the moment.... once it rots down it'll add loads of vitality and nutrients. Win-win!
I then grabbed 2 barrow loads of woodchips and filled all around the blue barrels. No weeds here, and over the course of time this will rot down into the soil, improving the humus..... apparently. (Makes sense to me!)
You will notice that the blue bins and raised beds have stuff in them(weeds, gravel, once laden strawberry plants). I'll do the hard work sorting the soil first, before I tackle these. These will have special soil in them (compost / Molar clay etc) so can be done at any time - but I want to get the hard digging work done during the nice weather and get that much spread out as much as I can before the rain comes later this year. It's not going to be fun standing hip deep in horse shit and mud, when I could be standing on dry soil and not going home stinking....
I'm also using them as quick bins for large stones/weeds etc. I'll clear them periodically as I improve the site.... they'll then be ready for planting in spring.
I'm really chuffed. When you look at what this place was like just 8 weeks ago, I'm making genuine progress. I have until soring to get things sorted, but I'm getting the hard work done now.
Phew - it is labour intensive but I feel great after a solid couple of hours digging.
*Phew* - that stuff really stinks.... but I'm having so much fun doing this!
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