February half term - seemed like the best time to make a proper start on the allotment. Except for the first few days my body decided to give in to all the germs I spend all my time fighting. So the first half of the week was pretty much a write-off.
Wednesday though we headed straight out to the shops and bought an incinerator. I don't want to be spending a fortune on things, preferring to get as much as I can from what people are giving away etc. However getting a hold of an incinerator was proving difficult so we had to give in and buy one. (A whole £16 from Wilko's). Setting fire to the now quite large pile of grass and bramble roots wasn't a possibility. There's too much dead grass around, and the plot is too close to others, so it certainly wasn't worth the risk. We did realise however after about an hour, that it's actually going to take quite a long time to burn all this stuff down in this small incinerator. (You can just see the pile in the background behind the smoke)
So, while my husband worked on getting the incinerator going (boys seem to love playing with fire don't they?) I made myself useful and began the long task of turning the whole plot over.
As I said in my last post, we looked into a rotavator, but at around £80 a day, it wasn't really something we were able to stretch too.
So the hard work began!
It wasn't actually as bad as I thought it would be. It turns over quite nicely. The soil is nice, quite like clay, but not quite as thick. And not waterlogged in anyway, so I wasn't squelching around. The only downside was every few feet fighting with a bramble root. They are definitely my least favourite thing at the moment!
I think it's quite helpful to turn it over by hand though, to really see the sort of soil I'm working with. I did discover there are worms everywhere - including this monster! It was huge! So that's definitely a good thing...I mean, not for the worms I accidentally ended up killing, but there were so many it was pretty hard to avoid them. So I think it's safe to say the soil is well aerated.
We are still working along the lines of, while it's still the boring, hard work phase, we will just do a few hours at a time so we don't sicken ourself with the place.
So after about 2 hours work the other day it was looking like this. As you can see there is still a lot to do! We worked out that if we turn over the same size patch each time we go then it will take 6 visits to turn the whole thing over...so putting it that way doesn't sound so bad! And if we have a slightly longer visit at some point we'll be able to get even more done I guess.
Sadly I am back at work tomorrow, so will only be able to head along at weekends for the next few weeks. Although when the lighter evenings come along I will be able to get along even if it's just for an hour or so after work.
It will get there eventually! And it should mean by the Easter holidays (in 6 weeks) that I am able to start properly planning thing out on there, and creating beds/paths/a shed etc...not to forget the pond that I am very excited to create!
No comments:
Post a Comment