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Spring soil.
cowslip2
Posts: 137
in Fruit & veg
Have other gardeners noticed the state of the soil which was dug in the autumn? This practice is usually guaranteed to give us a most marvellous fine tilth come the spring. Not this year sadly, we have missed the frosts haven't we? It is going to be difficult to have fine soil for seed sowing.
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We're lucky - when we moved here we found we had very free draining sandy loam and over the past couple of years we've dug lots and lots of home made compost and well rotted farmyard manure into it - I dug this patch over and raked it a fortnight ago, and sowed some beetroot today.
However, when the summer comes we'll be watering the veg before people in other parts of the country.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Yes Cowslip - for those of us that have heavy clay (mine red clay) it is going to be a battle. Oh to have lovely soil to work on like Dove's.
My clay soil has developed a surface to it that looks like the sand when the tide is out so I just broke that up a bit with the hoe hoping it would dry out better. I think all the rain beat it smooth as if it had been trodden on. I will be starting all my annuals in plugs this year not straight in the ground. Next job is to aerate my lawn with a fork when it's a bit drier.
I managed to rotovate our veg garden at the weekend and planted the spuds I've been chitting for a few weeks. I was amazed how decent the soil was despite A: Clay,and B: endless rain. I now know why the previous owner put the veg garden where it is.
Our veg area is a raised bed out in by the previous owners, don't think the soil is up to much really but trying to improve it with crimson clover green manure before I plant out veg this year. I know raised beds are meant to be better because they dry out earlier in the season and you don't walk on them but it means in periods of no rain you have to water a lot more. Think I will have to lay a plank across the middle this year to walk on because the bed is huge, the previous woman was a lot taller than me!