After last week's storms the weather has settled down again bringing us some sunshine through the day but some very chilly nights, or more appropriately chilly mornings. Tuesday morning has been the coldest with the temperature falling to 3.1°C or 37.6°F.
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| Temperature Records 23-25 September 2018 |
We had a visit to the plot on Monday afternoon and were pleased to find no storm damage worth noting. However, I was most interested in seeing if all that rainfall had made the ground "diggable" once more.
I last tried to dig over this summer's onion bed on 27th August. After trying to turn over a couple of spadefuls I gave it up as a bad job and decided I'd wait for some rain to soften the ground.
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| 27th August 2018 |
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| 27th August 2018 |
Our clayey soil more resembled concrete than soil. It was in such a state I was beginning to doubt my cultivation methods developed over 20 years of allotmenting. After a month's worth of rain in 12 hours would the soil still be dry or would it have become waterlogged. On first inspection the ground looked much better than it had for the last few months. I wanted to plant this bed up with some green manure to grow over winter before being dug in next spring. I decided to see if my hoe would break up the top few inches of soil to allow me to sow some green manure seeds.
Amazingly, that concrete had become easily workable soil. Once more it was easy to hoe through the top few inches, sow some green manure a variety called Autumn Mix", and rake the seeds into the surface of the soil.
There's a video below covering the sowing of the green manure and I also managed to dig over the bed where our climbing French beans had been cleared away.
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