Ohhhh, the weather outside is… well, actually it hasn’t been too bad of late here in North Manchester. We’ve had our share of rain, but with enough dry-ish patches in between to mean that the ground at our plot has been sticky, but workable. Although one of my near plot-neighbours, three along and down in a dip, had half his plot flooded to a depth of six inches the other day, so our position slightly up the hill clearly comes with drainage benefits, even if the wind does cut across it like a knife.
Anyhow, the ground was certainly workable enough for me to get down there a few times last week and dig over this year’s three-sisters patch. I started with a 60cm (or so) wide trench, taking the top-soil off to a depth of about a 30cm and extracting the few perennial weed roots that escaped last year’s thorough clearance. Then I heaped in a few inches of well-rotted manure, moved to the left, dug another trench – transferring the top-soil onto the manured section – and repeated until I’d finished and raked over the whole 3m x 3m (ish) section.
(I think that weird pinkish tinge is something to do with my old phone’s camera lens, not the soil…)
The result is a well-manured bed that will be used for three-sisters growing (companion planted corn, squash and beans – more on that another time) again next year. And it should be a year or two before it needs digging over again, with any luck.