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Plot #59

‘Tis the Season to be… Digging

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.

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