Clay court work

Believe it or no starting to run out of space so now breaking up some really bad clay-type bindweed-rich soil. Turns out pouring some water on about 24 hours before you try to dig it saves a fortune in spades: the ground becomes more like old concrete and less like diamond so the spade can (with persuasion) break the surface. This is how that patch started:

(had already dug some of this area for courgette / squash planting) any how about three or so hours digging later it looks like this - from Thursday:

As you can see there is soil under here - along with some 20 lbs or so of bindweed roots (moaned about these in an earlier post.) Today went up to finish off and had a chance to turn the whole lot with our allotment neighbour (plotmate?) Julie's new rotavator:

This would struggle with unbroken ground but where I have already dug the weed roots out from it does a smashing job of breaking up the soil:

Almost looks like something you can plant into now :o) and just to prove it was actually done by me:

Day was also much more sunny than the BBC suggested - the weather forecasts have been unreliable of late... As you can see next to the area I was tilling the courgettes are doing OK - got some fruit coming along (still early enough in the year to be excited about getting courgettes - in 8 weeks will be drowning in them!) and the leeks planted in the week are getting established. Had to drive the tiller carefully so as to avoid collateral damage. Now just need to improve the soil a bit, add some lime, plant the purple sprouting and build a frame to keep the pigeons / cabbage white butterfly / other misc. critters from eating it before we get a chance to.