Gotta get me one of them: azadas

Our allotment neighbour John has a new toy:

which turns out to be really neat for lifting the turf on soil you want to dig - it's an azada or grub / trenching hoe. Essentially you whirl it around and dig it in sideways below the grass roots then lift the turf off, ideally while leaving your shins in tact. Wear your boots! I had a go with this for clearing some turf on an area which is due for digging:

which worked very well indeed, so the ground can then be dug with a regular spade for weeding etc. Could also have used the tool for digging the ground and think I will get one to aid with breaking soil elsewhere. End result after digging in some more manure:

quite satisfactory! We have a chunk more ground to clear so will be good to get one of these to aid with clearing the soil before digging. Amazing thing about the plot is the massive range of soil types across a very small area - in the picture above the spade is in quite nice light soil, but half way between there and the raised bed is heavy clay - go figure... Next job is to continue clearing this area for potato planting next year...