New half plot - need some advice (as always)

[funstuie]

I have resized the pictures which should make them smaller and quicker. Let me know and I will remove them if necessary.

[gilwrig]

Poor you - I kinda feel your pain. I spent all of last year trying to uncover carpet from under 8 inches of soil. Knackering and soul destrying as I couldn't dig very far and it was too heavy to pull.

Keep going at bit at a time- if he was growing asapargus I would have thought that the ground must be pretty good in parts as it needs a good root run.

Good luck

[funstuie]

Haven't gotten a great deal done lately. The weather has conspired against me but I spent all weekend down on the plot.

The tarp I put down was about 2 foot off the ground as it had acted like a big greenhouse and the grass and weed underneath blossomed!!

Also there is mares tail everywhere, I didn't really notice it before but on every single square inch of my little plot. The other plot holder has created raised beds with weed control membrane on the bottom and he is slowly filling in the beds with manure, compost and sieved soil. The mares tail is still coming through the membrane.

It's going to take me a long while to get this plot anyway useable.

[Alison]

I think I have been given a bit of a duff plot. I spent all day on Saturday down there and the plot is a mess. The soil is full of rubble and rubbish, it took me 4 hours to dig and clear out a 4x4 foot section. The bed which had asparagus in it also took hours to clear (I only got halfway through before giving up).

Half a day for a 4' square is about right to me. I was over optimistic last spring when I started digging mine over and was amazed it took a full day of digging to clear a 10' by 4' bed (properly double dug though) but it was really worth the effort. Those beds have stayed much clearer than the ones I took short cuts on so the initial hard work has helped me loads this season.