Soil too wet to dig?

[dilettante]

Morning all. I've come down to the plot to get on with the double digging I started yesterday, but I'm not sure if the soil is too wet. I just finishes fprking my firat trench and it's breaking into fist size-ish clods, and some crumblier bits, but every few feet I have to scrape the soil off. It's a heavy clay loam, apparently. It's not been bad to dig the first spit, but I'm not sure if I'm doing more harm than good forking the second. Any thoughts? It looks reasonably dry I thought on the surface of the clods. Sorry for linking to my pics, can't seem to upload them on mobile
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Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

[alldigging]

Clay. I'd put as much muck on it as you can.
Avoid walking on it.

[noviceveggrower]

I think the general rule is, I think someone on the vine told me, if it sticks to the spade then its to wet to dig over. Mine is at the moment.

[Martin H]

Clay is tricky, you need to catch it when it's not wet enough to stick to the spade and not dry enough to turn into concrete.

Once you've got the ground "clean", mulch as much as you can and you'll end up with lovely rich fertile soil like Monty Don's at Longmeadow.

My own clay soil has a long way to go to get that good, but I'm making progress.

[dilettante]

The first spit's depth is actually quite nice and didn't stick to the spade. Although a little compacted, perhaps, it does crumble quite nicley with a bit of work. I think actually part of the problem was I was hitting subsoil in the second spit. It was a much sandier colour than the top layer, much wetter and clung to the fork a little, although it did break up a bit. I' did fork over a couple of trenches, just to see how it went, but realised I didn't have anywhere near the amount of compost I thought, so I'll got back with a couple bags to finish off the job.

I'm trying to experiment with different methods of cultivation to see for myself the results. I'm only double digging a small section of one bed, then single digging a section, then no dig on the last one. Or maybe, a section of single dig which is then on treated as a no dig.