Well, it has taken me some time to dig trench 10 right across the allotment but I have almost done it now. The weather has been slightly drier and today was quite warm as well. Digging does not take that long once you have the dry ground to work with. I will continue to sieve mix in the rock dust because I have quite a bit. I will probably have enough to do all of this half of the allotment and some over to put on the potato bed.
I have cleared away all the carpets and rubbish at this end of the allotment which gives me a fairly good run through to the large mound of soil that was probably a compost heap in the past.
I am going to use this soil to mix in with top soil that I am taking out of the trenches now. I am hoping that the compost soil is going to have a lot of organic matter in it because there is not much organic matter in the top soil that I am digging now.
I am still taking out bindweed and mare's tail throughout the soil profile. Although I cannot sieve the subsoil, I will have to fork it over very carefully to make sure that I take out all the rhizomes.
I will take the camera tomorrow and get some pictures of the new allotment to show the development and how it has changed over the winter.
I have bought the old vine, Vitis vinifera, from the old allotment and planted it on the new. As planned, I trained it to the guyot system and am very pleased by the way it has settled itself in. I planted it with a dose of mychorrhizal fungi to help it to establish quickly. I have just wound the vine stems around the wire supports in order to keep them from being damaged but I will go back and tie them in with wire ties. A very successful project.
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