Another achey-breaky update. I am creaking from a mattocking stint, hacking out a hole in the road running along the plot’s south side so I can put my oldest rhubarb in it, a short 3 years since it was bought. Enlarged the hole to a metre wide, 45cm ish deep & half a metre wide, and loosened the subsoil at the bottom. With much huffing and puffing, 5 barrows of stones and pink gravel/hardcore have been kicked about on the car park to even out the hardcore there. Then refilled the hole with a heap of rotted manure, some spent compost from last year’s tomatoes and a barrow of soil borrowed from the other beds. Hopefully this will make the bed free draining enough, though the true test will be surviving the inevitable winter waterlogging.

Refilled the largest dalek with 4 loads of (very) fresh manure from the communal bay, digging right to the bottom of the heap to find some poo with heat in it. At that point it was over the top of my wellies and my forking got a lot more careful. My feet were warm though!

I still need to empty last year’s manure from my hotbin. It looks lovely stuff, dark and crumbly and somehow totally full of worms. How they get into a sealed unit and survive the heat genuinely baffles me. It gets up to 50-60C in there. I’ll have a full dalek of manure for this season, with the hotbin too, and 3 bins of manure filled and rotting down for next season. That’s not nearly enough, but it will have to do.

Looking forward to the weekend and making a start on Plot 92. I foresee many tip trips. And a fire.