Selfsufficientish.com

Well, actually, I'm theoretically gardening in heavy clay soil, but with the current lack of rain, it's all baked off to something as hard as concrete. I tried to dig a trench to get my late maincrop spuds in the other day and the spade bounced off the earth with a very impressive "DOINGGGGGGGG!!!" sound.

I can't break it at ALL. I've covered the space I want with an old door, in the hope that preserving what small amount of damp there is will make it possible to at least break the surface.

Planted out beans the other day and it was less like planting and more like very small-scale cairn building.

RAIN ALREADY!!!

Have spoken to the local farmer and he's going to tip a load of muck over the fence for us in late autumn, but until then I'm stuck with this. Grrr!

well you ain't doing the spuds roight girl. Get some car tyres and grown them in those. No digging, big crop, easy peasy.My king edwards are already 2 tyres high. By the time I have stacked the tyres 6 high there will be spuds top to bottom in a small space and not a spade been near them.

Or you can do the same thing with a couple of stakes (If you can get them in! LOL) and some chicken wire wrapped around them - a potato cage. I grow my potatoes in cages (in Australia tyres can get a bit hot LOL) and get fantastic results from them particularly with King Edwards - I stack in compost and straw as the vines are growing and generally get them to about 5 feet before they flower.

Oh, I know what you mean. The unmulched areas of my garden are like stone. I have cracks appearing in my lawn - in April?!?!. Eeek - this is really scary. And no sign of rain.

First of all, get rid of the spade! Use a fork. I'm currently trying to dig over a patch which was trodden on a lot last year and having the same problem as you, and my soil is sandy!

I have to stand on the fork, and jiggle it back and forth to get it to sink in. Then each clump has to be broken up by repeatedly bashing it with the fork. It is backbreaking work.

If you can't get a fork in at all, do what my husband does in summer here when our soil is even harder. Use a pickaxe!

It is like digging into stone up at our patch :/

Anyone know the rain dance?