Hard frost

I went to the allotment yesterday, the weather was glorious, clear blue sky but with a biting wind. There had been a hard frost overnight, the top 2 inches of soil was rock hard which made digging hard work. And that's all I was really there to do so I ended up with a sore back. I brought 2 buckets of the compost I extracted from my wormery the day before with me and spent about half an hour preparing the bed I'm going to put peas in this year. I first removed 3 large comfrey roots and moved them to another area on the plot. Then I dug out several shallow trenches in the bed and put in a layer of shredded paper followed by a chunky layer of wormery compost, and covered it all back up with soil. Hopefully when I sow lots of rows of peas they'll benefit massively from the rich compost and layer of moisture retaining shredded paper. Well, that's the plan anyway!

What else did I do...I discovered to my horror that the horseradish roots had broken through the bottom of the plastic pot that they're in and were happily spreading a million roots through the ground underneath....noooooo! That wasn't supposed to happen! I suppose I'll be digging out horseradish root for the next 20 years! The bit I dug out was brought home and pickled ready for the next time I make roast beef for sunday lunch.

I gave the rhubarb and blackberry plant some feed and tidied up a bit and then legged it home to rest my back and get warm.

Here's a couple of pics of the plot, one of the whole plot and the other of the old compost heap that James has been tackling recently.