Sunday 7th April

Sunday - Up early and down on the Allotment from 7 in the morning, constructed two frames one for the mini poly tunnel only to find the plastic clips had gone brittle and snapped when I fitted the first pipe so I will need to go and pick up some metal pipe clips from the hardware store. Made up the first 1.2m square picture frame for bird netting.

Assembled the Automatic Shovel using the fork head. Moved the last of the pile of earth from the South West corner and marked out the beds and started digging out the first bed and the path either side. As suggested dug a trench and moved the soil to the back of the bed ready to infill the trench, once I get to the end.

Really slow going taking about 2-3 inches at a time but soon got into flow, very quick to dig very slow getting at the weeds out. First few times the spring flicked the soil way to far and once you get a feeling for it after a while and taking a narrower section allows it to break up as it hits the soil on the other side of the trench, and this makes weeding a lot easier. So not so much ground dug per line but faster over all.

The normal fork was used on occasion to stand on with one foot on the dug side as to distribute my load and not flatten what I had just dug and to help further break up the soil once flipped.

Decided to unroll the hose pipe to allow the sun to warm it up as it had moulded itself around the drum somewhat to find actually it had become brittle and split!

Left for home and lunch at 12:30 and was so knackered I fell asleep for an hour after lunch - then went to Wilkinson's  in the afternoon to pick up teak oil but also came back with a new hose, 7.5kg of chicken poo manure for £4.75 which is cheaper than the Garners Club offer at the local garden centre of £9.99 for 10Kg and a box of lime.

Applied the teak oil to the garden furniture, and decided to put removable shelves in the cold frame so that new sowings can be placed close to the glass in their propagators to start off and as they grow I can lower the shelf or ultimately remove them. The bottom isf lined with insulation on the paving slabs and I'm going to get some foil bubble wrap type radiator insulation for the walls or perhaps just staple some tin foil

Picture below is the area I had dug this morning I estimate it as being 2.4m wide x 1.8m deep and I skimmed off the vegetation and removed even more glass covered with about half inch to an inch of soil and weeds.

This particular hoop frame will be covered in plastic as a mini poly tunnel or a large cloche to warm up the soil for my potatoes, Others will be covered in scaffolding debris netting.