The first time I saw this video, I thought, she's kidding isn't she? Barefoot, digging, in Australia! All those snakes and funnel-web spiders and bloody hell! I won't be going barefoot in Riddrie very often, but I have started to use gloves less, enjoying getting my hands in the earth. As I've been digging out the spuds, I've noticed how dark and loamy the earth is looking, how big and fat the worms.


This was the view yesterday, looking South up the slope. Bulrushes foreground, and there are two more little-uns have sprang up in the last couple of weeks; behind them the yellow flowers of the unplanned tansy, and behind them again heaps of beanstalks. To the right, the netted chard, and the blue tarp with I-don't-know-what beneath it, (and I-don't-know-when it's going to get lifted, either... in time to be sown with winter field beans, anyway).

It's all still very weedy, but I'm getting more sanguine about this. With no-dig, lots of mulching and hoeing, it will be under control one day. Meanwhile, it's a work-in-progress. I'm going to drying halving the depth of dig in the riddling area, from about 12 to 6ins. That should speed things up. Heavy rain has put the riddling on hold for at least the last two weeks.



I'm keen to free up this bottleneck in the schedule: when the glass is riddled out, the dogs can come back, which in turn means that I can incorporate working at the plot with dog-walking, saving a huge proportion of the day. Once we reach that magical stage, I can walk up each evening, the dogs get exercised, and the plot gets its shed built, its poly-tunnel erected, its weeds hoed. And then we're good to go in 2018.


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