The Dirt on the Plot

We went to the plot this afternoon to work in all that soil we got at the seed store yesterday.  The nice can-do woman (whose name might be Heather or Susan or neither and I can't remember for the life of me) was there with a couple of companions.  They were digging down about a foot of soil from their plot and piling it onto a big tarpaulin.  Once they'd dug it all out, they produced 7 or so garbage bags filled with kelp, dumped them into the plot and spread it all out as evenly as possible.  Then they shovelled all of the removed soil back on top.  They raked the top layer even and they were done.  Amazing.  The whole operation was done smoothly and quickly.  

In the meantime, the sweary one and I used the local flat-bottomed spade (like a trenching shovel) and our own pitchfork walked from home (not as bad as I thought it would be) to turn over the soil in the top foot of our plot, working in the new black earth and seaweed mulch we picked up yesterday.  The sweary one finished off with the local rake (much more effective than it looked like it would be) and now our plot looks (and probably is) ready to take seeds.

We planted a couple of short rows of lettuce (having turned over the patch where we planted seeds on Monday) and three short rows of spring onions.  I am not at all certain about the age of these seeds, so I think I'll do the viability test with them.  If they're duff, I'll get new packages some time this week.