Digging

3 hours of child free allotment time meant one thing today, digging, digging and more digging! I love having the children with me at the allotment but find myself limited to tasks such as weeding, planting and occasionally seed sowing, as you can imagine they also only stay tolerant for around 1.5hrs before we come home again, so when they are otherwise engaged, I have to make the most of it. I normally manage a 3 hour childfree afternoon every week. It is never quite enough time to tick many jobs off of the 'to do' list but I really relish every moment.
We still had 2 veg beds to dig on plot B, both 4ft x 10ft before we can really start digging over on plot A.
We seem to have fallen into a routine with the bed digging: We start with a first dig, turning over the soil/ grass whilst removing any trace of perennial weeds, then a week or so later a 2nd dig takes place, to break up the large clumps, and double check for perennial roots.   We usually end up digging it over a few more times before it is ready for planting or sowing, depending on whats going in them.
Today was all about the first dig, here is a before and after picture(see below). As you can see 2 hours doesn't get you far! But there is only about 5ft left to go haha! The most time consuming part of the job is getting out those weeds. Our plot suffers mainly with 4 perrenial weeds,
*Dandelion, competes for nutrients and water, and spreads a gazillion seeds (epecially appealing to small children) they are not too hard to deal with but the tap root often goes deep and it will re grow if you leave even a small bit behind. They seem to grow into entire seeding plants overnight!
*Mares tale, the roots go really, really deep and snap really, really easily, they don't really compete for nutrients but they do get in the way, taking up space when they open up like little ugly Christmas trees.
*Bind weed, although it is a pretty plant, it strangles everything else! It grows and spreads like crazy. It has long, deep roots that spread, again it will re grow if a tiny bit of root is left behind.
*Creeping buttercup, spreads like crazy, the roots spread underground and there are lots of root on one plant (seriously google it!) they don't root too deeply, but are a real pain to dig out, they also grow back if a bit of root remains, can you see the common theme here? Sigh!
They are all a big pain in the bum, but I figure that if we get out as much as possible now, we will have to deal with them less and less each season,  you can see from the picture that I managed to fill half a big trug just with these weeds today, mainly the roots, just in this small patch, so you can imagine how much of the things we have already had to deal with, and how many of them are waiting for us on plot a!!!