Man of the Soil

An alien from the planet Zob arrived in my polytunnel

A lot of my time nowadays is spent mucking about with soil. Like many things in nature it is easily taken for granted. It's just the stuff plants grow in right? Well, yes. But the moment you take a closer look at what it actually is, the mind begins to boggle. An ingenious mixture of minerals from rocks, decayed organic matter and living organisms that takes millennia to develop, it is everywhere, it is incredibly varied and without it we would not be here. Next time your mum complains that you've walked mud into the kitchen again, remind here of that fact and see where the conversation takes you. (Straight to your room I'll bet).

Tomato plants are flowering now

My soil is a light brown, stony, sandy and acidic type of soil. Not exactly the ideal for growing veg. The stones get in the way when seeds are germinating. The sandiness means water drains quickly through it leaving roots gasping after a dry day or two. And the acidity inhibits the complex biological mechanisms the plants adopt to extract nutrients from the earth – some are more bothered by it than others. (Blueberry plants absolutely thrive on on it, apparently – well, someone should have told mine.)

A baby beetroot not yet ready for its moment to be planted outside

...and many of its compatriots

When I started two years back it was full of stones but had very little organic matter other than perennial weed roots (which I removed) so I had to import some. By a stroke of luck three of my neighbours just happened to have huge piles of rotted horse manure they were only too happy for someone to cart off, so I have spent many mucky days filling bags a spadeful at a time, hefting them into my trailer, driving them to my land, emptying them onto my veg beds and forking the good stuff in. The advantages are manifold – it stops water draining too quickly away, it provides the key chemical nutrients the plants need, and it increases the worm population (who are miracle workers in themselves.)

The mange tout in the polytunnel have been producing lovely big pods for a week now, the ones outside are half the size and only have a few tiny pods so far

Picking out all the stones beforehand sounds like a tedious job, and looked at from one angle, it is. But what I like about this backbreaking little task is that unlike weeding, once a stone is out, it's gone. It ain't coming back. And the big pile of stones just keeps getting bigger and more gratifying. Who knows they might even come in handy sometime! I have already used a few to fill a pothole up by my track entrance.

Weeds on the other hand just keep multiplying. There are two types of weed – annuals and perennials. The annuals have just one season to live so their job is to make as many seeds as possible before they die. If you can pluck them out before they do so, you've won. Worse are the perennials which have underground root systems that allow them to live year-on-year. You have to dig out the network of roots to eradicate it, which in some cases is nigh on impossible because if you leave a bit of root behind, it starts off growing again.

Dwarf French beans. On the left, those I sowed direct in the soil. On the right, those I started inside in modules.

 Generally speaking the most dispiriting job is painstakingly undoing something you had earlier laboriously done, and this is what I found myself doing on Monday when I discovered that some of the manure I had dug in was actually full of a dense perennial weed root system whose tiny white tendrils had over the months begun to spread throughout at least two veg beds. What it is I do not know, but I know it shouldn't be here. And that it's not going to be easy to get rid.

The rhubarb is a success story though, probably because I haven't done anything to them.