the fruit of hours of labour, a bed ready for planting
A series of compromises must be made while breaking land with hands and muscles. Some methods are absurdly labour-intensive, but result in reasonably fine tilth ready to accommodate small seeds of a wide variety of crops. Other methods are leisurely and low-impact, but rely upon father time and the silent army of soil organisms to do most of the digging. When I learnt how to grow potatoes in mounds of turf smothered with newspaper and straw, it changed the entire trajectory of my life. Useful and delightful as such no-till methods may be, I still find myself preparing some beds with heavy toil, so as to be able to grow the sorts of things that don’t thrive in newly sheet-mulched turf mounds. As of the time of writing we have prepared 300 square feet of dug beds, and 300 square feet of sheet-mulched beds.
big clumps of soil and roots waiting to be broken into something more plantable
forking in manure, lime, and organic fertilizer while breaking up clods