Worm castings galore!

It's a decent sized area so it was worthwhile to borrow a tractor. I used both a power harrow and a rotovator attachment.

I would have preferred to just use the power harrow because it doesn't invert the soil layers. However my clay soil had baked pretty hard in the dry weather so I needed the rotavator to really break it up.

I initially thought I would be completely no-till but now I am I am practising a form of minimum-till which works for my site.

Power harrow in action.

It was laid straight onto the grass as I am trying to grow with minimal soil disturbance. However, I have found that on my heavy clay drainage can be an issue for winter crops. What I am doing now is rotovating the top inch into a fine tilth, I will then rake the tilth from the paths into the beds. The end results will leave the paths below the bed surface so they can drain excess water away.

We are going to give this a go next year.

Excellent! It's worthwhile doing this just to get the perennial weeds out of the way. The worms and their castings are an added bonus.

From my experience I would also suggest that the summer is a pretty good time to try this. Heat drastically speeds up the process and keeping the tarp down in strong wind can be an issue.

I am also now struggling with leatherjackets... I put the tarp down in winter, trapping them underneath - they are still there and they are hungry! If I do this again I would aim for the beginning of July before their eggs have been layed. This may even give me time to plant a cover crop before the winter.