Green and Gold

Tuesday 6th June 2000
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There's a stiff breeze. Fifty House Martins wheel about like leaves in the wind in the lee of the old colliery railway embankment.

After writing about the state of the garden in yesterday's diary, a break in the weather gives me an opportunity to clear the raised bed behind the pond. It takes only twenty minutes to complete, a welcome break from desk work, the ground is so soft that the weeds pull out easily once I've loosened the soil with a fork. I'm aware that the Coltsfoot rhizomes are snapping, leaving root cuttings ready to sprout again below fork level. But I've tried double-digging - going over the whole bed down to two spades' depth - and even that didn't get rid of the coltsfoot for long. As I'm committed to avoiding the use of herbicides the only solution that occurs to me, other than doing more work in the garden, is to cover the bed with a plastic sheet now that the soil is moist and plant through slits cut into it. This method worked well with potatoes last year.

Richard Bell,
wildlife illustrator
E-mail; 'richard@daelnet.co.uk'