At the allotment, March 2021

 First off, ours is still not quite the weediest plot on the allotment site, but only just.  A combination of digging over the last summer (to give to chickens) and sheet mulch over winter has reduced the weeds by about a third.  A third-ish.  Maybe closer to a fourth.  But anyway, there are fewer weeds than last year, which had fewer than the year before.  

Actually our weeds are mostly just grass.  Really coarse, tenacious grass--the kind that throws out lots of long fragile runners.  I don't think digging it out is a viable solution, unless the diggers are chickens who spend a month in the same spot.  Even then, the chicken yard is now starting to regrow some grass;  despite it being about three inches deep in manure, there is still some determined blades showing through.  Of course if they were still there it would be taken care of immediately;  they've been off it since November.

Sheet mulch seems to be a better solution, as the spots which were deeply sheet mulched last winter (as opposed to a few places where the mulch was kind of shallow) seem less grassy.  The grass there looks newly grown from seed rather than established clumps.  Also, the sheet mulched sections are much softer, richer soil with lots of worms--easier to dig.  It's not a perfect solution however:  grass is not eradicated here, just set back.  Sheet mulch is a lot less work than digging, another reason I prefer it.

As for digging, I've been doing a little in order to sow some rows of broad beans and snap peas.  I got a couple rows of the broad beans down already, and will hopefully get a couple more by the end of the week.  

The son has also been digging!  I've struck a deal with him:  I will pay him £1 for every bucket of grass--with roots, not just the tops--he digs out of the strawberry bed.  It's the one bed where the grass has taken over completely and I almost think it might be unsalvageable.  I wanted to transplant to a different spot, a sheet mulched spot, but I think it's the wrong time of year now.  But then again, if the strawberries are swamped in grass they might not fruit anyway this year, so will I actually lose anything if I transplant?  He has earned £3 so far.