[rowlandwells]

have you finished your winter digging yet? or perhaps  your like us as unfortunately the ground has been to wet  to do any winter digging or ploughing as we normally finish our ploughing before Christmas the ground is absolutely sodden so its likely that we will be unable to plough the allotments till the spring when hopefully the ground will dry out 

so we decided to spread horse manure on the plot and  hope it will rot down or feed the worms before cultivation 

[Pauly1958]

Got half the plot dug over and raised beds topped up with 3inches of manure weather not been to good up here in Rotherham

[mumofstig]

My plot is just too wet to walk on, and I'm at the top of the plots - those at the bottom are under water

[Christine]

It will be spring digging when the repaired knee is fit enough this year. Anyway the plots are still very wet.

[Aidy]

half done, too wet at mo to finish off

[Plot94]

Decided not to dig over the main plot this year, leaving the weeds and spent crops in to hopefully keep the soil in good heart, the worms certainly seem to enjoy the roots in the soil. I have taken on another plot that is severely overgrown with nettle and bramble so am digging this over a bit at a time, the fact that it hasn't been touched for a few years seems to have helped as all the bramble is keeping it quite open and easy to dig, even though I am risking sliding straight past the plot on the main paths 

[garrarufa]

I'm currently enjoying the end of my very first season of growing my own crops. I started a few months too late, but had some good yields so still very much in the all new and exciting stage. I couldn't wait to start digging in before winter. Haha... silly me. I spend all day mostly fitting kitchens and my body is very much used to hauling around 4.1 meter worktops and constant bending and lifting, but the act of digging gives me little twinges at the base of my spine and hip. I hope this is just that old "using muscles in a different way", but something tells me I'm getting old.   

Still,  I enjoyed digging in a few rows about six weeks ago, and read some article about double digging, throwing in the kitchen veg' wastes and teabags to break down over winter. So I did that, and then a week later I read another article about how double digging can be detrimental and airs various spores etc... so now I've shrugged my shoulders and will just enjoy the experimentation and fun of playing one plot against the other next year. 

I also had fun/mild pain digging in and securing old floor boards as the base of next years raised beds.  So now I have a mound of soil heaped up against a wall, and I don't see how it's all going to fit back in, haha! 

[snowdrops]

No digging here 

[jambop]

That has to be the saddest post I have read for a while. We have had so much rain over the last 6 weeks 75% of my winter brassicas have died they have been under water so long. I doubt I will get anything done in the big open plot until Feb or March . I have a rotavator so that will be used as soon as the ground is anywhere near workable. Good news is I have prep'd 7 new no dig beds of 3m x 1.2m so I will be getting a lots of stuff in these as being raise they drain well. I am thinking of moving another large area of the veg garden over to raised no dig beds it would mean that they would be usable during the winter even if we get the rains we have had. probably constructing another 16 such beds where I currently grow rows of crops.

[OakR]

End of my second year, and first full year.

Have managed to get roughly half the plot done but stopped a few weeks ago when it got too wet. Managed to get the garlic in, hopefully it's not just rotting away!

I've got quite a bit of bind weed and couch grass in half of the bit I've yet to do, but want to have as good a clear of it as I can, and it's very uneven, but I'm hoping once done next year will be easier (this year was easier in the bits I cleared as extensively as I could previously - still bits coming through but much less).

[al78]

I don't do any large scale digging, only enough to get individual clumps of creeping buttercup out. The soil is saturated and slippery to walk on, so even if I did plan to dig, it wouldn't get done in these conditions.

If the weather were to deliberately try to annoy me, it couldn't do a better job this year. I spent most of last weekend putting glass in a new greenhouse, only to have strong winds this week before I had a chance to secure it with sealant.

[New shoot]

I haven't got anywhere near done with the winter work on the plot, but the overwintering stuff is in and I did get the old crops cleared before the rains came.

If it turns into spring digging, then so be it.  I used to get worried about falling behind over winter, but now I just look at the plot, portion it into jobs and allocate some time to each section - an afternoon to prune the soft fruit and mulch it, a morning to dig that section over and get some compost onto it - that sort of thing.

It usually ends up as maybe a week of work and then I realise I have 3 -5 months to do it in (depends on what is planned there for next year) and it doesn't seem so bad 

[heygrow]

No dig here, like Snowdrops!
What is winter digging?  Is it fun??

[Mintyboy]

Got half done before the rains came . There is no point digging my soil in spring as there is no way I would be able to work it down into a tilth, it would just set like concrete. So where ever is not dug I will just dump a load of compost, mulch or manure onto it and plant through.
Every year is different so it is a case of adapting methods to cope.

[New shoot]

So where ever is not dug I will just dump a load of compost, mulch or manure onto it and plant through.

My soil is heavy clay and can set like concrete if dug at the wrong time.  If I get a break where it will dig over well, then I do that.  If not, I get round it same as you do.  It will have been turned over at some point last year and probably will again at some point next year, so it is not reverting to heavy clay pan under that mulch to any great extent.

I never dig all of it anyway.  For big stuff like squash and sweetcorn, I usually adopt the dump compost and plant through method