Clearing the fence border: couch grass, a buried path and a wheelbarrow of rubble
The strip along the south-west fence was, when we arrived, a knee-high mat of couch grass, bindweed and a sprawling shrub that had not been pruned in years. Under the grass, about 15 cm down and running the full length, was a line of concrete paving slabs, nine of them, each the size of a doormat and heavier than they looked. Under the slabs was rubble, broken brick and a surprising quantity of glass. Three weekends in June went into removing all of it, and the pile by the side gate is a wheelbarrow and a half of rubble that I have no plan for.
Couch grass is the problem that decides everything else. Its white roots run horizontally just under the surface, break at every joint, and every piece grows. I forked the whole border over by hand, lifting the roots out in long white strings and shaking the clay off them, which is slow and satisfying and never complete. I filled three bags. Then I decided, against my own impatience, not to plant in summer at all but to leave the border bare until September, fork it again twice, and pull whatever comes back. By mid-June it is already returning in tufts, which I am treating as a sort of test I set myself.
The other job this month has been measuring the light. With the slabs out and the shrub gone, I spent four Sundays noting what time direct sun reached each end of the border and when it left. The south end gets sun from about 10:30 until it drops behind the neighbour’s roof around 18:00, roughly seven and a half hours in June. The north end, next to the shed, gets it from 13:00 to 17:30 at best. That difference is going on the plan: the shade-tolerant things at the shed end, the sun-lovers at the south.
The soil, under the rubble, is yellow-grey clay, slick when wet and like fired brick when dry. A hole I dug on a dry Saturday took forty minutes and the sides came out shiny. I have started a compost bin in the corner behind the shed with the couch grass roots kept firmly out of it.
Nothing is planted and nothing will be for three months. The border is 9 metres by 1.8, measured twice, and the graph paper is bought.