About the service
I come to the plot with my own machines — a walk-behind tiller for tight corners and a mini tractor where there is room to turn — and I bring the attachments with me: plough, rotary tiller, hiller, furrow opener, harrow, trailer and a snow blade. You are not renting iron and then working out how to drive it. You are buying a finished piece of ground work, measured by the hundredth of a hectare and handed over walked through together. Before I load anything I ask three things: how large the plot is, what grew there last season, and how a trailer is supposed to reach the gate. A narrow gateway, a soft verge or a ditch at the entrance changes the machine I bring, not the price I already named.
Depth is where people save money and lose a season. A garden that has been worked every year I take with the plough at twenty to twenty-two centimetres and finish with the tiller in one pass, so the top stays crumbly instead of baking into a crust. Virgin ground and land that has lain fallow for years is a different job and always two passes: the first tears and turns the sod, and a week and a half later the second cuts whatever has come back from the root. Planting earlier than that is wasted work — the couch grass comes up with your seedlings. I do not plough wet ground on principle. Soil that smears instead of crumbling is pressed into a hard pan under the share, and you pay for it for two or three seasons with water standing after every rain. If the week turns wet I move the date rather than ruin the field.
Stones and roots are normal, not a reason to raise the bill afterwards. On an unfamiliar plot I walk it first, mark the well cover, the septic lid, the cable run and the young trees, and on stony ground I go shallower and slower rather than break a share and leave you with half a job. In spring the same set of tools cuts furrows under potatoes at the spacing you use and hills the rows twice over the season; in winter the blade and the trailer clear the yard and the drive after a snowfall, on a call or on a standing arrangement for the season.
What the work includes:
— walking the plot, marking hazards, agreeing on depth and direction of the passes;
— ploughing or tilling by the hundredth of a hectare, one or two passes as the ground needs;
— breaking virgin and fallow land with the second pass after the regrowth;
— cutting furrows to your spacing and hilling the rows during the season;
— harrowing and levelling after ploughing so the bed is ready to plant;
— snow clearing of the yard, the drive and the approach to the gate;
— dates agreed against the weather, with an honest warning if it has to move.
Depth is where people save money and lose a season. A garden that has been worked every year I take with the plough at twenty to twenty-two centimetres and finish with the tiller in one pass, so the top stays crumbly instead of baking into a crust. Virgin ground and land that has lain fallow for years is a different job and always two passes: the first tears and turns the sod, and a week and a half later the second cuts whatever has come back from the root. Planting earlier than that is wasted work — the couch grass comes up with your seedlings. I do not plough wet ground on principle. Soil that smears instead of crumbling is pressed into a hard pan under the share, and you pay for it for two or three seasons with water standing after every rain. If the week turns wet I move the date rather than ruin the field.
Stones and roots are normal, not a reason to raise the bill afterwards. On an unfamiliar plot I walk it first, mark the well cover, the septic lid, the cable run and the young trees, and on stony ground I go shallower and slower rather than break a share and leave you with half a job. In spring the same set of tools cuts furrows under potatoes at the spacing you use and hills the rows twice over the season; in winter the blade and the trailer clear the yard and the drive after a snowfall, on a call or on a standing arrangement for the season.
What the work includes:
— walking the plot, marking hazards, agreeing on depth and direction of the passes;
— ploughing or tilling by the hundredth of a hectare, one or two passes as the ground needs;
— breaking virgin and fallow land with the second pass after the regrowth;
— cutting furrows to your spacing and hilling the rows during the season;
— harrowing and levelling after ploughing so the bed is ready to plant;
— snow clearing of the yard, the drive and the approach to the gate;
— dates agreed against the weather, with an honest warning if it has to move.
