The message
from "Mike Tickle" contains these words:

I have just moved to the new house and there is a 7m x 9m plot at the back
of the garden that belongs to us. Sadly for years this has been left and is
filled with rubble, weeds, nettles, brambles and blackberry bushes (and
something else with red tubers/roots.
/snip/

It depends on how soon you *MUST* get started. Or to put it another way,
how impatient you are.

My advice would be to put on it all your weedings, lawnmowings etc, with
as much vegetable matter as you can cadge from greengrocers, etc.

Interleave with newspaper, cardboard, fresh horse, cow or whatever
manure, sprinkle some sharp sand amongst it and cap with bales of straw.

Give the straw as much urine as you can reasonably provide, and come the
end of *NEXT* summer, lay old woollen carpet over it, and cover the lot
with builders' black polythene membrane.

Weight this down round the edges, make a few holes in the top and place
some of that rubble you were going to throw away by the holes so a
funnel is formed and some rainwater can get in, andleave the hard work
to the earthworms.

This will delay your plot by a year, but you'll have good workable
ground the following one, and the bed will be raised.

What more could you want? Yes, all right, but that doesn't grow in the garden.

--
Rusty Hinge
horrid·squeak&zetnet·co·uk
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/tqt.htm