So we decided that the large lumps of stone that stood out near the road to stop the large farm machinery from tearing up our drive were perhaps a bit overkill and could possibly pose a risk to cyclists /motorcyclists. It was decided to plant a hedge and as it took hold to move the stones back underneath it and out of harms way. Thats when we discovered that the previous owner had maybe chatted up the men laying the tarmac road to run it into the drive a little. OK! no big problem and out came the trusty Kango. Next to dig away the layer of loose stone and earth, no big problems there then. The next layer was just compacted earth/clay and after attempting to use my trusty hole digger I had to resort to a pick axe and still no decent headway till I tried the kango and found the ground so hard that the kango was actually needed making a sound as if it was cutting through concrete. Even after pouring some water into the bottom of the holes before planting it was found that the water was just not soaking away because of how solid and compacted the soil was. After plenty of soaking and forming a ditch like set up I finally managed to get plenty of water into the soil helped along by a decent amount of overnight steady rain. You just would have not believed just how hard and dry that soil was helped by the lack of a decent amount of rain over the past twelve months or so.
My wife provided plenty of tea that made all the difference when taking break between each new planting:-)