Cultivation, step by step

1. When the soil is ready

Most damage to soil comes not from the plough or rotavator but from working at the wrong time.

1. The ball test — Take a handful of soil from 10 cm (4 in) down and squeeze it. If water oozes out and the soil smears into a ribbon, wait 2–5 days.
2. Just right — If the ball breaks into crumbs when you press it with your thumb, you can work it. A ball that won't break means too moist, except on sand.
3. Don't walk on wet soil — If you must step onto a wet bed, stand on a plank: it spreads the weight. A tractor on a wet field compacts the soil to 30–40 cm, and that takes years to put right.
4. Warm soil — Spring cultivation makes sense when the soil at 10 cm is warmer than 5–8 °C (41–46 °F). In lowland UK and Ireland that is usually March and April; on heavy or upland soils, often later.

Why: Wet soil under a wheel, a boot or a rotavator gets compacted into clods that won't break down all year. On clay the working window is short: a day or two before it bakes into brick. Sand is nearly always fine, except in a real quagmire.

• An old ploughman threw a clod from the furrow at his boot: if it shattered, he ploughed; if it stuck, he went home.
• The calendar says when you ought to; the ball test says whether you may today.

2. Ploughing

A plough inverts a slice of soil: the grass goes down and the lower soil comes up.

1. First breaking of grassland — A meadow or pasture that becomes cropland is broken with a plough. The top layer with grass and weeds goes down.
2. The winter furrow — Plough heavy clay in autumn and leave it rough, with big clods. Frost crumbles them over winter, so in spring a harrow or disc is all it needs.
3. Depth 20–25 cm — Deeper brings poor, lifeless subsoil up. Vary the depth by a few centimetres every 2–3 years, and plough manure in shallowly, 15–20 cm (6–8 in).
4. Across the slope — On a slope, plough along the contour, never up and down. Plough sand and light soils in spring, so bare soil doesn't lose nutrients over winter.

Why: Ploughing is the best way to first break grassland and to work fields of half a hectare (1.2 acres) or more. The trouble starts when you plough out of habit, every year at the same depth: a hard plough pan forms at the bottom.

• If you pay a contractor, ask the price in advance and agree the depth.
• Don't plough grassland on shallow soil with stone at 15–20 cm: no-dig or raised beds are better there.

3. Rotavating · Locked

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4. Spade and broadfork · Locked

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5. No-dig · Locked

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6. Seedbed and switch · Locked

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