Grow Your Own Magazine

Hi
Need lots of help with thisone.
We are intending removing the shed from our lottie this next weekend (before it falls down ) Bearing in mind the shed has been there for some years I anticipate the soil will be naff and well compacted. What is the best thing to plant to start improving the soil?
Any advice appreciated!!

Potatoes. on top of lots of muck/compost.

Or pile with muck/compost, cover with cardboard and let sit until June when you can plant squash and pumpkins through the cardboard. Worms will take the good stuff down into the soil and start working it for you and the squash will love all that lovely manure. Come the first frosts, you can either turn it into a no-dig bed, or give it a good forking over ready for the next year (and add more compost to it and then put potatoes in)

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Kris

I child-proofed my house, but they still manage to get in.

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Pickaxe it, then pile some barrow loads of dung on it, ensuring it gets between the lumps. Let it lie fallow until you have compostable stuff, then use it as a one year compost heap, leaving any planting till next year.

Did the shed have a floor of compacted soil, or timber?
If soil were chemicals spilled in there?
Was the shed painted or creosoted?
Gather up and dispose off site as much of the old paint as you can, it may be leaded paint.

Leaving it fallow with humus added will allow it to "heal" itself and wash out any crap that's left.

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Good advice Peter!

I inherited a shed area with harcore etc. and did exactly what Poledragon advises, and had good crops of spuds and squash. One day I might get around to broggling the soil to ease compaction, but for now just laying on organic matter and getting crops off the area

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SSx
not every situation requires a big onion

Thanks for all the advice.
The shed does have a wooden floor and has been treated in some way in the distant past----or I think so--- but very little of the treatment remains now.A one year compost seems an excellent idea ans we can use the space next year.
Ta muchly