Over the weekend, I opened up a patch of the lawn for a vegetable garden. Removing the sod was easily accomplished using a square spade inserted just under the root. I then just jam the spade repeatedly along the sod-soil boundary. It peeled off readily.
After about half an hour of doing this, I realised that that meant my soil was hard as concrete. I immediately reached for the garden fork but tried hard I did, I couldn't make a dent deeper than 3 cm. A digging bar didn't fare much better either at 10 cm.
It was dried clay under the grass. How the grass could survive or how the clay got so dry under the grass was beyond my understanding. Helpful discussions in gardenweb.com pointed out that moist clay soil was easier to work on.
I was not going to waste water hosing down the dry soil. I mulched it instead and am waiting for a rain. Once it gets easier to work with, I'll insert garden fork as deep as I can and lever the soil up. This will allow some air and mulch to drop inside through the crack. The trapped mulch will entice worms to go deeper and till the soil for me.
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