Soil Preparation !

[Hammer]

I have come across a lot of information about soil preparation, however, it all pretty much says to prepare the soil to a fine tilth, the consistency of coarse breadcrumbs.
Now, i dug over my three raised beds in October, again in early February and am at present putting the finishing touches to them ready for sowing seed potatoes, garlic, onions etc. Despite a lot of work removing stones and generally cleaning up the soil and breaking up small sods with my hands,it is not exactly a fine tilth. I have tried sieving a bit of soil but it is a slow laborious job, also i am blessed with a lot of worms which i pick out of the sieve by hand and place back in the soil.
My soil is good clay which was mulched and manured (except carrot bed) last October, it consists of three well drained raised beds.
Is it just that the soil is not really dry enough at this time if year or am i doing something wrong or am i being too fussy?
Any suggestions Welcome.

Regards Hammer

[gibson1314]

I think you have done enough, I have clay soil and I added compost and some manure dug it together and flung in some potatoes and carrots etc. I got very good returns doing this. You won't know until you try so go for it and learn from your mistakes. The only thing that wasn't succesfull for me was garlic but I planted it at the wrong time.

[vegetable-gardener]

I think 'tombtroy' is a spammer.

Your soil sounds fine to me. We have raised beds and you are never going to have the soil really fine. Also the soil can still be wet around this time of year - but the great thing is that raised beds dry out quickly. (That can be bad in very dry weather though )

[malcolmx]

in old fashioned gardens we would rake soil until a fine tilth is achieved and thrn trad it downn to remove air and then re rake . this cannot be achieved on raised beds so rake the surface then tamp down with rake head and re rake if this does not give a fine enough surface for seed sowing draw aout the drilss line botton of drill with ji no 3 sow seed and cover with jino3. alternativly sieve some dry soil amd use that .if the soil will not natualy produce a fine tilth it may still be too wet to sow seeds