soil
I agree with smokeyeyes, this looks like sub-soil, particularly the colour, and nothing will grow in it (hard lessons learned myself, very expensive). It will be waterlogged in winter, and drown anything planted, and will go rock hard in a dry summer, also killing anything planted. You need to get a good layer of topsoil, preferably several inches (someone has just posted top soil to give away on jumbletown), and then add manure or compost (people give away compost from time to time too and home-made compost is ideal, full of needed biological activity!) and it will improve over time. Its pretty hard to overdo compost or manure when mixed with topsoil, so use as much as you can get hold of (just make sure manure is not fresh, needs to have been sitting a while). I wouldn't even mix the sub-soil in, it adds nothing, just put the topsoil and any compost on top. Worms will do the rest. I just put compost from my composters directly on the soil now and the worms work it in.
Ruth
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