Rick Price in reviewing Liam Flaherty's book "Famine" (about the Irish potatoe famine) writes the following about traveling in Ireland today:

"As you pedal through western Ireland on our bicycle tour you'll see remnant 'lazy beds,' the planting beds for potatoes that look like gentle ocean swells under the mantle of green grass. In areas rich in top soil these beds were easily made. On rocky soil, including places like the barren Aran Islands, the hummocks were 'manufactured' by humans using gathered soil, seaweed, and beach sand.

Maybe you could make some "lazy beds" on your 2 acres; wide rows of "lasagne gardening" layers of compost, soil, and mulches atop the rocky soil.

In Maine, kids used to be paid to pick rocks every spring in the potato fields -- maybe they still are. Have any young kids or grandkids?

Ginger

or friends who post over in the "Gardening With Stone" forum? I once picked up so many rocks in my old Volvo (240DL--goodness I miss that car!)that I got SERIOUSLY chastised when I got home...DH took me around to the back ofthe car to show me the rear bumper--inches form the ground...got some FABULOUS rocks though!

melanie

With a 'lazy bed' the seed potatoes were laid on top of the existing ground and the other stuff piled on top. Not a very effective method but we are talking about subsistence living i.e grubbing out whatever is marginally possible.
We got a penny a bucket for collected stones ginger.
Your " lady in the local society" reminds me of a neighbour we had when I was a kid. He dug up his entire garden (25 feet square) to a depth of two feet and passed it through a sieve. He was Egyptian and wore the striped clothing my brother and I thought was pajamas which kept us amused the whole summer. The poor man died in the September, as result of all that digging or not I cannot say but just be warned Jim.