I think I mentioned this is my first year cultivating my new veggie beds. I have dug them in my garden, where I very recently built a new house. The soil is a very heavy clay, and became compacted while building.
I started out digging in a huge bulk of seaweed to 2 spades depth.
(http://i44.tinypic.com/23kp4br.jpg)
That was last summer. I used in the region of 2 tonnes of eel grass.
Digging doesn't break up the lumps of clay enough, and hoped that frost would have helped, but it didn't. So now I have put my secret weapon into action! Here is my coarse sieve, made from a steel grating....
(http://i44.tinypic.com/2yxm70n.jpg)
I push the clay lumps through it, and it also removes the stones I was too lazy to pick out by hand when digging.
In the coarse sieve I then put a fine sieve made of chicken wire. The grating supports the wire so it doesn' go all baggy.
(http://i41.tinypic.com/140knrc.jpg)
The result is a fine, crumbly tilth
(http://i42.tinypic.com/6yd2mu.jpg)
So far so good, and I shall add compost every year from now on. But I have to say, starting from scratch on compacted, heavy clay is hard work!
I had similar problems when I moved onto site. We're on London clay and my area was no exception.
I covered all the rubbish areas with about a foot of horse manure and then over that with plastic sheeting and cardboard.
Worms came did the digging for me over the first year.
No digging required.
Sorry!
Both perfectly acceptable solutions IMHO :)
Phew! Bejerryby that made me feel quite tired thinking about the work you put into getting that bit of good compost.
But well worth the effort in the end!
I do similar with my daleks, the contents of these goes through a ½" seive/riddle then I bag it up to be used in my containers including my ring cultured plants.