Fruit bodies grow in manured soil or in sand.

If carrots are grown in soil which has been manured that year, some of the carrots are strange shapes because the young carrot plant's roots go off in odd directions, drawn by irregular pockets of manured soil.

Flint fragments from the farmer's tools have been found spread widely across the area enclosed by Grove Lane, Low Road and Church Hill where sites were likely to have been cultivated in rotation as the poorly manured soil became exhausted.