Topic: Most stupid allotment decision ever?

[ThomsonAS]

What's the allotment decision you most regret? Mine is, without doubt, planting Horseradish in a neglected corner of the plot and forgetting about it after the first year. 
Nice enough grated and creamed into fresh horseradish sauce but why did I not realise it is an evil plant that's near impossible to remove? I've just dug more than  two foot deep to try and get the last bits of root out.
Can anyone beat this for a daft decision?

[sparrow]

Siting my permanent fruit bed on the border of a neglected plot riddled with horsetail. 3 years on and it is very much all over my strawberries and gooseberries. I am considering bare-rooting the bushes and moving them so I can keep better control of the weeding there, but it will be a hell of a job.

[Duke Ellington]

Putting a double row of raspberries in my fruit cage In the second year they had taken over the whole cage. Year three we removed them all and now at year seven we still have raspberries springing up

[artichoke]

What a good question! Mine was letting a chance willow seedling grow on the corner of my plot, thinking it might be good for beanpoles. It is now a gigantic tree, crowding out my nearby plum tree, and sawing through its great trunks is hard work. Don't know how it happened so quickly.....

Still, the two of them do provide welcome shade on a very hot day, and I have a table under them. My plan now is to saw down a branch a week, use what is useful and have a bonfire with the rest. I am looking askance at some pegs I made in the autumn to prop up boards, and which are sprouting leaves, and hoping it will be enough to rub out the leaves as they appear.....

PS My horseradish seems rather shy - has stayed in the same shady corner for about 8 years and shows no sign of wandering. I have weed cover fastened to the ground all round it, which seems to work, and I dig some up every now and then for sauce. However, I did get it from a plot about 50 miles away covered with the stuff. I was listening to the plot holder telling me how he made his own horseradish sauce by buying roots in supermarkets, and felt obliged to ask him if he knew what was growing all around him up to his knees and higher.... He had thought all those leaves were docks.

[Digeroo]

Choosing a plot next to a hedge.  It was about a metre high and I could talk to people on the footpath the otherside.  But now several meters high and shading the plot for several hours.

Though it does keep the East wind at bay.

[Paulh]

Getting an allotment!

My garden is now neglected!

[Spireite]

Getting an allotment!

My garden is now neglected!

Unfortunately I return from trying to tame my new allotment, to sit down and look out at through the French doors to see a patio needing weeding, a lawn needing edging, random weeds everywhere, a bird table that needs rubbing down/scrubbing, a wooden garden table that needs repainting/varnishing,  pots that need sorting for the spring...
Fortunately my husband will cut the grass...everything else is up to me :D

[Silverleaf]

I don't even have an allotment and my garden is an absolute tip. I guess years of neglect add up, now it's taking forever to get it sorted.

Case in point, I cut back a section of hedge in the orchard the other day. I'm doing it in stages, and I went back several feet cutting out brambles and rambling dog roses and this weird round-leaved bush thing that has white berries in the autumn and spreads like crazy. I found a currant plant of unknown colour that I planted years ago that had been completely engulfed - the hedge has grown at least 4ft since, and I'd forgotten the currant existed.

I'd like an allotment, but I have enough on with the garden already.

[goodlife]

Yes...horseradish..been there and done that and learned to live with it..Jerusalem artichokes, they took some getting rid of too...yellow raspberries, waste of space and hell to get rid of...

One decision that I've regretted from day one is allowing my OH take over my polytunnel..it is FULL of logs now... Yes, they dry there beautifully and it was necessary thing...but I have soooo missed the growing space...so much so, that now after 7 yrs of being without it, I'm going to build myself new tunnel  I've got space for it sorted...just waiting to harvest garlic first that is occupying part of the tunnel land and once the garlic is up, I'm starting my summer project

[Silverleaf]

Artichokes! They are totally on my list to source for next year, because I love the taste. It would be awesome if they thrive in badly-drained clay soil. ;) I don't lack space (almost 1/4 of an acre) but I do very much lack growing space with decent soil.

[goodlife]

Artichokes! They are totally on my list to source for next year, because I love the taste. It would be awesome if they thrive in badly-drained clay soil. ;) I don't lack space (almost 1/4 of an acre) but I do very much lack growing space with decent soil.

2 years ago I FINALLY managed to clear out 'a row' of JA's that was rapidly taking over the land.....so I saved 2 tubers and planted them near hedge where they would not grow in 'prime location'. This winter I cropped them first time....2 tubers was now 2 buckets full!...again...'cleared' all the extras and planted 2 tubers on same spot...and what can I see sprouting through the soil again...DOZENS of them!!!

Come next winter,I can certainly supply you with some if you are sure about them. Nice as they are...I can't eat many of them or 'the winter storms' in UK will be worst than ever..

[Paulines7]

I regret planting artichokes too.  I have them in two different places in my garden and they have spread even more after I think I have dug them all up!  They manage to creep into and penetrate paths too and I find them an absolute nightmare to control.  I have been trying to get rid of them for several years now.

Silverleaf, you could try growing them in a large container such as a metal dustbin but you would have to ensure that roots don't find their way out of the drainage holes.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Wait till they come up - about this time of year - and they're easy to find.

[BarriedaleNick]

Rotavating my first plot in early spring.  Basically chopped up all the bindweed into nice new little plants.  It was like a nice neat field of green when it came up several weeks later.

[strawberry1]

growing loch ness thornless blackberries. We put the posts in and the wires and pruned the old and tied in the new and all went well for three productive years, then I noticed runners and the blackberry was getting a bit too hard to deal with. We dug the original plants and the extra runners out and spent many hours pulling up the posts and undoing the wires and digging out as much of the roots as I could find. That was 2 years ago and all last year there were still runners, showing up yards away, so they all came out and I breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn`t left the two plants in the ground, yes you have guessed it, today alone I dug up 23 more runners and two got quite big almost overnight, they were all several yards away from the original site. So much work when we could have picked them from the hedgerows anyway. The upside is what if I had left them, arghh it doesn`t bear thinking about

[artichoke]

Another one: the goji berries! They grow at the speed of light, are strong and thorny, flower very late, and do not produce berries. I struggled to keep them within bounds for years, great waving tentacles grabbing everyone. I read that the leaves were edible and tried to like them.....  Now I have sawed them down to the ground and put newspapers and tarpaulin over them until they die. They are far too huge and tough to be dug out.

Be warned.

[elhuerto]

Another vote for goji berries. Took me ages last year to dig out the roots as they were beginning to pop up all over the place. Thought I had sorted it out but down on the allotment tonight I've found them popping up again. It did produce a lot of berries but noone in the family liked them and it was spreading all over the place.

Another case of being guilty of planting first and thinking later as I should have learned from my rampant raspberries and blackberries. I also have a huge chokeberry "tree" that is going to have to come down this year and will probably haunt me for years to come

[pumkinlover]

Composting window envelopes and cardboard boxes without removing the plastic tape.......

[strawberry1]

another 30 runners dug out from the exterminated loch ness blackberries. There seems to be no end. Just breathing a sigh of relief in not planting goji, I almost did

my raspberries are starting to get rampant, I used to grow summer raspberries under a large fruit cage in another garden and they were so manageable, these autumn ones are completely different, at least they won`t be as hard to pull out as the loch ness

[Marlborough]

Every year, taking time to plant and raise broccoli. Only for it to go to seed and end up on compost heap!!