Clearing a new allotment
From Allotments4All
Contents
Introduction
One of the most common reasons why new allotmenteers give up in their first season is the daunting task of cultivating an entire overgrown plot. Understanding different techniques for clearing some parts of a plot and simply keeping other parts 'in check' by stopping futher undesirable weed growth, can be an important part of helping to set realistic goals, reduce unnecessary discouragement and increase active allotment participation.
Bit at a time
New allotments are not cleared in a day. Unless you are very lucky your first plot will have a covering of both perennial weeds and annual weeds when you first get it. The perennial weeds should be disposed of carefully, since they have the capacity to re-root and grow again if dug back into the soil.
Do not add perennial weeds directly to your compost heap unless all light is excluded and you intend the heap to be left for a couple of years before using the contents. Other ways of dealing with perennial weeds include either burning/binning, or submerging in a spare water butt until they rot down completely. The resulting liquid can then be used as a liquid feed, or tipped onto the compost heap as a wetter/activator in the summer.
Covering with black plastic, cardboard etc
If sections of your allotment are not going to be dug in the near future but you want to bring them into cultivation at a later date, you could consider covering these areas with black plastic, cardboard, carpets made of natural fibre or any other light excluding material which does not pollute the soil.
Remember that winter winds can be quite strong, so any material used to cover the earth will need to be pegged down at the edges and weighed down with heavy objects such as bricks or 'soil bags'.
To make soil bags, simply fill one bag with soil and tie a knot in the top, then put this in another carrier bag so that you have a couple of handles to move it about with. When you have finished with the weights you just cut holes in the bag, empty the soil back onto the allotment and bin the old carrier bags.
Also remember that some materials, like polythene, can also be degraded by UV light so may crumble up and present further difficulties if left in the open for very long amounts of time. After a year most growth will have disappeared from under a lightproof covering and much of the hard work involved in clearing this area of weeds will then no longer be necessary.
Some allotmenteers choose to cover bare soil with light proof plastic over winter to protect against the leeching effect of heavy rain which may otherwise wash away soil nutrients that other plants could benefit from next year. Another way of doing this is to use a Green manure between sowings of other crops.
Land may also be returned to cultivation using a method referred to as Lasagne Gardening.
Rotovating
Whether to rotovate or not appears to be a personal thing, below are listed two points for and two against from the A4A forum. Point 1 Two things, 1. yes rotovating does spread weeds (especially bind weed), but the ground is so broken up that they can be pulled by hand quite easily. 2. The rotovator blades form a 'Hard Pan' at the bottom of the trench over a period of time which can seriously affect the drainage of the ground and also the plants ability to access trace elements in the sub soil. Every 5 years drive a stake appox 2' into the ground every foot or so and wriggle around to break the 'Hard Pan' up.
A rotovator is great for creating a fine tilth, mixing in compost, manure etc but for 'digging' compacted earth it is as hard or sometimes harder than digging using a spade.
Point 2 but it was rotovated - twice in the space of a month or so - before I took it over. I don't know if it was done very badly or very well, but what I have is gorgeous friable soil that's full of worms and dead easy to work. Some of the beds that I'm digging over by hand are full of bloody great roots and others aren't.
What it seems to have done for me is given me a plot that's much less scary than it would have been otherwise without vastly increasing the weeds (as everybody warns that it does). As above, you do still have to put the backache in; I'm going through each bed by hand and rarely clear more than one each weekend. I'll be lucky to have the whole plot rough dug by spring. But because of the rotavation I've managed to sow some rye grass that seems to be competing with the couch and bindweed, and I'm digging ground that even now, two months on, seems like more earth than weeds.
Point 3 When I got my latest plot it coincided with another new owner at the other end of the field.
Much to my husband's chagrin I insisted that we clear the plot by hand, digging over, bed by bed freeing all the couch and bindweed roots as we went. Allotmenteer number two took the rotavator approach, my hubbie was deeply jealous of the sight of man and machine pitted against the ravages of nature.
Two years later we have a neat(ish) and productive plot, full of veg, fruit and flowers. We still struggle daily with the bindweed - as do most of us- but things are well with the plot.
Allotmenteer number two has a disaster area of pernicious weeds, lumps and bumps where yet another time/labour saving idea has gone wrong - (dig below the level of the weeds and seive all the soil back into the hole - I don't think so). More importantly to me, he has not harvested so much as a bean from the plot.
I cannot count the number of times over this year, as the sun has set over the rhubarb, that my husband has said "do you know, I'm glad we did the thing properly"
Point 4 If your plot is mostly weeds, as most are, then you will just exacerbate the problem by chopping them into zillions of little pieces and digging them back in. You need to cut weeds back by strimming first. then you could cover up with sheet mulch etc and just prepare one bed at a time. this way the rest of the plot is slumbering under black plastic or cardboard and not getting any worse while you tackle a bed. You can then either weed kill your bed with glyphos and wait til it does its thing (about 3 weeks ish) then dig and get all the couch roots out, or go for no dig Lasagne Gardening method There's no need to try and do all the plot at once - it's not going anywhere and I'd resist the urge to try. You're more likely to stick at it if you do it in manageable chunks, eg a bed at a time.
