Topic: Just taken over allotment!

[carolrhart]

Hubby and I got our allotment yesterday - it's in one hack of mess - very overgrown, but with 2 cracking rhubarb plants and a gooseberry bush, so at least that's a start!  

What's the best way to get all that overgrown grass away?  Perhaps I should say what's the easiest?  We can't afford ro buy/hire any machinery, so I suspect it'll just have to be done the hard way!

[Multiveg]

Congratulations and good luck!

Do a small section at a time. Clear a small section of weeds and try to dig out the roots. If the weeds include dock, daisy, thistle, plantain, creeping buttercup, then you may have acidic soil. If weeds include nettles (carefully remove them and either bung 'em on a compost heap or soak them in a bucket of water - good fertiliser...) fat hen, chickweed or groundsel, you may have nice fertile soil.

You should be in time to get some maincrop potatoes down - this is a good start as the leaves will shade out a lot of the weeds.

If you then chop the rest of the weeds down, you could cover them with a bit of old carpet/thick black polythene... to stop the light getting to them. Or you could sow a "green manure" such as buckwheat which grows fast and chokes the weeds. The buckwheat can then be chopped and added to the compost heap. In the organic gardening catalogue http://www.organiccatalog.com/catalog/, buckwheat seed is only £1.30 to cover 18 sq metres.

A number of things can be sown indoors to be planted out in June/July - such as the cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli & calabrese, and leeks. Lettuce can be sown out well into summer.

Do a little at a time. It will take a time and patience but it will be worth it in the long run.

[Fingle....]

We took on ours in January, covered in brambles grass etc.... Just take it slowly and surely...we found the easiest thing to do was skim the turf off the top of out beds (put aside to rot down to soil) for raised beds etc.
Youll get fit and sleep well...trust me

All the best

[kenkew]

(Fingle: Your moving type is unreadable.)

Carol-etc, It's April, a couple more months and you would have a bigger problem. The growth you have now is manageble. Mark out a section and cut the grass and weeds down with a scythe/mower then take off the top layer of turf with a good sharp spade. Create a mound with it and cover with black poly. Leave it to rot down. (You'll need it next year.) Turn over the rest of that section with a fork breaking the ground as you go. Take out at root level all the weeds you can. Get some second early spuds in that section. Crack on with the next section.
(This time next year you'll have a good plot and a fantastic figure!)

[gavin]

Good advice - just chucking in a tuppenyworth!  Better a small bit really well cleared - and producing - than a large bit which is frustrating you to distraction!

Take it slow - and a lot of the work you do will be preparing for an excellent season next year?  Especially using the current growth to build a compost heap!

Good luck, Gavin :)

[Wicker]

Echo all of the above - every effort is repaid a thousandfold.

But not sure about Kenkew's last comment.  May have worked for his figure but I'm still pearshaped! :(

[carolrhart]

Thanks for advice and encouragement!  Muscles are aching and sore - but feeling very satisfied after our first bash at clearing the ground.  One plot is nearly ready!  The only things that seem to have grown in our allotment are plastic bags and bits of glass!

Going to take photos as we go along to chart our progress. I'm a naturally lazy person, but even I enjoyed a muddy evening down the allotment to another dull Sunday in front of the telly!

[Wicker]

Can sympathise about the glass and plastic.  Part of our plot used to be the ground where the site rubbish dump was and every time it rains heavily loads of pieces of glass, broken crockery, nails etc come to the surface!

Expect you'll be like the rest of us soon, go down to the site for just half an hour to finish something and when you check the time you've been there two hours - addictive!  Lovely!!

[Dunc_n_Tricia]

When you have your first bed prepared, plant something in it straight away.

We got our lottie just over a year ago, and the first bed was planted with herbs from B&Q within 24 hours! It had been weeded, dug over and had some growmore thrown in (and we were Kna**ered).

When we were working on the rest of the plot, we only needed to see those plants growing away and happy to keep us going. Seeing something actually growing is a great morale booster.

Enjoy yourselves and remember ... It's cheaper than joining a gym!!!

 :-* Tricia