Topic: Newbie, new plot, loads of weeds - help

[Yampybird]

Hi folks

I've been having a read and thought I'd ask for some advice.

My friend and I have just got a largish plot between us, about 200sq mtrs.  The parish council will strim the chest height weeds to ground level for us.  I'm going to ask them NOT to rotovate, coz I want to pull the weeds out not chop them up.

The plot is on clay soil, gets sun from about 11am until sunset.  I have water nearby, the site is slightly sloping, drainage is quite good.

The question is - what is the best layout for an allotment, should I create raised beds?  Are long narrow beds better than large beds?  Take into consideration the fact that we have 4 small children (1-5 years old) just to complicate things.

Any suggestions on the best way to clear (digging my fingers to the bone is my bet - and I'm sorta looking forward to it), what I can still plant at this time of year?

All help greatly appreciated = please assume I'm a complete numpty when answering ;D


Thanks for your replies in advance

[SMP1704]

Hi there and welcome.

You came to right place for advice (honest!)

Everyone clears their plot in different ways based on how much time they have available.

You have already decided to clear by hand so go for it.

when I got my plot 3 years ago, it was completely overgrown.  I marked out a series of 8x4 beds and just dug those areas.  I had about 8 of those ready to go in the first year.  I also dug out and prepared some pumpkin 'pits' and left the weeds - that worked well as the big leaves held back the weeds.  Year 2, I changed the layout, dug the weedy paths and put in fruit trees and more raspberries and strawberries and rotovated a large area baked solid by the April sun and then dug it by hand.  This year I put in a flower and herb bed and a polytunnel and put a cage up over the strawb bed.
 
Size of beds - I now have 4 8x4 beds which I use to grow onions, carrots, brassicas and beans and rotate on that basis.  I have 3 larger beds which I use to grow potatoes, sweetcorn/squash and another for peas - after the first year I found it too difficult to grow these in small beds.  I also extended my raspberry bed to 20x4.  With the larger beds, I have to walk over them and they are the 3 beds that do need to be dub every year.  The others beds just get a light fork over and some compost - no-dig  ;D

I also have two children and now at 10 and 15 can be quite helpful but when younger, I found it easier to leave them at home ::).  I was lucky that my work patterns meant I could devote at least one day per week to the plot and this year I find I can manage with evening and weekend visits.

Do whatever works best for you - look at what you have done rather than what is left to do.

Useful things for the plot - black plastic/membrane to cover the bits you are not ready to dig, bricks to hold it all down, black plastic florist pots for growing just about anything, with or without the bottoms removed, string to mark out digging areas and tie things up/together, sharp sand to break up the clay.

Everyone has a different way of growing and most times the plants ignore our interventions and get on with it ;D

Enjoy your plot and digging and come back to ask more questions and post pictures of your progress :D :D

[Yampybird]

What's a pumpkin pit?

[SMP1704]

For me, it was a square about 4x4 that I dug out of the weedy area.  In those squares, I thoroughly weeded and enriched with manure so that the soil was mounded up and the plant went in the top of the mound, in a slight hollow so that the water would soak in rather than run down the mound.
 
I did that in year one so that the boys would have pumpkins for Halloween and something to hold their interest while on site with me (that part of the plan only partially worked ::))

Does that make sense?

[Yampybird]

Yep gotcha, I was thinking of digging kid pits, that should keep them under control.  A pumpkin pit might well be good for my son coz he was fascinated with pumpkins last halloween.  Thanks

[ceres]

Hi yampybird and welcome!  Congrats on your new plot.  Hours of fun ahead!  

No doubt you'll get replies from both 'rotovators' and non-rotovators'!  I chose not to rotovate and dug it out clearing the weeds by hand and I've had almost no re-growth of perennial weeds to deal with.  Little and often is the way to do it, saves your back and your enthusiasm.  

I can't help with clay soil - I've got the opposite, very free-draining sandy loam.  How you lay out your beds is an indiivdual choice - if you're Joe Swift, you go for diamonds and triangles!  The only thing to watch out for is that you can reach all parts of your beds from your paths so that you don't have to walk on them.

My advice would be to concentrate on clearing a small area quickly and get planting to get some payback.  You can sow salad stuff all summer, it's not too late for beans, squashes, pumpkins etc and you should still be able to find young tomato and brassica plants.  Once the council has strimmed for you, cover the rest with membrane/black plastic/carpet/cardboard to start killing the weeds off.

Good luck and keep posting!

[ceres]

Alternative idea for pumpkin pit - I grew mine on all the weeds I'd dug out.  Piled them up into a huge mound covered with a holey tarp.  Planted butternut squash and pumpkins into the holes, watered and fed and Roberta's your auntie!

[manicscousers]

hiya, yampbird, nice to meet you
when we got this plot, it was covered with marestail and couch grass, plus lots of bindweed around the sides, it was also under water for 3 months of the year, so we put down on paper where everything would be.
we marked out paths with thick cardboard, covered some of it with old compost bags, cut in half and laid flat, some with weed suppressant.this made it easier to not walk where the beds were going to be
then we built raised beds, covered the bottoms with thick card (everyone was saving it for us), started filling them, one at a time
if you can get a bed done quickly, french beans can be planted, some garden centres are still selling plants, brassicas etc,
have fun, don't do too much at once,  ;D

[posie]

Hello and welcome!

My plot was just like yours when I started, the council rotavated it when I wasn't looking and although at the time I thought great, now when I'm in a death battle with bindweed and marestail I'm cursing them!  So I would advocate to dig it out as much as possible.

If you're going to have paths then don't do what I did which is to dig everything then try and make a path, because quite honestly it ends up full of lumps and very wonky!  Work out where its going and dig around it!

Make sure you have a decent sized compost bin/heap - I made mine out of pallets........ ok so my brother made mine out of pallets  ::) and its already rotted half way down since last June.

And make yourself a plan but don't expect to stick to it rigidly because I can guarantee you'll end up planting something in the wrong place!  Oh and depending on kids and animals - plenty of slug pellets, you could try organic ones but quite honestly I think the slugs just eat those ones then go on to munch on your plants as the main course!

Oh and plenty of tea/coffee/vodka in a flask!

Enjoy  ;D ;D

[STEVEB]

In the 4 years ive had my plot ive changed things around constantly,only just got things where and how i want !!

[Yampybird]

Thanks all

Posie - I shall take your advice about the vodka, in small but regular amounts ;)

Thank you all for replying, I've hardly slept I cant wait to get digging and planting.  I've been doing some research online for plants, but I'm going to trawl round the garden centres this morning, whilst I'm waiting for them to strim.

Anyone got advice on the most useful tools to buy (apart from spade, fork, rake and hoe)?

 ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Jumping with exictement
Yampybird

[daileg]

i have recently taken a new plot as well it takes time and there is allways plenty of good advice here the only thing i can add to what has allready mentioned is there is two basic methods of the way you tackle your plot from the earlist point .
weather you decide to do a no dig aproach
or a conventional approach .
no dig is you turn all the soil and take all the weeds out for the first time then cover your beds with cardboard and build in layers with manure and newspaper then more compost in raised beds then there is no need to dig every year you just replenish the top of the beds every year with new compost / manure as you go .
as you have mentioned you had little ones and time will be your greatist problem  i would of thought this would be a good solution ,
have a look at the no dig website

[daileg]

Thanks all

Posie - I shall take your advice about the vodka, in small but regular amounts ;)

Thank you all for replying, I've hardly slept I cant wait to get digging and planting.  I've been doing some research online for plants, but I'm going to trawl round the garden centres this morning, whilst I'm waiting for them to strim.

Anyone got advice on the most useful tools to buy (apart from spade, fork, rake and hoe)?

 ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
to answer your question what to buy

that come to money there is loads of diffrent varieties of tools you will need a rake ,a hoe a fork i bought a product called wolf as they have interchanging heads on them
you buy one pole and can buy the attachments as you need them but a fork and spade are essential   
Jumping with excitement
Yampybird

[heyho]

Just taking my first plot this year (about 45ft x 45ft). About 3 years ago the council cleared the site i.e. run a JCB over it and dumped all the c**p in a corner (it's still there) and went away. They came back and sprayed it with roundup last year. So when I took it over it was weeds all over.

So what I did was:-

I ran a rake over it clearing most the big stuff then tried to clear as much glass as possible (the councils attempt at clearing it with a JCB meant they just flattened old greenhouses etc).

Then I hired a big rotavator and took a couple of days go over and over it.

I have then split it into four 13ft wide manageable plots (crop rotatation and all that).

Erected a hut - so important as it emans you don't have to cart all your tools around.

Aquired a load of scaffold boards which I intended to use for defining the beds but have ended up placing the between each different crop so that I can easily access it and weed it (see below). Someone dumped loads of wood chipping on the site so have used them to define the pathways.

Then I further dug and have started planting.

Then came the weeds, and the weeds and the weeds. But I have placed my crops further apart than normal so that I can hoe easily between them and this helps a lot.

As for rotovating - Luckily there is only one area that is infested with couch. I would say that if you have a lot of couch grass or other nasty weed then rotavating might make the situation worse. Most my plot seems to be weed that is shallow routed and easily pulled out and the rotavator/digging has broken the soild up so well that this is a pretty easy job (although  never ending).

And don't do what I did and for the first year order load of plug plants then not have all the area ready (work commitments and weather I blame). Plugs are sound for the first year 'virgin' allotment owner as they are an instant 'hit' but you need to be ready or else you see them slowly wilt away.

[Yampybird]

I was going to post a piccie but can't work out how to do it. :-\

[heyho]

Anyone got advice on the most useful tools to buy (apart from spade, fork, rake and hoe)?

 ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Jumping with exictement
Yampybird

My most valuable tool (ooo errrr missus) is like a conventional dutch hoe but with a hand fork (three pronged) instead of the usual dutch hoe flat end. Brilliant for weeding around crops and being long handled you don't have to bend down all the time.

Not easily to find but I managed to get one off ebay. Best tenner I could ever spend

[heyho]

I was going to post a piccie but can't work out how to do it. :-\

Do what I do and bore any guests by showing them before and after photos.

Moved into a new house 8 years ago which was just soil and rubble and i have shots of every year since showing how the garden has been transformed. Personally good to look back on but I bet it bores the pants off the people I show them to.  :D ;D ::)

[posie]

I can recommend something I bought from Instore called a cultivator - think the posh version is called a garden claw, but it's a good long handled one that's fab for getting weed roots out.  I probably use that more than a fork to be honest.

I can also recommend sharp sand if you have clay soil.  I put some through half of one bed and left the other half as it was and just two weeks on it's so much easier to dig the side that has the sand.

[Yampybird]

I've put piccies on the gallery

All looking very green and weedy

I hope you are able to view

Yampybird

[Melbourne12]

Looks a nice plot - and no brambles as far as I can see from the pix. 

Pulling and digging the weeds is the only long term solution, but if you can afford it, Roundup (glyphosate) will work wonders for this season.  Once the weeds are dead, they're a lot easier to remove, too.  Plus, any little bits of bindweed or dock root that you inevitably leave behind won't spring back to life.

We took over our plot in June 2005, in a similar state.  In the first season we cleared enough to plant some tomatoes, celeriac, and leeks - we were limited by availability of plants since it's really too late to be growing anything from seed.

Best of luck!