Topic: Carpets on allotments

[antipodes]

Guilty to using carpet for paths, but this year I have finally got around to removing it and putting down boards etc in its place. The only thing that grows under carpet is bindweed, worse luck...

[OberonUK]

Can I suggest a slightly different approach? Some basic psychology first; the human brain does not process negatives. If you tell someone "Don't walk on the grass" what is the one think they then most want to do? If I say to you, "Don't think of a tree" what is the first image you get in your mind? To process 'no tree' you first have to think 'tree' and then take it away. So, as a way of encouraging people to change their habits, you may have more success suggesting alternatives that ARE allowed, than ones that are not. Don't start by saying "You can't use carpets" but say, "Our allotment supports the use of..." - you can then go on to say that other products, such as carpets, have been proven to have negative impacts. That way you don't take away something without providing a replacement and you may find the transition a little easier. Sorry, load of waffle, but I have found that an effective approach for implementing change.

[Trevor_D]

Nice approach, Oberon.

We're trying to stop members spreading a layer of untidy rubbish over their plots. But putting something under paths is another matter.

So - what are the alternatives? Cheap ones, that is - you can buy woven landscape roll, but some of our members are retired or unemployed, or have young families. The appeal of carpet is that's it's free!

[Baccy Man]

The 2 most popular alternatives to carpet are sheet plastic which excludes light & water so it doesn't do the soil much good which then photodegrades (breaks into millions of tiny fragments) after a couple of years even if it is UV stabilised. It then takes years to remove all the fragments of plastic from your plot. Or there is landscaping fabric, most people either don't know or don't care that there are several different types of landscaping fabric which are intended for very different purposes they just buy whichever they can find cheap if it is covered with mulch it lasts about 5 years before it photodegrades if exposed to light it breaks down significantly faster. Both are just as bad as carpet when it comes to removing them in my opinion.

The alternatives are either to dig over the plot removing all the weeds, or using weedkiller if digging sounds too much like hard work, or to use organic materials as mulch, or growing green manures to suppress weed growth.
Most tree surgeons will give away free woodchips by the lorry load they could be spread several inches thick to mulch the ground suppressing weed growth. When people are ready to cultivate the ground they can easily be raked into a pile somewhere out the way, after a year or 2 they will of broken down (faster if you innoculated them with mushroom spawn & you would get a load of mushrooms to eat too) & the resulting compost can be used to amend the soil.

[lincsyokel2]

so how do we know if there are toxins in the soil that are harmful?  How harmful is harmful?  I know that there have been bits of carpet in the soil as we still find fibres here and there.  Are all our plans to grow lovely veg this summer going to come to nothing?  Are we going to poison ourselves if we eat the stuff we grow?

You dont know, unless you send a sample to the public analyst. Otherwise its a guess.

[lincsyokel2]

Most tree surgeons will give away free woodchips by the lorry load th

Thats rapidly coming to an end as well, since the chinese are buy all the lumber on the planet (srsly), and bark chips are a by product of milling lumber. The Irish are now burning bark chips in power stations and the value is rising rapidly. So the amount of bark chips entering and being made here is rapidly diminishing.

In 3 or 4 years, bark chips will be a luxury product.

[Unwashed]

Good points Baccy Man.  Getting the land under cultivation has to be the priority, and allowing land to stand is just a management issue like Tony said.  Interesting idea about tree-surgeon chippings - they have to pay to dump the stuff so there shouldn't be a problem with supply, though I wonder if you really would be able to rake them up, and if not you might need to apply a good dose of nitrogen, no?

When I took on my 20 pole plot it was in a state and took me a couple of years to get under control, and I kept the weeds under control by regular hard strimming.  Not everyone has a strimmer and they're not cheap, but a good site association can rent one for a small fee.

[Baccy Man]

Wood chips are just 1 example of a potentially free readily available organic mulch. I co-own a Bear Cat CH1238DHXE with a tree surgeon I know & have a flymo electric shredder at home for the smaller stuff, I carry out clearance work locally so always have abundant supplies of woodchips available.
If woodchips were left in place they would cause a certain amount of nitrogen immobilisation in the first year easily remedied by adding something rich in nitrogen such as manure however in subsequent years colonies of funghi would of formed which would break down the woodchips without too much nitrogen being used in much the same way as soil in a woodland area does so it would not be necessary to continue adding additional nitrogen every year.

[caroline7758]

Just had a look at ebay- amazing how much some people think they can get! (Mind you, I'll be watching that one in Leeds!)

[gp.girl]

Free mulch - try cardboard availiable from all good shops, in a varity of sizes, just ask, will supress most things, dig in, compost or burn at end of useful life.

Just remember to take off any tape first.

I've seen people BURNING old carpet on my site.  >:(

The weeds got a serious bashing for that one. ;D

[caroline7758]

I use cardboard when I can,but it's hard to get enough stuff to hold it down, so it often ends up blowing all over the plot.

BTW, got a quote from a local tree surgeon- 80 quid for 3 cubic metres of woodchip!

[Baccy Man]

£80 is a ridiculous price for a waste product, the most you pay round here is a few quid to cover the fuel for delivery & that is only if you live out of the area where the tree surgeons are working.

As a point of reference each square metre of woodchips will cover 10 square metres of ground as a 4" thick mulch to preserve moisture.
Alternately it can be used to cover 5 square metres of uncultivated ground @ 8" thick preferably with cardboard or newspaper layed below it which will suppress virtually all weed growth & kill off the majority of the existing weeds.

[Vinlander]

The toxic chemicals are released when the carpet rots, and then leeches into the soil. This doesn't happen when you use a carpet at home, only when you leave it to rot on a square of land.

Im afraid its the product that IS the problem.

Either it is a natural product and the carpet (or that part of it) rots away, or it is a synthetic carpet and the carpet (or that part of it) doesn't rot away.

If it doesn't rot away then anything inside the nylon (say) fibres isn't going to come out. Maybe a tiny amount from the surface - but dyes are generally active chemicals with a short half-life - interaction with light and chemical reactivity tend to go hand in hand - that's why lapis, ruby, amethyst etc. (that rely on elements not molecules for colour and break this rule) are expensive and it also knocks on to heavy metals being really nasty and active.

Active chemicals that are there because of their reactivity tend to come out during normal use - the fungicides that gave sofa owners full body rashes recently wouldn't have been a problem if they had stayed in there...

I can't speak for fire retardants - borax is fine unless you eat a bowl for lunch, but there are so many others I've never researched.

If you read old organic gardening books (which are much more down to earth and less dogmatic) you find that the carpet scare started when our coal fires used to shed heavy metals onto them and our motor cars burnt lead tetraethyl that was blown or walked in from the street.

Carpets can be more trouble than they are worth if they are used stupidly, and the council invariably ends up dealing with the worst of them. so it comes down to that old saying "they would say that wouldn't they?".

Cheers.

[lincsyokel2]

The toxic chemicals are released when the carpet rots, and then leeches into the soil. This doesn't happen when you use a carpet at home, only when you leave it to rot on a square of land.

Im afraid its the product that IS the problem.

Either it is a natural product and the carpet (or that part of it) rots away, or it is a synthetic carpet and the carpet (or that part of it) doesn't rot away.

If it doesn't rot away then anything inside the nylon (say) fibres isn't going to come out. Maybe a tiny amount from the surface - but dyes are generally active chemicals with a short half-life - interaction with light and chemical reactivity tend to go hand in hand - that's why lapis, ruby, amethyst etc. (that rely on elements not molecules for colour and break this rule) are expensive and it also knocks on to heavy metals being really nasty and active.

Active chemicals that are there because of their reactivity tend to come out during normal use - the fungicides that gave sofa owners full body rashes recently wouldn't have been a problem if they had stayed in there...

I can't speak for fire retardants - borax is fine unless you eat a bowl for lunch, but there are so many others I've never researched.

If you read old organic gardening books (which are much more down to earth and less dogmatic) you find that the carpet scare started when our coal fires used to shed heavy metals onto them and our motor cars burnt lead tetraethyl that was blown or walked in from the street.

Carpets can be more trouble than they are worth if they are used stupidly, and the council invariably ends up dealing with the worst of them. so it comes down to that old saying "they would say that wouldn't they?".

Cheers.

well, i dont want to rain on your parade, but i am aware of trials that conducted by certain well know compost manufacturers, using shredded carpet as a peat substitute, the result were poor (which is why you cant buy it in the shops now) but there was also a significant problem with neutralising chemicals in shredded carpet and trace toxins leaching out when in contact with moist peat.

[kippers garden]

Well i think there will be alot of people worried after reading this thread after taking on new plots and disposing of old carpets on their plots.  From reading this thread it sounds like people will be poisened if they eat veg grown on areas that were previously covered in old carpets...will someone with some knowledge of the chemicals put our minds at rest and tell us that we won't be harming our kids if we feed them veg grown where carpets once covered the ground.

Thanks for any replies on this

[tonybloke]

Well i think there will be alot of people worried after reading this thread after taking on new plots and disposing of old carpets on their plots.  From reading this thread it sounds like people will be poisened if they eat veg grown on areas that were previously covered in old carpets...will someone with some knowledge of the chemicals put our minds at rest and tell us that we won't be harming our kids if we feed them veg grown where carpets once covered the ground.

Thanks for any replies on this

The chemical problems created by carpets on allotments are minimal when compared with the arsenal of poisons that generations of gardeners have used over the years on their allotments, not to mention the fall-out from aviation, vehicle exhausts, chernobyl, agriculture(via composting shop-bought fruit/veg) etc etc etc.
Most, if not all poisons are 'cleaned up' by processes known as 'bio-remediation', and the actions of bacterium and fungii, aided by the actions of earthworms.

[Unwashed]

Google for "carpet toxic chemicals" and you'll find several news stories and some hysterical blogging about this.  There appears to have been some peer-revied research but I didn't turn up any papers as such.

As I understand it there are two concerns, one is that carperts out-gas toxic chemicals used in their manufacture, and the other that carperts accumulate environmental toxins.

I can understand how the second mechanism could potentially be a problem for heavy metals because it's exactly the same mechanism used in a sluice-box to collect gold, so after a lifetime of accumulation the heavy matals are released when the carpet rots, though exactly how big a problem that would be is anyone's guess.  If a 25 year old carpet contains 100x the typical environmental load of cadmium, lead, and mercury that's an interesting finding that could well earn an eager beaver her PhD, but if it's 100x negliagable it's still negliagable.  Other toxic chemicals can accumulate by the same mechanism and protected from UV and bacterial action they can apparently survive in the carpet for quite some time, but like Tony says, bioremediation is likely to neutralise these toxins as the carpet rots.

The first mechanism is what we've talked about so far and without some reliable research it's difficult to understand how much of a problem this is.  It's plausible that the carpet releases dangerous chemicals as it breaks down, but does it release these chemicals in dangerous levels?

It's my natural inclination to dismiss any idea that's new and worrying and not run around like Chicken Licken, but to balance that it's good to be open to dangerous new ideas.  So on balance I'm not bothered if the odd carpet has rotted down on my plot.  I reason that toxins in the carpet are not going to be at dangerously high levels, that they will be neutralised by natureal soil activity, and that they won't bio-accumulate in my crops.