Topic: First Allotment - What to do now?

[BAK]

Dave83,

I guess that I was trying to understand how easy (or not) the soil is to work. I am on a sandy soil which is easy to work ... clay soils are much harder. Hopefully, you are somewhere in the middle ... on a medium loam.

How easy the soil is to work and the area to be covered will provide an indication as to how long it is likely to take you to convert an overgrown plot into a working one.

Sorry if I am telling grannie how to suck eggs but my approach (just one of many) would be to do it in 3 main stages ...

1. Clear brambles, bushes etc and strim the area (Oct say)

2. Using a fork, remove as much of the top growth of grass and weeds as is feasible without removing the soil. Aim for 90%+. The objective is to be thorough but not so thorough that you get bogged down. It is important that you feel that you are making progress. Spread this work over whatever period is reasonable (Nov-Jan?)

3. Go over the plot again with a fork, attempting to remove the remaining weeds. It is important to try and get rid of the roots of any perennial weeds, eg couch, bindweed, ground elder and mare's tail (I realise that the latter is particularly difficult). Do this in Feb say.

You could then decide what areas need to be dug and what areas could be cropped without digging (after your forking activity).

I realise that this "project" cuts across your idea of getting some crops by Xmas. My view would be to forget that very short term goal, not least because growing crops in the autumn and early winter is not easy ... possible for sure ... but not easy.

Re identifying soil types, you can find stuff on the web. Here is one example ...

http://www.ehow.com/how_4425294_identify-soil-type.html

[sunloving]

HI and welcome to a4a and congratualtions about your new plot very exciting.

You can tell what kind of soil you have by digging some up then turn over, if it falls of the spade in many small lumps and feels gritty then its a sandy probably well drained soil. If you dry some it would make a pile of sandy dust.

If you can roll it into a ball or make a ring shape and when you turn it it stays ina big lump and when dry it just makes a hard lump then youve got a lot of clay or silt in it this would not be well draining and would need some manure/ grit to open it up a bit

something in between these two is what to hope for.


Heres my two pee
dont spray as you cant be sure about residues in your crops or soil and as said above it works best on growing material and its too late. Cover as much as you can with cardboard, black plastic carpet (if allowed on your plot) and pick a patch to begin on.
If youve got a clay soil then you might not be able to simply weed out the weeds and you might have to kind of take the turf of the top and stack (under plastic- this will give you a top soil in about 6 months) and then dig over the soil and add manure or whatever you have- gromore, blood and bone, chicken poo then plant , you dont need walls to this bed really becuase when you dig over the soil it will naturally make a mound. use compost bags , coal bags cardboard to make a path around your bed. and plant this with things that are in jeannines winter planting thread in edible plants- ive got leeks and brocolli and will plant onions later on. Once this bed is planted then you can work your way around the plot.

I wouldnt build a raised bed now becuase unitl you have spent a few seasons on the plot you dont get to know what lay out will work best and so a permenant bed would restrict your ability to change this.

Little and often is the key and dont listen to the nay sayers unless they are all saying the same thing. trust your instincts and know that we have all had our disasters and made mistakes thats part of being a gardener.

good luck and lastly
if your back starts to hurt stop, dont keep going until you cant et back in the car! you wont be back on day two.
 :)
x sunloving

[heloise]

HI - I got my allotment December last year. It was  a scraggy area that had been used as a council dumping ground, so there was waist high weeds and plastic everywhere. As I wanted to plant in beds with paths inbetween I made a plan of where they were going and concentrated on chopping down the path areas and covering them with weed suppressant and bark chippings. The ground was too frozen to do much else! I don't see the point in digging the bits you'll be walking on, so this approach made it easier to see the smaller areas that needed digging when the weather get better. We put in the compost bins too at this point so we didn't waste time digging those bits either.

Once the weather became good enough and the (clay) soil became workable then it is as everyone says, time to dig. There was an enormous amount of plastic in the soil, which was horrible - even found half a fridge door about a foot down in one area! Any areas of beds that we didn't think we'd get round too straight away got covered in black plastic until we were ready to dig it - this weakened the weeds and prevented more from growing, which always helps...

Finally, we made our beds 1.5m wide, which in retrospect is a bit too wide. Neither of us is particularly tall and so reaching the middle of a bed to weed isn't as comfortable as it could be. In future (on the second half plot we seem to have recently taken on - you never have enough space!) we shall make our beds about 1.2m wide. I don't know how tall you are, but it is something to bear in mind.

We must've done something right, we have more produce than we need from our half plot, it's been fabulous. And we won a 'best endeavour' award in the allotment competition recently!  ;D

[realised this is a very selfcentred post - sorry! But I hope our experience helps]

[Rage in Eden]

Hello

I'm new to A4A and have been reading the posts for a couple of weeks, as long as I've had my new allotment.

I'm reading this thread with interest, we've made some progress with our overgrown plot but have so much to do it's a bit daunting.

[caroline7758]

Hi Heloise- sounds like you've made great progress with your plot. I wish I'd been so methodical when I started off- I'm still trying to get mine under control 5 years later! ;D

[Digeroo]

Well done Heloise. Sounds like you are doing brilliantly,

Welcome Rage in Eden. Congratulations for getting your allotment.   
Looking forward to hearing how you are getting on.  When I was getting my allotment ready I tried to set myself targets and get thing planted so I could constantly feel successful.  One of the plot holders here got rather daunted and nearly gave up but she then divided hers up into smaller areas and tackled one area at a time.

[Rage in Eden]

Thanks for the welcome Digeroo.

I think I've gone through "giving up point", we'd cleared almost half the thistles and brambles but still had so much to do that I thought we must be mad to try. Apparently the last 3 people to have the plot only got that far before giving up.

We carried on and cut down almost all the brambles (except for a waspy corner) and we've dug/made a couple of small raised beds. Some of the roots go down forever  ;D

The plan is to keep the weeds cut back and under control while we dig over all the raised beds. Hopefully by spring we'll have a lovely plot (or getting there).

[1066]

welcome to A4A Rage in Eden, and congrats on the plot  :) It sounds like you are doing a great job :)