Allotments 4 All
Allotment Stuff => The Basics => Topic started by: cdchater on October 13, 2003, 16:55:53
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Hello all
Just wondered if anyone has any good cheap ideas for pegs, to mark out my beds?? I'm thinking of using old tent pegs and string...threw some out a few months ago because the tent was broken, and now I wish I'd kept them!
Assembled my shed yesterday (great fun!!) so I shall be nice and warm during the winter months....although digging my beds will keep me warm enough!
Any ideas/tips grateful.
Claire
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Hi,
To bed or not to bed..that is the question.
I used to have beds, but they became an absolute pain.
Now I have an unbroken run. Why? I found the beds too restricting. They determined my run, not my plants or my own ideas. I feel that a central path the length of the plot is simplest/best for me. This means that I can plant in blocks, double/triple rows and even in a conga If I wish. :)
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On my old family plottie we used old boards to mark the beds - dad used to pick up wood from skips etc when out on his milkround, but I agree with Merv, you were restricted to the bed size, and as has been mentioned in another posting somewhere, the boards kept all the lovely slugs and snails in! I am not going down the bed route with my own plottie, I have dug the whole site and will just walk paths inbetween rows of things where I need them. I am lucky as the soil is very light and stoney and doesn't seem to get compacted easily, and it means, if I inherit, for example, a clump or rhubarb.....I am still hoping! then I can plonk it in wherever I choose.
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I planted some onions and garlic last weekend, put a net over them to keep the pigeons away and then realised that the measly 4 pegs that came with the net would not keep them pinned down :-[
So, I improvised, we had just cut down a privet bush and I snipped off some sturdy stems that had fairly sturdy offshoots, trimmed the leaves off, and had some excellent free L shaped pegs!!!
Of course this may mean I end up growing lots of small privet bushes as well, because the wood was still green... but needs must!!
Ten x
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hehehe, so this time next year you will be out cutting the hedges around your allotment! ;D
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I just marked mine out before digging by tying string to old bits of brick to weigh it down
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Hi Claire. I don't think this is what you mean but it may be an idea to mark your rows. I use wooden tongue depressors (that doctors use) at the beginning and end of each row, with a water proof ink pen I write what it is I sowed there on it. They are dirt cheap and 100 to a box. -Ina
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My plots (2 main L-shaped ones - one manured, the other not) get forked over each spring..my sub- plots then depend on how many/much of what I'm planning to grow - tread down paths between them , so some times a bit more, some times a bit less?
Like Ina I use wooden markers - in my case those flat lollipop sticks. They get composted, in time..
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When I need pegs I just cut them off the nearest hedge. However, for plant labels I find nothing better than the flat lolly sticks from Walls Mangums or similar - my grandchildren have firm instructions to save them all and present them to me for Christmas.
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We had an amusing experience pegging out some beds in the Spring, as we used some old pruned bits of red currant twigs to mark them. We were amazed though at how many took root and started shooting away with green leaves. ??? It was so unexpected as the twigs looked completely dead when we used them. We could have had lots more lovely red currants plants, I am sure, if we had left them in. We couldn't help feeling though that if we had wanted to re root the red currants it wouldnt have been quite that easy. ;D Busy_Lizzie
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Once, I bought some new bean poles. At the end of the summer I dismantled the structure, except for one pole. It just wouldn't come out...I tugged and tugged and tugged and then dug and dug and dug and got very hot and bothered...then..out it came...
WITH ROOTS!!!! ;D
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Oh boy I definitely will be getting privet bushes then!
Hmm privet & parsnip soup?
Ten x