Allotments 4 All
Allotment Stuff => The Basics => Topic started by: Trevor_D on April 29, 2010, 17:17:48
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In the days when people were encouraged to take on more land than they could deal with, just to get plots being tenanted, it was common advice that those areas which couldn't be dealt with immediately should be covered up. One of the materials frequently mentioned was old carpets.
We're still finding that plots which haven't been fully cultivated still have carpet on them, even though the folk who left them there have moved on (ie. given up!). So new people who take on plots have first to deal with layers of old carpet!
But we're also concerned that modern carpets have other problems: they don't rot down and are full of toxic chemicals! From odd references here, I know that a number of sites and councils now ban their use. We'd like to, but don't want to be seen by our members as making up rules for the sake of it.
We have a newsletter coming out soon and would like to offer some informed opinion. And I'd like to raise it at our Borough Federation's meeting - although they don't currently ban the use of carpet there are a number of people who are concerned, as I am.
What's the situation on other sites? All input gratefully received.
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Trevor, I think you're going about this in exactly the right way. I'd agree with all of what you say; there are legitimate concerns, and there are also the tenants to think about.
I've encountered old modern carpet and you get left with a mess of non-biodegradable string. I wasn't aware of a problem with toxic chemicals though - is that right? I don't think it's acceptable to contaminate the plot like that so I suggest a ban on synthetic carpet is justified. And as the details of that could easily get forgotten I think a total ban on carpet, synthetic or otherwise, is justified.
But you're right to explain the need for the ban because none of us enjoy needless rules, and a reasonable allotmenteer will support the reasoning.
I'd also give serious thought to a total ban on glass too. I know greenhouses and shed windows are really useful, but every plot I've had has had tons of broken glass. On balance though I guess this is too much, but it does make you wonder.
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When I took over my plot, the bottom 1/3rd was covered in old carpet with bindweed and mares tail growing happily under and through it.
I removed it and cut it into manageable pieces which I took home over a period of weeks and put in in my household waste bins. I take all my non-compostable waste home and dispose of it that way while other plotholders seem to bring their rubbish to the allotment and dump it on their own plot.
Apart from obvious sheet glass, it was amazing how many bottles, both broken and complete were in the soil and I am still removing it 4 years later.
(http://www.allaboutallotments.com/aaaindexplot060318.jpg)
http://www.allaboutallotments.com/index.html
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Carpet is banned on our site because of the toxins in the dye amongst other things. There nowt worse than digging along happily and coming across shreds of old nylon carpet. Its apain the butt
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Carpet is banned on our site, only a recent ban. I think the Council man who drove the big machine that turned the allotments over before they were let got very angry when the carpet broke the machine. The plots are let as seen now. We had time to get rid of the carpet, it was very heavy and ackward to lift but the Council did provide a rubbish truck so we could dump it on that. My site is in Enfield, north London. We are not allowed sheds or greenhouses. Sheds because they get broken into and greenhouses the same and I suppose also the problem of glass, although I would have thought that strengthened glass like car windscreens should be OK. I am quite happy with the way the Council run the site so far, we even get free compost and if very lucky woodchip. The compost is getting very popular and our next delivery will be the end of June, I suppose the word has gone round and they share it between all the allotments.
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Totally agree about the nasties that are in carpets, for starters you have the dye you also have the rubbish that is in the foam backing all kinds of hazardous materials go in to that stuff, but I suppose someone will come along and say they only use 'Axminster', ;)
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When we took on our full size plot it had two layers of carpet,nasty ,sodden ,heavy, smelly ,leaving a layer of foam etc removing it took us two weeks and countless trips to the dump.Plastic or cardboard is a much better option for all concerned,there is no merit in using carpet. Can you tell after 5 years I am still cross and finding nylon.
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even with finest axminster you don't know what chemicals, flame retardants and what nots they have been treated with
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As Borlotti says carpets are meant to be banned on our site, another Enfield site, but no one as far as I know have removed any from their plot, quite a few use it as paths in between the plots and some cover their compost bins with it. I have some covering the back end of my plot and have been rolling it back over the months to work on, I think if its not left down to long its OK, but the problem is people put it down and leave it and by the time someone new gets the plot the carpet has become intwined with the grass and weeds and thats the problem. ;D ;D ;D
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There are other, biodegradable alternatives so why mess with the land?
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Banned on our site, thankfully. Had to dig loads of it up, left by the 'eco friendly' previous tenant!
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I use old carpets, cut into long strips to cover my paths. they are wool carpets though. I have seen the mess that the nylon ones make. You never seem to get rid of the nylon stringy bits. I would never leave this in a heap to be overgrown with soil and weeds etc. I have seen them like that on other peoples plots. they must be near on implossible to reeove. I too have seen broken glass just left on plots, walked over and crunched into slivers.If nothing else, it is so cruel to anials, either wild or domestic. Why don't people just clear up their mess, be it on their own plots, or elsewhere? ???
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I had a nightmare job getting rid of carpet on my plot when I took it on. the biodegradeable bits had rotted, and what was left was embedded in a mass of couch grass.
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modern carpets have other problems: they don't rot down and are full of toxic chemicals!
if carpets are so full of toxic chemicals, why do folk purchase them to put in their homes? Isn't the usual advertising image one of a baby laying on the said poison-filled product?
I use industrial cord-type carpet, the stuff you see stuck on the floor in schoolsand offfices, on my plot, as paths between the beds, and as a cover on some beds, when the beds are not in production, asparagus bed over-winter, etc. ( I got a mate who is a professional flooring installer)
The sites that ban the use of carpets also seem to allow the use of 'landscape fabric' on their sites (Possible case of prejudice between folk who can afford ground-covering materials, and folk who can't afford to purchase?)
This stuff is just as much of a nuisance on an over-grown plot as carpet is. Any thing that is left on a plot at end of tenancy should be removed at the tenant's expense.
It's the bad management of sites that's the actual issue here, not the product!!
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I think Georgie has a Persian rug on hers. :-* ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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I have put carpet on my plot but it is coir with a natural latex backing.
an adjacent plot holder told me it was full of toxins and my veg wouldn't be safe to eat........as he wandered round spraying round up willy nilly. ::)
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When we took over our third of a plot in February it had been covered for four years with thick black plastic then carpet on top of that. It took our plotholder a couple of weeks to take it all up in stages, but didn't seem to be causing too much of a problem. In places it had a layer of moss on top which he scraped of, and there some some patches that just had carpet, and we keep finding fibres in the soil as we dig, but it was a whole lot easier for us to dig than if we'd taken over a weed infested bit of ground thick with brambles! And we didn't have to remove it ourselves, or find places to store it!
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modern carpets have other problems: they don't rot down and are full of toxic chemicals!
if carpets are so full of toxic chemicals, why do folk purchase them to put in their homes? Isn't the usual advertising image one of a baby laying on the said poison-filled product?
I use industrial cord-type carpet, the stuff you see stuck on the floor in schoolsand offfices, on my plot, as paths between the beds, and as a cover on some beds, when the beds are not in production, asparagus bed over-winter, etc. ( I got a mate who is a professional flooring installer)
The sites that ban the use of carpets also seem to allow the use of 'landscape fabric' on their sites (Possible case of prejudice between folk who can afford ground-covering materials, and folk who can't afford to purchase?)
This stuff is just as much of a nuisance on an over-grown plot as carpet is. Any thing that is left on a plot at end of tenancy should be removed at the tenant's expense.
It's the bad management of sites that's the actual issue here, not the product!!
The toxic chemicals are released when the carpet rots, and then leeches into the soil. This doesnt 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.
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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?
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Thanks for the input.
I think - and much of what's been said here has confirmed it - that the main problem is laziness. People think that because they've covered up a "problem" area, it's somehow gone away and they "don't have to get round to it for a bit"! Carpet - or any other covering for that matter - may be OK for very short-term use, but it gets left and that's when the problems start.
I agree with Tony that it's (partly) a problem of bad management: that's why we as a Committee are trying to introduce some good management! At a recent working party, I spent best part of an hour removing layers of carpet from a disused plot. I stopped counting the layers when I reached 12! (I think there were nearer 19!) That's not good husbandry - it's laziness!
And there are toxins in modern carpets; the materials don't rot down; weed - convolvulus especially - isn't killed. And it looks a mess!
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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...
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!)
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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
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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!
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£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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.