Allotments 4 All
Allotment Stuff => The Basics => Topic started by: gavin on March 24, 2005, 21:44:41
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My soil is still too cold and wet for sowing, so I had to do something the last couple of days. Itchy fingers, and far too many seed potatoes for the space I've cleared!
Anybody used the "lazy bed" technique? I've read about it - turning grass lawns into vegetable beds. Sorry, but that's the easy bit - how about solid clay soil (bent a third spade today - two broken already), with a 2-3 inch mat of couch grass? (I've removed the brambles, rasps and plum tree suckers!).
I've made a couple of lazybeds today - one is sown with potatoes, the other I'd like to use for sweetcorn and squashes.
BUT - am I being too optimistic?
All best - Gavin
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Gavin
No a lazy bed as such but I did this last year to a patch of grass. I too am on heavy clay.
Mowed it of tight to ground level a couple of times.
Covered the whole are with plantex.
Cut crosses on the planted where I was to grow anything, bug out a bucket of soil/turf, back filled with manure and compost.
In this "no dig" bed I grew very good crops of courgettes, pumpkin and out door toms.
This was a picture taken on the first day, plantex peg down and ready to go:
(http://img.photobox.co.uk/547950718c11b28761fdb812357bf7dc2272522804dd9149d3a3f8bb.jpg)
I cant seem to find a picture of it planted up but in this picture you can see ther same bed this year, the one in the middle at the back of the picture. This spring I removed the plantex and dug over the bed and created a raised bed. All the couch under the plantex was dead and the soil dug very well. I did skim the top 2 inches of to remove most of the dead turf. This is stacked in a corner and will go back onto the bed in the autumn.
(http://img.photobox.co.uk/982020692958c28f8ba91c60613c71232d74f6ba46500083c16dd34a.jpg)
Hope that helps.
Jerry
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Don't make the same mistake that I did.
I put down a 25' run of Agralan Permealay (weed supressant) for dwarf beans.
The 'oldies' will have seen the result - a 12" high weed 'cushion' which smothered the beans!!
Small print? Yes. Cover the material with soil or bark!!