hi all my name is mike i come from a small village just outside devizes in wiltshire.
i am in a very lucky position in that my dad owns a smallish piece of land that is currently empty but severely overgrown with weed etc but he has kindly let me use it to start an allotment.
i am totally green when it comes to all things "allotment" and have no knowledge whatsoever when it comes to tending a plot apart from the fact it will be hard work!!.
however since i have looked at this site and read a lot of the posts it seem's there is no shortage of people that are willing to help, offer advice etc.
have just grown our first batch of patatoe's in potato bags that we bought from a garden centre and now have the taste for bigger and better things!!.
got a machine coming in within the next month or so to rip the top layer off so we can actually get to the plot and will then be racking everyone's brain's as to what to do next.
look forward to speaking to you all and will post pictures of the site to give you a bit more insight into our mission ;D
take care..........mike ;)
welcome welcome
Welcome. Good choice of site ;)
Good luck mike,is it turf your stripping of ? if so stack it in a corner upside down,great top soil in a years time.
when you say your ripping the top off ?
i would be vary carefull if your talking JCB or anything like that as you will strip to much of the top soil and will take a long time to replenish this unless you have a large amount of manure you can add back
also from what your saying i would sugest a trench all aroung the edge otherwise the weeds will come back across as the root system go under ground and back to where the open good soil is .
hiya, mike77, welcome to the site, brilliant to be able to have security on site (your dad ) ;D
looking forward to seeing your progress
If you're taking the topsoil off, you wont get much off the site till you put it back. I temporarily lost a lot of mine when I lifted a vast area of couch turf to compost. I dug in loads of leaf mould, but still didn't get much till it went back on. Heap it up, cover with black plastic, and put it back after 12 months. It would be less work to dig a trench all the way round, then cover what you can't dig with black plastic. You can grow a lot of crops through holes in the plastic.
Hi and welcome Mike, good luck with your piece of land. Always good advice given here :D
Welcome to the forum.
hi all thanks very much for the welcome!
stripping the top layer started this weekend basically taking the top 1 or 2 inches off just so we can see what we have got to work with and clear the waist high weeds etc!
the soil looks very good no clay slightly sandy and quite coarse well hope this equates to being "good!!".
the stripping is being done with a mini machine daileg which has been borrowed from a friend for free!
managed to rope in a friend of my dads who has 30 yrs+ machine experience and he's done a great job of literally just scraping the surface off.....would have been craters everywhere if i had attempted it ;D.
the plan now is to finish clearing the plot marking everything out with some sand and then starting a small corner getting that clear and planted and then move on to the next part.
i think it's probably better to do that rather than trying to tackle it all at once and getting disheartened!.
at least if a small part is done and has something growing it will keep us motivated.
please feel free to correct me or give advice if you think i'm going the wrong way about it like i said before it's all totally new to me and any advice gratefully recieved ;) ;) ;).
we marked out where beds were going to be, and paths ,then didn't walk on a bed again, saves them getting compacted :)
Have been reading a couple of books for "inspiration!" and they both say she should test the ph of the soil before planting ....worthwhile or not? ???
Hi Mike,
I'm a newbie also. The Vegetable Expert by Dr D.G. Hesseyon is a good book. You can get it from W H Smith and it won't break the bank. I have all his "Expert" books and they are good. In the Vegetable one you'll find tips on how to prepare your land, fertilize it, how to rotate crops (and what crop comes under what category) and how to plant and then look after each crop.
Brambles are the worse to get rid of and if you don't intend to grow any and want to get rid of them, the quickest solution is to get some Roundup, cut the brambles down to their basic stalks and spray them. This gets rid of the root as well the top bit.
Of course experienced allotment holders are going to know best and any advice they can give you direct will be very valuable, but failing this, this is a good book to start with.
We've just planted our bean crop today and hope to get a good yield. Good luck with whatever you plant.