Hi all visited my plot last night just to check on cauliflowers I planted over the weekend.Discovered that my neighbour has gone absolute ape**** with weedkiller all around the borders of his plot destroying the grass paths dividing our plots I noticed that my runner beans near the path dividing us dead and one or two onions a funny yellow colour(same as the once green grass).I am tonight going to put on my borders scaffolding boards too little too late from me I suppose in the hope that this might protect my border to his plot.I am a bit (lot)cheesed off with this and don't really know how to handle this situation.Please could any of you give me advise on how to deal with this. ???
dig deep trench, put offender in, back fill, plant more beans
How you deal with this depends on how well you get on with this person. Take some photos as proof. Does your site have a site rep you can call on if you feel unhappy about dealing with this yourself. At the very least the bean plants should be replace by offender.
But don't approach in anger, this may be a geniune accident give the person chance to right this wrong.
Hi Taurus
Approached the offender last night who was deeply sorry.As it was I only lost four of the beans nearest to the border adjoining us and he did offer to relace the damaged crop.I did ask him why he had used so much weedkiller to which he replied he wanted to kill crouch weed at source whatever that means.I like so many others dig the dreaded stuff out.He did tell me if he uses it next year he will warn me in advance so I can cover veg (dont think he realises it goes in the soil as well) to which I replied do your own three borders but not our adjoining one as I always strim my borders and paths, like I said earlier dig out weeds in the plot which he should do.
Hopefully he has taken the advice and lay off the weedkiller,so hoping now for a weedkiller free summer or a new trench will appear in my plot (his dimensions).
Any I hope something positve came out of our chat last night and I can just concentrate on my plot which is we should be doing instead of lectures on weedkiller.
Thanks for your advice Taurus especially on the photographs which I will take tonight just incase I get a repeat performance in the future.
Glad to hear you were able to talk with this man and it all worked out fine.... nothing worse than bad feeling between neighbours.
Hi Angel
That's what I was concerned about more, I didn't want to enflame a situation and have a bad neighbour who in fairness was genuinely upset. I dont think he realised the strength of the product used because the other borders are a lot worse than our divider/path.
The problem is that allotment sites are windy and unless you spray on that very rare still day, the weedkiller will drift on to ajoining plots. My raspberries on the border are showing the effect of my neighbour spraying his path even though I'm pretty sure he was careful - what can you do?
But if you are both hosting a path, he should consult you before spraying and you have explained that to him. And spraying with glyphosate isn't 100% effective in the long term - they take a hit but where you have well established weeds with deep running roots, you need to do lots of digging and spraying - it is a war rather than a single battle.
Still, sounds as if you & your neighbour are talking and that can only be a good thing.
In my garden (not allotment) I have a veg. plot which is fenced with an electric fence to keep out rabbits. To keep this clear, I use a strong glyphosate weedkiller. Half of the plot is left fallow and rotavated regularly to clean up the weeds. this dry weather has helped a lot.