I've had my allotment since last year sometime, we managed to get a few things growing. The soil is very fertile as the weeds and grass will testifty to. ;) One side is completely grassed over, we did have it rotovated last year but it sort of went to rack and ruin. The potatoes didn't do too well over there. The leaks and onions survived the winter though, and are still growing despite all the grass. I think the rotovator made our docks and couch grass problems worse.
The main problem apart from all the weeds in the soil is still very heavy, despite it being almost april. We have a couple of trenches but we noticed the guy behind us has a trench about two feet deep - we don't need to make them that deep do we?
We have blackberries, and I'm going to get rubarb this week. What apart from those will help soak up some of the water? I've heard something about fennel liking water.
Also we seem to have an awful lot of slugs, will anything other than toads, help us get rid of them? Something had a field day on the potatoes last year, I'm assuming it's wire worms? Should we be growing mustard when we plant the potatoes?
Any advice would be gratefully appreciated.
Well, Sarah - good luck!
You've obviously got a few problems and it's going to be a slog getting it right - but you've got the right attitude - you are now looking to see what sort of things would be most suitable for your plot and also what action you can take to improve the situation.
Others here can definitely advise you on drainage.
We have the opposite problem - our site is so free-draining, we may as well be gardening on the beach!
But we used to have a heavy clay allotment in Leeds - now that was so much more fertile. You can at least comfort yourself with the fact that you won't be watering every night from May to September.
At the end of the day, all plants like some water. With spuds, you can get wire-worm resistant ones - think the skins can be a bit metallic - but you can peel them. Also - one crop of spuds will lift a lot of the wireworm from the soil (apparently).
Anyway - how about brassicas - they used to do very well in our wet clay in Leeds and so did peas.
Hope someone more helpful comes along soon...
sb
Squashes and pumpkings like a moist soil and don't seem to have any trouble with our clay soil. Have you ever tried Nemaslug for the slug problems, it may be worth using initially to get them under control. When we first started in our garden there were an enormous amount of slugs, we used Nemaslug and it seemed to work but unfortunately only lasts just over a month but gave us the time for seedlings to get growing without being eaten. If your soil is very heavy and wet then I recommend raised beds, our garden soil is very wet and heavy and now with raised beds I can grow all sorts of flowers that I couldn't before, should have the same effect with veg. Good luck :)