Allotments 4 All

The latest issue of The Garden (October 2005) has a good article on clearing and starting an allotment - and how to get it to full production in just a year given enough money for rotavation/any weedkillers/manure etc.

It tells you when to rotavate in England (I didn't know there was a best time of year!) and how to get shot of couch and brambles.

Even better, the whole article's online!!
http://www.rhs.org.uk/learning/publications/pubs/garden1005/allotments.asp

This will probably be very useful to any newbies here!

moonbells

WOW thanks moonbells great find :)

I've scanned through it and it's just what most of us are looking for.  Interesting what was said about sheet mulch not being very effective on areas thick with weeds

I shall read all of it later.  it's great info and a "must read" for all newbies

Thanks MB

I kind of lost interest when old Will reached for the naphalm/herbicide...

QuoteHowever, often many organic gardeners will first use a herbicide to clear an overgrown site of weeds, and thereafter employ organic principles.

That, frankly, is a load of a r s e!

They do though TM, then declare themselves organic  ;D

Bah!

Quote from: terrace max on October 02, 2005, 16:51:18
I kind of lost interest when old Will reached for the naphalm/herbicide...

I suspect a lot of organic-intending newbies either do that or give up when the plot is a typical wilderness.

The first half plot I got I weedolled - not exactly the strongest weedkiller in the world but I wanted to get shot of the grass and more precisely the speedwell (argh - still a pain!)
By the time I decided to clear the orchard area from its waist high grass I'd already made the decision to go organic and dug it all out by hand - it wasn't fun! But by then I had the incentive to keep going as I'd had a season of crops.  And compared with some of the folk round here, I had it easy...

To be honest, I think this article will go a long way to showing folk that some situations may need drastic measures.

The other article I like to refer folk to is
http://www.hdra.org.uk/organicgardening/gh_allt.htm

which is the HDRA's advice on how to do it entirely organically but even they duck the issue of what to do with a dense mat of couch  :( -  they say "Forking and removing roots by hand is good for tap-rooted weeds such as dandelions, and also for shallow rooters such as creeping buttercup and couch, provided they have not formed a dense mat of roots." but don't tell you what to do in that case!!!

I rather suspect it involves herbicides...

moonbells

Hear what you say Moonbells. I just think that what is being suggested may be pragmatic, but it isn't organic. I think if people appreciated the effect of glycophosphate on our ecosystem they would be as likely to use it as a mouthwash as spray it on their plot...

I've tackled couch grass hell twice now - and yes it's hard work but most things worth doing are...

When I started off my allotment this year, I tried round-up, using it 3 times, as the couch, bindweed and marestail kept reappearing.

The only way I have taken any control is to dig down two spits everywhere and take out every piece of weed root I can spot. Then fork over the bottom of the pit(no other word suffices) and add whatever manure or compost I have around before putting the top two spits back.

It's hard work, and I find 72 square feet is the most I can manage in a day, but I have come round to the conviction that the weedkiller approach is only partially effective, and maybe not the best way forward. So I am now with TerraceMax on the weed control approach.

Having just taken the half the next plot I am back to the digging routine. It's really therapeutic rubbing the clods to find the bindweed roots..and, after all, Rome wasn't built in a day.

I've just taken on an allotment and would like to be organic, but I work very long hours and don't really have the time to not start with weedkillers.  How long after using weedkillers would I have to wait before I could honestly say I was gardening organically? (if ever :-[)

What sort of weeds are you up against GS?

Thistles, bindweed, nettles(i'd like to keep some of these, but not in the middle of a bed), Dock and bramble.
Also a few bricks and fire hardened soil. I don't have much money at the moment so I'm limited about what equipment I can buy or hire. If I started by dealing with a very small patch at first would it become overgrown by weeds over the course of the winter or do they all stop growing?  

There are three ways to kill couch organically that I know of. Mow it for a year. Black plastic, provided the edges are dug in deeper than the mat of roots. If they aren't, then I know from experience that the roots will just run in under the mat, and there will be a mass waiting to emerge above ground the moment you remove the plastic. Lastly, the way I did it. Repeated digging. I had a job which left me with plenty of spare time in the day, and I just dug, ten months out of the year, for two years.

Why is everyone fixated about weeds and couch grass in particular?  They are inevitable so why worry about them.  You can spend your whole life waging war against them and for what?  will removing every piece of couch in your allotment make a massive difference to your crops?  Or are you all hand weeding them in lemming like fashion because someone says they must be removed at all costs?

I'm sure some expert in science will say they are evil and must be eradicted to justify a life time spent on picking out every last bit when there are other things in life to be getting on with  ;D

My lotty is full of em but I have harvested loads of crops despite spending no time in picking out couch grass rhizomes.  I leave them buried as digging only encourages em  ;D  Any that are brought to the surface are burned but I don't set out to look for them

I'll get me coat ....   ::)

I haven't got it all by any means, though actually the ground elder is a far worse problem now. You should have seen the plot when I started though; at least 50% of it was a solid mass of couch, and most ofthe rest was a solid mass of ground elder. All I want to do is keep it to manageable proportions, that way there's a bit less ofit every year.

I try and look kindly on weeds for three reasons:

1. Some of them are edible (see recent thread in the edibles section).

2. They provide biomass - without which all the soil on neglected allotments would blow or wash away.

3. They are a green manure. I can't understand why people burn weeds or fry them with chemicals. They contain so much goodness: especially those tap rooted ones which draw up all sorts of good stuff from the subsoil. All you need to do is bung 'em in a binliner for a few months and when they've become unrecognisable empty the contents onto the compst heap.

GS: you could try clearing a small area by hand, compost the weeds as you go, then plant the area. Repeat until the whole plot is utilised. Sure, a lot of the plot will look a mess for a while. But anybody who prioritises tidiness over toxicity has deeper issues than we can resolve  :)

Hi all.  There was an article in the Guardian's saturday magazine this week 'how I manage my five allotments' (smug b***er  ::)).

Most of his techniques involved large amounts of cash and an army of helpers (I can dream...) but he did do one thing which seemed quite interesting to stop couch etc coming in from unused plots next door.  He dug a 2ft trench and lined the outside edge with weed prevention mulch then refilled it.

Is this feasible when next door is a couch/thistle/bindweed/bramble wilderness?  I've read somewhere that couch will grow through plastic mulch but if it does work it would be a godsend.

Quote from: terrace max on October 03, 2005, 09:20:20
I try and look kindly on weeds for three reasons:
<snip>
3. They are a green manure. I can't understand why people burn weeds or fry them with chemicals. They contain so much goodness: especially those tap rooted ones which draw up all sorts of good stuff from the subsoil. All you need to do is bung 'em in a binliner for a few months and when they've become unrecognisable empty the contents onto the compst heap.

<snip> But anybody who prioritises tidiness over toxicity has deeper issues than we can resolve  :)

Try telling the allotments committees of the land when they are sending letters to folk with untidy plots! Untidy and unworked, yes, but untidy and worked - I agree, they shouldn't necessarily be penalised.

However other lottie holders may well take matters into their own hands. I know one holder who gardens holistically and organically and by the moon, and keeps patches of teasels for the finches and comfrey for the leaves and the neighbour went onto her plot one days and strimmed the lot.

We think he didn't like the "untidiness".

As for the binliner trick... doesn't quite work with bindweed. Darned stuff. I have it coming OUT of the string tied top of my pile of couch/bindweed bagfuls (which are composting nicely by the shed).

Got to deal with that this week... I suspect it will be the council green waste bins... *sigh*

(Hate bindweed)

got to dash... latest lot of passata bottles are done as the timer is beeping :)

moonbells

Moonbells  That's was a bit drastic wasn't it - the person gardening holistically and getting her plot strimmed  :o  I bet she flipped!

Quote from: wardy on October 03, 2005, 14:49:36
Moonbells  That's was a bit drastic wasn't it - the person gardening holistically and getting her plot strimmed  :o  I bet she flipped!

Sorry wasn't very clear there - it was just teasels and comfrey that got strimmed. Still bad enough and as usual, no proof.

I know the lady concerned deliberately grows at least one staked teasel on the border of plots these days...

moonbells