Allotments 4 All

couple of pictures of a plot that was rotovated before weeding
just a thought, 90% of the weeds are dock leaves

Blimey, hope it's not yours.  :)

no, thank goodness  :)

There's something to be said for painstakingly extracting every bit of every root. Rotavating is the last option, imho.

I think the guy who had my plot before me rotovated everywhere Aargh!!!!!

Nice big Poly tunnel though!
;D

If that's all docks, they're probably seedlings rather than bits of root regrowing. The seeds can survive a century in the ground, and they sprout like mad when the ground's disturbed.

Thanks for that, makes me feel all the hard work by hand is worth it! :D

this should be the first photo that newbies see !

Before they go and hire a Rotovator.

Using a rotovator seems to be frowned on by alot of people but for any new plot holders who are struggling to get their plot ino some kind of shape I say rotovate.
We doubled our plot size this winter and started to dig the new ground but with a young family and work commitments it wasn't going to be possible to dig it all so we hired a rotovator and did the whole lot in less than 2 hours.This enabled us to mark out paths and put up our fencing.
Sure enough the bind weed has come up but with the soil being light and airy its been easy to pull up all the shoots and every piece comes up with a root.The result of rotovating has been that our plot is far more usable than it would have been as I am sure we would still be digging.We have planted quite alot of crops with the odd piece of easily removed bind weed popping up.

For us the benefits of rotovating have far outweighed the drawbacks.

mmm I was put off rotovation by some old timers for this, my first year, and now I am quite pleased that I dug by hand because the weeds are not too bad. It is hard work though and I must admit that I am going to try to do as much as I can this winter to suffocate and eliminate the weeds so I don't have so much work to do next spring. Still, I guess the second year is always easier than the first?? (or is this a myth too ??  ;D

I can understand your argument, Sillybilly. I guess as long as you don't think rotavating is an alternative to weeding rather than an addition, it can be a good way of making an impact on an overgrown plot.

also, this was a very heavy clay soil, the second year and subsequent ones were harder, he just keeps rotovating it  :o :o :)

I agree sillybilly, we've done almost exactly the same this year on our plot.  Totally new to us and hadn't been looked after properly by our predecessor  ::).  Neighb's rotovated it for us, and even though the weeds are back with a vengence, i'm glad we did it.  There's just no way we'd have been able to dig a decent size of ground to grow anything, not with full time jobs and a house to look after as well!

We will gradually hand dig & weed it, but probably one bed per year over the next four years, but in the meantime at least we'll be able to harvest some crops  ;D

I rotivated my first plot last year and have done it again on my new plot, it worked for me. I'm not getting many weeds at all on my first plot now few here and there.

We have manually dug 3 beds, and are on our 4th, it has taken us a month so far.
I popped to teh allotment today, the first time in just over a week.
One of the plots where another newbie rotavated is completely covered in weeds, so much so that I could hardly make out their crops, I think they are potatoes! Ours is fairly weed free, thank goodness.
This rain has made the soil much softer to dig, but now I find that the weeds are sticking to my gloves!! LOL!
Hoping to finish the digging this week.

My husband was helping me put guttering on my shed and he stung himself with nettle. he was frantically looking for a dock leaf and I was thinking oops! I weeded out everyone that I could find!
Fortunately there was one over the fence.

It's been done to death on here, my view in summary:

If you rotovate once then leave it, you're in trouble.
If you redo it every 3 weeks to a month for a few months you will get on top of the weeds. Even the docks, although they're usually the last to die, along with the dandelions.

I know that I wouldn't have a chance of keeping on top of my 2 plots without the help of my Howard Gem.... (thoroughly recommended, btw).
Good luck to anyone who digs by hand, though. I'm not saying that you shouldn't, just that there is another way that works.  :)

Aaah you wusses!!!  ;D ;D ;D ;D