Allotments 4 All

Popped down lottie yesterday to get some potatoes yesterday and noticed that the one that plot that had been left for years next to us has obviously now been rented as they had started doing some work.  Now, we have just been digging the surface grass off of ours and leaving on part of their lottie (as it wasn't rented) so obviously we have a mountain of grass there with bindweed etc growing through it and now I realise we are going to have to move it.  What does everyone else do - I will have to move it onto part of my lottie but with all the bindweed growing through it it's not going to be productive in the slightest.  Can's see any mini-mountains on anyone else's plots so am not sure what to do???  Will have to meet new neighbours and apologise soon  ;)

I too had mini mountains of grass (and couch grass roots). Luckily where we are, you are allowed bonfires. So it dries out, and then on a nice day when the wind takes the smoke away from the houses... out with a match. Actually, I've come down twice or thrice and found the thing already lit, & being tended for, by a lottie neighbour. I'd said to him just to shove his (very small) amount of rubbish on top of my Himalayan Range, since it made no relative difference to my excavations...

As you move it oik out as many roots as you can, then I guess you could cover it with something like carpet or weed surpressing fabric, or plassy, then you could plant a pumpkin or 2 into it.  I have 2 mini Snowdons on my number 2 plot, one each end, and it is my winters job to try and riddle the soil, remove all the bindweed roots, then redistribute it onto the plot.  Seems a waste not to.

We got our lottie in January and have huge piles of the stuff!  I've covered one in manure then black plastic then planted squashes through it, and am waiting to see what will happen!

Pile it up somwhere on your plot, cover with black plastic and leave for 12 months. Then spread it, and watch out for monster flushes of weeds shortly afterwards. It settles down after that. If the bindweed is massive, some of it may well survive, if so just pick it out (which is easy at that stage) and compost it for another year. I did this systematically when I first had my plot; I'm still working my way through the mountains, spreading them, but it pays in the end.

If you do cover up with black plastic (which I'd do too) put some underneath too - wrap it up.  I had a pile of manure delivered a year or so ago which was lovely but the bindweed underneath invaded so now I have to riddle it out whenever I want some manure!
The opposite may be true - your dug-up bindweed may well migrate downwards so I'd make sure it doesn't!

(And next time I get manure delivered, it will be onto a sheet!)

moonbells

I had a huge amount that I had loaded into bags ready to go to the dump.  Then I got hold of one of those large builder's merchant's bags that they deliver gravel etc in.  I rigged it up between four fence posts and have emptied all the sacks in there with loads of comfrey leaves and a good dose of wee.  I've covered the top with the old jacket from the central heating cylinder to help it get warm, covered with black plastic, and will leave it for at least twelve months, probably longer.  Hopefully, that might help do it.

sieve,than compost,than sieve your compost.

my allotment neighbour had a huge pile of nettles and couch grass from clearing his plot.  he covered it with black plastic for a year, and the following year, when the hedgehogs had moved out, he covered it with weed suppressant matting and planted pumkins in it and they are growing like wildfire!