How to clear an allotment.....?

[Peter]

OK, silly question but what are the right tools? I'm gonna start digging in the morning ! Have the wine in the fridge ready for tomorrow night Thinking i might need it

For cutting most of the top away, but leaving a few three foot "pulling handles".
An old long sleeved fleece.
A pair of leather gardening gloves.
Longhandled loppers.

For getting the roots out.
A sharp spade.
A fork.
A mattock (like a pickaxe but broad 4" blades instead of a spike and 1" blade).
A pickaxe.
A couple or four of housebricks or better still drive paving blocks.
A six foot scaffold pole or very strong wooden fence post.

The last three are used as levering devices, the pickaxe on its own, the bricks a fulcrums and the post or pole as a lever.

Most come up with spade / mattock cutting, make a moat round the stump and then use the fork for levering, shove it into the moat and under the castle(stump) at a shallow angle, then lift the handle.

Bigger ones need the pickaxe, whack the point under the centre from one side, push the handle to vertical, then swap sides and pull the handle to continue the levering in the same direction, as the stumpcomes out the pickaxe will bear onto the lip of the moat.

Really stubborn ones need the lever, put the bricks in the ,moat, put the end of the lever into the failed pickaxe attempt hole, adjust the bricks so the pole at 45 degrees just rests on them and pull down.

PS If the lever bends or breaks say "Damm, we should have got something stronger,".

[Cosmo and Dibs]

I've been told that if I cover with black vinyl I may find that I get pools of rainwater on it. If I do, how do I remove the water? Or, even better, how do I prevent it in the first place?

Would using cardboard prevent it?

[geoff]

'New' plots are nearly always neglected and overgrown, that's why you get them

It's better to clear part of the plot well, and just leave the rest fallow or covered, than to try to do it all at once and not do it thoroughly

Try dividing the plot into quarters and do one quarter at a time. When you've done some clearing plant potatoes, they are fairly cheap and robust

Try to compost any soft weeds and burn tougher things. They contain the minerals that the weeds have taken up from your soil, and you should return them, not discard them. Councils usually offer Dalek bins at a cheap price; you can make your own, but a Dalek is the quickest and easiest to start with

If the plot is very overgrown, ask if they will let you off the first year's rent

The soil will probably be in poor condition, so add manure, compost or general purpose fertilizer

If you are going to cover the ground, use newspaper or cardboard; it's free, and you don't have to take it up, just let it rot then dig it in

[geoff]

Nearly forgot - don't rotavate! I did it to mine It looked fine for 2 or 3 weeks then grew back worse than ever! All you do is chop up the weeds and replant them. And it's harder work than you think Rotovating is meant to be a technique on established gardens

[Cosmo and Dibs]

I'll get some pics up tomorrow to show you.

[spennysaint]

Thank you to everyone who have offered advice for clearing brambles. Have got lottie rent free for a year,

Mostly all cut down now and burned now so i just need to start digging! Def not going to rotivate. I'm still planting veg in containers in my garden this year so i see anything i plant in the allotment this year as a bonus, potatoes are on the windowsill waiting to go in and i'm planning on planting parsnip/carrots/onions - staple veg really

[rob the roller]

I have reclaimed lawn using the lasagne method. Lay a thick wad of newspaper or cardboard (the heavy carton type) on the ground you intend to cultivate and lay compost on top. You can then plant directly into the compost. The newspaper keeps the weeds etc in check and eventually mulches down and lets the worms take over. I surrounded the area with timber to make a raised bed, but it will work without timber. There will still be weeds that push their way through. You have to keep them from taking hold, cut or pull them as soon as they show. Can be costly if you are buying in all your compost, but it brings your growing start time forward months or even seasons. Get all the stuff ready in advance and you should be planting the first weekend.

If I was tackling something more drastic than a lawn I would dig out the larger woody plants and the bramble roots but just strim everything else back to ground level, and then carry on as for a lawn. Success depends on the depth of the compost and what you grow in it. Potatoes are probably the best to start as they keep the light away from the nasties trying to force their way through from below. It also helps if you have seedlings to go in, rather than seeds, as they can get going faster and will compete with the weeds.

I used a high speed rotivator once (Mantis?), it reduced the clay soil to a mush which then hardened into a flat pan. It also broke up the roots of the weeds into little pieces and spread them over the patch. It took forever to clear up that year, and I think I am still at it 5 years on!

Best of luck

Rob

[DaveInBraknell]

Plot Clearing

Hi,

I took over a plot last year with a friend, it was about 800msq (we have 22 beds x4.5m sq) completely over grown with brambles about 7ft tall. We have all but cleared it in 10mnths, our last 3 beds are going in now.

This is how I took it on. First plan your bed layout roughly.

Then start at the edge, I kneeled down and started to examine the bramble layout under neath. In a bramble bed you'll see thick brambles and shorter thinner ones (Where the bramble has propogated it'self). I would advise both putting something over your arms and getting a tree lopper. First cut the smaller ones out, work your way in slowly then use a big tree lopper to lop out the large structural bramble canes. They can be up to an inch wide, I had some about 2 inches wide.

Clear out the first two beds, leave about two feet around your beds to walk around, then dig out the roots by hand, do not rotovate it's pointless, two reasons, first you'll propogate root cuttings of the perennials which will be a bugger to clean out. Bramble roots sit mostly about 2-3 inches below the surface, there will be a massive tap root somewhere in the pile, dig it around and dig it out, a fork or an adz is good for this then use a claw on the bed and harrow out the last roots.

Then cultivate the soil and get a quick crop in, if you have dug out all the roots then you can get a crop in no worries, to date the above method we used has seen zero reinvasion of brambles in 10months, no weedkillers just hard graft..

Best way to get rid of the brambles is burning them, once they get going they go like tinderwood.

Sure it's hard work but if you put it in it'll save you revisiting it later on. Nettles are another thing, we had that combination, but again, they are surface roots, dig them up, pull it by hand and you'll clear it real quickly.

Take it bed by bed, and remember clear a bed, plant a bed, clear a bed, plant a bed, it makes it worthwhile when you see the crops grow

Dave

[xtian170174]

Recent allotment requisition

I just signed up to growfruit&veg after arriving from Google search results for 'fallow allotment dig' having just undertaken the regeneration of an allotment with a friend here in North Lincolnshire, it has been fallow for around two years and from others' accounts was not 'kept' as an orderly regimented plot just prior, so quite a lot to go at and the weeds quickly re-emerging and chasing the progress made, like a tide coming back in, if they're not thoroughly eradicated in this first pass to recover the site as prime growing medium.

I created a kmz file so the allotment can be seen in all it's fallow glory on Google earth until the photo updates...., We transplanted an old 6x8 shed on the plot with some purposeful modification and adaptations - it now has a clear corrugated roof and slatted shelving around as much of the upper as possible so it doubles as a cold frame - a gate-leg table leaf under the window with a cut out for a washing up bowl makes it a potting shed & eases the task of sowing seeds - now all done indoors with minimal bending or reaching to the floor.

The main task though is the digging. We opted out of rotivating/ploughing, assured that it is the wrong path with fallow ground belying a dense root system and settled with manual labour - it is not easy going.
The best technique I have is to manage a 5m wide row per full day of digging - that's about 1 foot of progress along the 25m length...;

Get, a wheel barrow, a fork, a handtrowel, a jar with lid for bugs & a bucket for stones....
1st, 'Cut' the shape out with the fork, it may remain a solid lump or break up, there will certainly be earth remaining clumped and stuck in the roots, so,
2nd, Get down there with a hand trowel and beat the thing repeatedly to pulverise anything bigger than a small marble, this all goes back where it came and leaves you holding the weeds and their roots which are removed, put in the wheelbarrow to take to the pile for burning.
3rd, Get up, dig again with the fork - you're trying to eradicate unwanted roots and so be prepared to consistently dig down twice the length of the tines (lean the fork forward so the tines go straight down - it's easier, especially if you need to lever),
4th, Removing the remaining roots, again also get down with the hand tools and break it up - the big roots simply yield while the little rag-like bits need a patient methodical pinching mop,
5th, Get up, dig halfway back across your progress in the same way as described above so there's an overlap - it should be getting a little easier to do this bit by now
6th, Rake the fork up from the bottom of the trough, that this technique creates, to the top of the pile that has become greatly aerated and stands proudly higher than the ground you stand on - remaining weeds should surface and in about three sucessive rake & clear movements there will be none left to speak of.

That really works for me removing top growth, couch grass & mare's tail roots, long doc and dandelion roots, all the remaining threadlike stuff and you'll meet nearly every bug there is on your plot so you can approve their presence or evict them accordingly (I collect unwanted types and give them to a couple of frogs & lizards I keep for such an eventuality)
- Prior to devising this technique there was less attention to breaking the clumps of earth up and so a row could take less time but collect as much as four barrow loads - this way you can do a full 5m row and just get a barrowful.
It will take between 6-8 hours to complete a row, and if you stick at it day after day a 25m long 'half' plot will take just 75 days to prime [lol].

With this in mind and because it is laborious back breaking time consuming work - I go more for a day on/off and let the weather further postpone any attempt* - no point trying to work out in the cold at this - you'll end up stiff as a board, brassica'd off & probably suffer cracked skin on your finger ends that will not heal until you take time off from it - also, even in the warm weather you can all too soon feel a kind of rsi symptom - loss of grip strength and painful tendons that temper your best intentions with a canny outlook geared towards finding and deploying the 'heaven-sent labour-saver' - and so here's my idea;

I reckon the amazing 'CanSolair' solar furnace featured around the web can be downsized to ride on a wheelbarrow and it's heat output can be directed to a 'box-plate' - this is e.g. 3'x3'x6" and sits on the ground for 15-30mins in which time - on proviso of sufficient heat - it should have completely dehydrated and killed any growth - I believe in theory if you supplement this method with an array of 2' hollow tines (like a grid of 9 x 9 tubes at 4" intervals) which can be tapped flush into the ground that the soil will completely dehydrate and stall or completely stop any further growth from roots.
The dry soil may make for harder clumps but they're not too hard with a hand tool, no noticeable extra effort - and even then if you're being creative like this, you could take them out of the soil and 'process' them through a grinding millstone arrangement, something as simple as a suspended breeze block to swing into a slightly angled hod shape - neatly powdered earth trickles out and with a riddle, yet more roots can be filtered from this flow....

All the best with yours anyhow :-D - I will endeavour to post images to illustrate our progress, we're after extending from the shed with a poly enclosure (shared walls saves materials) - I'm collecting a nice looking selection of stones from the digging which may contribute to a rockery, a fire circle or the like, we're looking for ideas to deploy some good size branches from a sycamore I pruned at home - a couple of dozen approx 6', and some larger, very stout, as well as other types - all good canes at any rate.

We have a large pile of weeds and roots amassing and try burn off as much as we can in any one go (maybe a better idea, if the allotment rules permit, is to enclose any pile and put a chicken in there - should be flattened in no time), but at present a brazier fashioned from a metal drum reduces the pile to ash and as the pile is sorted on to a 6x3' mesh, it leeches and offers up enough soil beneath to damp the fire which in turn ensures the soil does not still have any weed growing potential when it is spread back on the plot....

*Also, because the progress is really steady and very localised around a small area, a windshield can take all the breeze off so you can enjoy a suntrap on an otherwise cool day.

...That's about up to date, I look forward to hearing from all you other grow-yr-owners - hopefully share a few tips and tricks

[Two_Sheds]

Blimey that's a long post... I only got to the 2nd paragraph. Welcome aboard though

[xtian170174]

Hi Rebecca,

Thank you for greeting me - so far I just had an atypical admin correspondence. Sorry my post is so long, should just be succinct updates to follow though.

All the best
Christian