New Allotment In December. Your advice good people?

[Jimny14]

Do you literally throw on any organic matter you can find for compost/mulch? Any ideas?

Any leaves that happen to be available I'd be inclined to use as a mulch, especially if you can get em nice n wet or cover them with tarp, plastic or card to stop em blowing about. Anything already rotted is also a great mulch, eg compost or well rotted manure. If you're thinking longer term covering an area with bark chippings would be fine but you may need to leave it a good while to rot in or remove it when you're ready to plant. Fresh organic matter such as veg and kitchen waste can be used to make a bean bed. If you decide where to plant your spring broad beans dig a trench, and start laying kitchen waste (raw) in to it. You may want to cover it with a little soil in between layers. You can build it up pretty deep then cover with a couple of inch of soil and plant your beans in to that. Should give plenty of food for your beans as it rots down.

[Paulie]

Here is my take on clearing a plot Alans Allotment: Clearing a New Allotment

Hi Matt, and welcome.
I can heartily recommend that anyone taking on a new plot has a good read of Alan's blog on how to tackle the challenge of a new, weed-ridden and neglected plot. There's lots of wise advice here, and Alan's blog is full of useful ideas. My own experience has lots of similarities, and I would suggest a couple of things: it's a long haul; enjoy that as it means years of pleasure. But also bear in mind that Rome was not built in a day, so be patient with the plot, and with your progress. Make sure, amidst all your future plans and lists of things to do, that you find time to reflect on your achievements. And one more thing: you cannot know your plot well until you have seen it throughout the first year: you'll find out new things between now and December 2018 - light levels, weeds, soil conditions, plants that are not presently visible, unseen opportunities... Hope you enjoy every bit of it!

Paulie

[lolie]

Hi and welcome.

How much time will you be able to put into your allotment? Pretty much all methods of gardening will work but some will fit better with your individual lifestyle than others.

I'm in the "smother everything with cardboard and pile as much organic matter as possible on top of it" club, but plenty of people enjoy the digging over and the weeding.

If your plot tends to get waterlogged then I'd consider layering to build up the level of your beds above where they currently sit. It's a much simpler and faster option than trying to dig in enough stuff to address the issue.

[Newt]

Welcome and congrats on the new allotment!

I took one over at the beginning of November and have very similar soil and plot situation to you. I started with giving the worst beds a good digging-over and at least trimming the grass, and pulling up anything I didn't want to keep for next year.

The clay soil is hard work to shift once it gets wet as I'm finding. I'm currently working on a no-dig plan for next year, and thankfully a lot of people here gave me practical advice that helped stop me going WAY overboard on it!

Current priority is trimming down the grass paths and long weeds (only have a pair of shears so it's taking a little while) and covering over the plot with thick layers of paper/cardboard, while looking for an affordable mulch to cover it with. Almost managed to get a mountain of free fallen leaves for it but the council, after leaving the leaves to grow to several inches thick over the entire year, finally decided to clean them up just before I got the chance to nab them!

[toastiesmurf]

Here is my take on clearing a plot Alans Allotment: Clearing a New Allotment

Thank you for taking the time to write this. It is very informative.

[toastiesmurf]

Welcome and congrats on the new allotment!

I took one over at the beginning of November and have very similar soil and plot situation to you. I started with giving the worst beds a good digging-over and at least trimming the grass, and pulling up anything I didn't want to keep for next year.

The clay soil is hard work to shift once it gets wet as I'm finding. I'm currently working on a no-dig plan for next year, and thankfully a lot of people here gave me practical advice that helped stop me going WAY overboard on it!

Current priority is trimming down the grass paths and long weeds (only have a pair of shears so it's taking a little while) and covering over the plot with thick layers of paper/cardboard, while looking for an affordable mulch to cover it with. Almost managed to get a mountain of free fallen leaves for it but the council, after leaving the leaves to grow to several inches thick over the entire year, finally decided to clean them up just before I got the chance to nab them!

Nice one! Let me know how you get on and what you end up using for mulch!

[toastiesmurf]

Hi all!

Thank you very much for your replies, every comment contained useful information and opinions and it's been great to get feedback on my specific situation.

An update: Since I posted this message it has been very frosty here and so all digging has had to stop for now. Today will be the first day I can get out there and do something. My current plan is to finish digging over the worst bed (half done that one), and if I have time dig over the second (out of three) beds, which has been recently cultivated and is not bad. Hopefully I can get both of these done pretty soon to let the soil break down over winter. Then the third one I plan on covering with cardboard to suppress the weeds - I'll probably try to plant straight through this with courgette and other squash.

Once I have done the digging I can do, my next priority is to get hold of some mulch. compost and organic matter to lay over the beds as much as possible to rot down ready for spring.

Does that sound good?

I will post some pictures soon to show my plot, and to show the progress I am making.

Many thanks,
Matt

[burnie]

I've never had an allotment, always had enough of a garden for my family needs, but I did have a large garden that was all lawn when I got it, complete with dandelions etc. Rather than rush at it and try to do it all, I did it in segments. One strip was dug and de weeded and manured ,not massive just about a yard wide, same size was dug in the spring and that had root veg, so no manure. Last strip had the turf removed and without digging it, just planted potatoes in it. Then after each crop the beds got a bit longer and wider and more nutrients from either compost or manure was added . This way the garden evolved rather than becoming a chore from the outset.

[bikermike]

sorry, can I just ask for clarification on this

were the strips together or separated?

ie was it A - space - B - space - C
And when you say you then expanded it, do you mean A, B & C got wider (presumably encroaching into the space between them), or did you add D, E & F?

I ask because I have a new portion of my allotment that is grassed over and am looking at easy(ier) ways to start it off.

My current plan was to just do a row of potatoes this year.

[toastiesmurf]

I got out in the allotment for a few hours today, so I thought I would give a little update:
and ask a few more questions that I dug up. Any thoughts are welcome.

I have nearly dug over the first bed, and pulled up some existing carrots. About one third or less left on that section. I started to cover another bed with cardboard.

At the moment, I don't quite understand composting. I know, it should be really simple... I mean, you put stuff in a heap until it rots down and then put it back on the soil. I get that. But do you compost Everything? Any foliage? Roots?

Unsure what to do with all of the roots that I am pulling up during this dig. I have currently put them in a big blue bucket and am drowning them, then I am going to pour the liquid on the soil and add the decomposed roots to the compost pile. Is this a good way of going about it, or can we go simpler? Because right now I feel like I am literally pulling the life out of the soil.

I also found three black bin bags with rotten down slushy brown gunk and some roots. I presume this was last owners attempt to deal with their roots? Can I now put this straight on my soil?

Final issue of the day: I wanted to pull out the purple broccoli that is on one patch, but discovered a load of white flies nesting in the leaves. What should I do with them? Straight on the compost? What about the stems, which are pretty much like tree trunks?

As you can see, most of my questions today can be boiled down to - what to do with the waste, and is there anything I need to know other than throw it on, let it rot and spread it?

[hamamelis]

For composting, basically, anything that was once alive *can* be composted. You can certainly compost dead roots, from annual plants, or even live roots from not too vigorous plants (they might try and grow, but it won't work and they die then rot).

You generally shouldn't add meat or cooked food to a simple heap, as it does attract rats, but you can add kitchen scraps, tea bags, coffee grounds (you can often get them free from coffee shops too).

The only plant matter to worry about adding is anything that could live through the composting; weed seeds, live roots from perennial weeds, which might not die in a small domestic compost heap (they don't get very hot, unlike the huge commercial ones) as some, like dandelion and bindweed have amazing survival skills, also stuff with disease spores that might survive the composting. White flies wouldn't make any difference to the compost- they wouldn't live through it and re-infect the crop that grows in the compost. Saying that, are you sure you want to pull out the sprouting broccoli? It might give you a good crop in spring.

If you're adding a lot of grass clippings and green foliage (known as 'greens') to your compost, it's a good idea to add some 'browns' as well, which can be stuff like cardboard and newspaper, as well as dry stems and small twiggy bits. It helps it break down fast into nice compost, too many 'greens' can produce sludgy yuck, and it's pretty slow as well (it tends to break down anaerobically with too much green material). The more you can turn the heap, to help add oxygen and mix it up, the faster it will break down.

Some people skip out the compost heap and spread the stuff straight on the ground. It can work, but it can also give you a great crop of birds if you have kitchen scraps in there!

[burnie]

sorry, can I just ask for clarification on this

were the strips together or separated?

ie was it A - space - B - space - C
And when you say you then expanded it, do you mean A, B & C got wider (presumably encroaching into the space between them), or did you add D, E & F?

I ask because I have a new portion of my allotment that is grassed over and am looking at easy(ier) ways to start it off.

My current plan was to just do a row of potatoes this year.

Sorry for the late reply, been out all day for an early family Christmas dinner...
I left adequate room between each strip allowing for the ideal finished required size, I didn't want the strips too wide, I had to be able to reach the middle(I applied this method to the raised beds I now have), this allowed for the idea of not compacting the soil. This was not for a "no dig" plot as this was in the early 1980's and I don't think anyone had thought of not digging, I had heavyish soil with some clay at the time and wanted to reduce flooding. The beds began at around 18 inches wide and over a couple of years finished up twice as wide and twice as long as when I started, so I was growing and eating without killing myself trying to dig it all in one go.

[toastiesmurf]

For composting, basically, anything that was once alive *can* be composted.

Saying that, are you sure you want to pull out the sprouting broccoli? It might give you a good crop in spring.

Thanks for your advice on composting. Will the purple sprouting broccoli regrow? If so, I will definitely leave it in to get a crop off it.

Cheers,
Matt

[hamamelis]

Thanks for your advice on composting. Will the purple sprouting broccoli regrow? If so, I will definitely leave it in to get a crop off it.

Cheers,
Matt

Dunno, what does it look like? Got any pictures?

[toastiesmurf]

Allotment pics1

For those who are interested, this is my lovely allotment! Picture 2 shows a sort of panorama of the plot, with the shed in the middle. I have some more to upload to show the bottom part in more detail.

Cheers!
Matt