Our first half plot seemed daunting. 90ft long and 15 wide, overgrown, full of weeds as I mentioned previously. Clearing involved digging and then sifting out huge bucketfuls of thick spaghetti like weed roots. If only they tasted like pasta. We aimed for at least a yard a weekend but wanted to plant immediately. It wasn't going to work.
We got our plot in April so slap bang in the middle of planting season. I like growing in beds so figured if I created a couple to get sowing in and then carried on clearing I'd at least get some crops.
The last house I lived in also had a stupidly overgrown garden. I cleared that by covering in carpet, the following year I used potatoes to break the ground. I devised a method using a variation on this to allow me some quick and easy planting.
First I got plants growing from seed inside to bring on in my cheapy plastic greenhouse, tomatoes, squash, courgettes and sweetcorn. Plants are too expensive to buy.
Second I joined freecycle. I scanned the site daily for carpets and flagstones, I put requests on there for them as often as possible. The Bank Holiday weekends were excellent for picking up DIYers cast offs, saved them the cost of a skip.
Thirdly I got dirty! The allotment has manure delivered regularly, we barrowed as much as possible and dumped it over the half of the plot I knew we wouldn't have the time to clear.
Then I carpeted it. I covered as much of the plot as I could, making sure there was a nice mound of manure underneath, aimed for at least 6 inches. The logic being that it would both fertilize the soil and suffocate the weeds. The old guys hated me for it. They despise people who use carpets. Granted there are tons of unused plots covered in the stuff, all with weeds growing through as the carpet rots and they look a mess. This wasn't the plan though.
Now traditionally with using carpet/mulch/weedliner/plastic you are supposed to leave it for months to a year to die down. I really didn't want to do that, what a waste of allotment rent?
This is where my plants in the greenhouse came in. After leaving the manure and carpet for about 6-8 weeks I divided the space into 3, and began planting through the carpet. The manure had begun to break down. the weeds had begun to die back and under the carpet was a vaguely workable surface.
Armed with a Stanley knife and trowel I made crosses in the carpet, peeled it back enough to use the trowel to dig a hole and dumped the plants in, watered thoroughly and folded back the carpet over the ground.
I did a third squash and courgettes, a third sweetcorn and the rest tomatoes. All grew better than I thought.
My logic was that any crop at all was better than leaving the soil empty. I was staggered at how well things grew without any digging or clearing. The courgettes went crazy, we had so many we did a deal with a local takeaway. Bartered them for curry. The sweetcorn grew tall and strong with several cobs to a plant, the tomatoes sprawled everywhere, I had gluts of the things, enough to make copious jars of relish.
What I hadn't thought of was that the squash plants sprawled and trailed and added an extra weight and mulch to the area. Bonus. The plants were so vigorous that the carpet that was moaned about was totally covered and I managed to use pretty much all of the half plot I'd been given in the first year.
At the end of the season I left the carpet in place to help with the weed killing and watched the neighbouring allotmenteers digging and moaning about how hard it was.
The next spring I removed and disposed of the carpet to find lovely fairly friable soil and minimal sign of weed roots. More worms than weeds. I proceeded with my old plan and planted potatoes across the whole area.
Potatoes are great, so many varieties and they dig the soil for you. As they grow and the tubers get sent down the soil breaks up. They are big plants so do a good job of suppressing the weeds too. The soil was still really fertile from the manure too so the plants went crazy, huge crops of new potatoes and nice large main crop ones as well.
After harvesting the potatoes we than started to create the permanent vegetable beds in the area.
Most of the work had been done for us by Mother Nature though so little digging was needed. I used a hand fork mainly to turn over the soil and sift out any remaining bind weed, couch grass and horseradish roots but there were hardly any compared to the first beds we made.
So by the third year I had perfectly fertile, weeded vegetable beds all ready to plant in, 2 years of crops and no back ache and wonderful healthy soil teeming with worms to do the digging for me!
I've used the same method now on the second half of the plot with equally excellent results. Had the potato crop planted last year so now I'm at the bed forming stage. Really don't think I could have managed the whole plot without this method. Especially on the new half of the plot, it was pure Ground Elder on half of the plot. Most of which is no more.
The bonus to this is that now I have a whole allotment fashioned into 13ft by 4 foot beds that are so easy to maintain. I mulch regularly with free council compost, I compost all my weeds and garden waste with our chicken litter and manure and add in manure from the allotment. As long as the relevant beds get a good winter dressing of manure rich compost the worms do all the hard work for me.
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| Second half of plot post carpet just before potatoes planted, see how clear the soil looks? |
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| First half of plot, beds created |
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| Full plot this year most beds created |
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| Courgettes planted through carpet |
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