Allotments

The wife and I are finally getting an allotment; I went to see it for the first time and it needs quite a bit of work/digging over.

However; thought I’d ask the STW allotment massive that if they had a blank allotment what would you do? just to see if you had any cool ideas that I hadn’t thought of.

Obviously the following goes without saying:

-Shed for the tools, small beer store etc
-Green house for tomatoes and chillies etc
-fruit cage for the soft fruits and some trained fruit trees.

other than the usual allotment veggies, I’m thinking of Asparagus.

does anyone else have some tips or non-standard veggies that they would recommend?

Cheers

hire a rotovator and turn the whole patch over now, before the heavy frosts. will put you a step ahead of the weeds come spring

If you have the patience – dig and fertilise now and the plant the whole lot in potatos. This will “clean” the soil and you’ll do better the following years. You plant a few varieties of tatties. Rows 2ft apart – seed tatties 18 inches apart.

If I had an allotment I would definitely grow asparagus nice crop to grow expensive to buy in shops and takes up too much space in a garden and can’t be rotated . We grow some veg in beds , Specialty potatoes are good fun but I avoid them as they’re relatively cheap to buy. We grew salsify a couple of years ago which was delicious. I also like fennel and beetroot.

Dig a wildlife pond for frogs which eat slugs.

Risk of weed spread if you rotovate .

Dont bother with Asparagus, or maybe do if you have a lot of growing space.
Have a look around at all the fruit and veg you like when you walk around a supermarket but dont buy because you always say “How Much”
Growing potatoes go for unusual varieties, again expensive, I grow Jerusalem artichokes as well as artichokes. Try Garlic but get it in now. Cabbage, fennel, hamburg parsley, salsify, purple top turnips are some of my favourites as easy to grow and store

I had this situation at the start of the year; took on a field basically.

I spend hundreds of hours (literally!) cutting it back, digging it over, removing couch grass etc & preparing a few beds & I successfully harvested a fair few bits recently.

However, I have now nuked the lot in weedkiller & covered.

In March I will rotivate it and place sheets over the top to prevent weeds; burning circles into the sheets to grown things and prevent the weeds coming through – the weeds have been a nightmare.

A chuffing great place to spend a summer evening though with a beer and a small fire 😀

So my advice is to prep it properly, but personally the effort in digging provided me with great therapy during a crappy year, but objectively as a means of growing stuff, nuke, cover, rotivate 😀

if you’re in this for the long haul, tiggs has it. Let the spuds outcompete everything else, which they will. IMO Don’t nuke unless you have knotweed. Rotavating just makes more weeds and ruins the soil. Google ‘no-dig’.

Oh, and unless you live very north, toms do fine outside. But not on ground you’ve done spuds in recently, google crop rotation.

However; thought I’d ask the STW allotment massive that if they had a blank allotment what would you do? just to see if you had any cool ideas that I hadn’t thought of.

Pump Track! 😆

we have had a plot for 4 years and have just moved to a site closer to home and the new plot all 400sq m of it needs to be dug grrr.

As said above

try and grow high value crops such as soft fruit and gooseberrys esp the red ones they are lush and are sweet ish also try

we dont grow just the normal varieties try indigo blue spuds, purple carrots and white raddish

Have a walk around the site and see what everybody else is doing and think why and pick the brains of the people with the best plots, work with the local conditions and not against them

Don’t nuke unless you have knotweed

I’m far from experienced, but couch grass surely deserves same treatment?

If you dig over now load it with horse crap!

I forgot to say have a good look at the plot and see if the soil is the same all over and if it isnt level do the lower parts get soggy and the high bits get dry. Also are some parts in shade and if so what time of year the same for wind is it all exposed the same?. You need to factor these in, so you can get the most out of the plot esp the shed as you want to be able to sit in the sun sheltered from the prevailing wind whilst you are having a brew.

On both plots we worked out what was going where first and marked out the main beds then sorted out the paths, compost bins etc. Its hard enough digging it the first time

If you break the plot down to chunks (we did lazy beds)it is easier to keep motivated, well it was for us

oh and enjoy it you should be able to get it all ready for the coming growing season

good luck

Cool cheers for the advice; I was going to go for the single digging method of preparing the ground and just preparing for the hard work time it would take. though I like the potato method; perhaps I’ll do that for a third of the plot this year.

that last allotment we had before moving was a nightmare for mares-weed (SP?) so I will not be rotovating this time

Took my daughter down there today; can’t wait for the summer and her helping out there 😉

My mom uses this method to keep the weeds down between plants:

– Spread several layers of newspaper on the ground, overlapping and interweaving sheets is best.

– Cover with grass clippings or compost.

– Wet it down, to keep it all in place.

Over time, the newspaper just decomposes. Its also no big deal to add new plants by making a new hole. It also keeps the soil from drying out when its hot and dry.

Edit – I’ll bet that your daughter would rather be riding a pumptrack than pulling weeds and eating broccoli, though! 😉

Asparagus are good. We got an allotment last year (and a second plot this September).
Not a fan of rotavating myself. It just chops up the weeds and puts them a few inches down.
My wife removes EVERY single weed by hand.
Personally,I remove the nasty ones by hand (ie big roots or couch grass) than then turn the soil over with a spade. This puts the smaller weeds 8 inches underground and makes most of them die. The remaining ones can be picked out in the spring.

Garlic is also a great crop, as are shallots.

Courgettes are great, but need space.

This year (on my plot) I already have in 8 rows of garlic, onions and shallots and 30 asparagus crowns (half price from crocus last month).
I shall also be planting king Edwards spuds and lots of sweetcorn (it tastes brill when fresh). As an experiment I shall grow pumkins, as I think these will keep the weeds down (certainly the squashes my wife grew last year had so much foliage that nothing got past them!).
Need to get the greenhouse sorted, and that will have tomatoes and chillis in.

Have a look at what the other plot holders are doing, especially some of the old boys who have been there years and done it all.

I grow all the high value crops I can, but have 3 allotments and have space to leave crops in that take time to mature such as broccolli etc.

french, runner, borlotti and broad beans all go in. Toms I grow are F1 Ferline as more blight resistant.

Loads of squash and pumpkinns, globe artichokes, parsnips and carrots, elephant garlic, onions and shallots, loads of leeks and caulis, sprouts.. all sorts

sweetcorn fresh off the plot is the best you’ll ever taste. Asparagus is great if you have room to out in enough crowns to get decent crops, but it does take a lot of room and time to mature.

When you are chatting to othor plot holders down there there may be some Rhubarb crowns that are being given away and shared, also soft fruit cuttings available are a lot cheaper that buying all your own stuff.

Only thing I dont grow down there is peas, I grow sugar snap and mangetout , but peas are cheaper and just as sweet from the tesco freezer!

I got myself an allotment a few of months back so will be watching this for suggestions. It too was a featureless plot with only weeds, mostly couch grass and thistles. I’ve dug more than three quarters of it over so far.
From my limited experience, the only advice i can give is don’t try and dig too much over too quickly. I haven’t been able to do any digging for well over a month having got Achilles tendonitis in my right leg from the repetitive action of pushing the spade into the soil. I couldn’t even ride for two weeks because of it.
I’d promised myself to only do the digging a little and often, but it’s easy to get carried away when you’ve got a couple of hours and the sun is out.

One consideration is to deep bed your allotment, 4 foot by 4 foot beds. I find i a lot easier to manage as getting one bed ready for planting is so easy, crop rotation is made simple and application of fertilizer more efficient.