New baby and new allotment - what was I thinking?

[jonahjonah]

Got about half the usable area on the new plot covered with black plastic. Had a little dig to clear one of the previous beds. Annual weeds came out beautifully with the nice fork left behind by the previous plotholders. Warm sunshine, mostly compliant baby, good strawberry harvest. It was an encouraging day. (Took a photo but it's rubbish. Can't even see the ugly plastic covered in weeds behind the tall brambles.)

[jonahjonah]

Just an update to say we're slowly plugging away at clearing our plot. We've cleared about 2/3 or 3/4 of the workable area. The far end of the plot has fake grass, so we're closer than we look to done. Much of the black plastic covering the cleared areas is itself covered in drying weeds, so it doesn't look like much October is the beginning of the rent year, so we're committing to a full year on the full plot. If I'm not cultivating the majority of it next year, that will be my cue that we just don't have the energy and time for it. We're still enjoying the process though, so here's hoping for steady progress.

[SarrissUK]

It sounds like you're keeping on with it! Are you enjoying it too? This time of year tends to be the 'messiest' looking for me, as everything has been growing like mad over the summer, and this year the weeds have been relentless due to all that rain and relative warmth.

My beds though, are relatively weed free! I made one bed on the old plot, for potatoes mainly, and that's so weedy it's not even funny. But I did expect that, as I was covering it with cardboard, then topping with soil that had been on top of all the carpet that was on there. And it was FULL of weeds before I cleared the carpet.
On the other plot though, I used cardboard and horse manure on top, and the first three or four months I spent a good hour weeding the bed that is 10 feet wide and about 75 foot long. Now I only weed it every other week for less than half an hour, so the weeds are coming through less and less. That's a real success for no-dig I think
I'm probably at about 60% cultivation on both plots, but I'm not worried about that. I'm slowly increasing the coverage of beds, but there's only me, and what I'm cultivating now is going to be more than enough for me. Next year I will have more veg than I will know what to do with.

Hang in there Jonah - and enjoy the space you have there, not just for growing veg, but to socialise as a family with friends

[SarrissUK]

Oh I forgot to say, I don't like petrol strimmers either, although they are powerful. I bought a little, light rechargeable grass trimmer from BandQ yesterday and I'm thrilled with it It is fairly quiet, strims for half an hour at a time and will definitely do the job up on my plot. That's a good job for £44!

[jonahjonah]

Thanks, Sariss. We are definitely enjoying it. It's so satisfying clearing this plot compared to the last. And now the babe is napping while we're out there which is a win for everyone. My husband is less concerned about the level of cultivation than I am, but I feel like I need to have a realistic cutoff to decide if it's worth it for us. Honestly, though, the cultivation cutoff neglects the happiness boost we get from being out there. I am hoping for a good year! I love reading about your no-dig plot. We don't have a car so it would be too difficult or expensive for us, I think, but maybe one day!

[Logunner]

Thanks, Sariss. We are definitely enjoying it. It's so satisfying clearing this plot compared to the last. And now the babe is napping while we're out there which is a win for everyone. My husband is less concerned about the level of cultivation than I am, but I feel like I need to have a realistic cutoff to decide if it's worth it for us. Honestly, though, the cultivation cutoff neglects the happiness boost we get from being out there. I am hoping for a good year! I love reading about your no-dig plot. We don't have a car so it would be too difficult or expensive for us, I think, but maybe one day!

Great work so far... why not try the no dig in very small stages, it’s a marathon not a sprint.

Get the compost bins going, use cardboard to cover a small area ( weigh it down with anything you have handy ) then in spring use a dibber to punch thru and plant. You can even use opened out newspaper under the cardboard.

Just increase the area over time and eventually you will have the compost you’ve made to cover the cardboard.

[bikermike]

I've had my plot for five years and have an almost- five year-old... i think this last weekend was the first time his presence on site was a help to cultivation rather than a hindrance :-)

I took over the larger half of my plot 3 years ago and still haven't finished it. Got a telling off from the committee last year, but otherwise it's been ok.

As they say, it's a marathon not a sprint. It'll be worth it in the end.

Do it in small doses and cover what you can't cultivate

Edit, put it all in one post, so I look a bit more organised...


In terms of compost, it's a case of do what you can. I have had much better yields this year and have fed everything with weed tea (made from the stuff you can't compost). Stinks, but it's free (apart from needing something to make it in).

Also, looking at the pic, there is lots of plastic down. Can you cover it with woodchip - it will last a lot longer if it's not exposed to full sunlight (The bits I put down and didn't cover were ripping within a year, the bits I have covered have done 3 years with no sign of any degredation. And it looks more like you are doing something...)

[jonahjonah]

Thanks, logrunner and bikermike. Good thoughts about getting started in a small way.

I collect our veg peelings and small bits of plain cardboard to compost. I'm slacking at the moment, though, as the little countertop bin got a bit...unfit for a human abode. There is a somewhat unsteady homemade compost tumbler on the plot, which I have been slowly filling. I will soon dedicate some time to wheelbarrowing up my hard-won compost from my old plot up to the new.

We are trying to cover with plastic as we go. (There're also some larger pieces of plain cardboard under the plastic. A potential start to a mini no-dig approach.) So far, as you can sort of see, it's only being covered with weeds. I'll look at covering with something to preserve it. I'm loathe to keep binning plastic. We have access to a bit of free wood chips, but they're at the neighboring allotment site, which is probably a 10-minute roundtrip. I'll need a nap just thinking about it. But a much-appreciated tip.

I made some weed tea in the past, but was a bit reluctant to use it. We have lots of bindweed and other non-compostable weeds coming out, though, so I'll give that another go. There are a few water containers on the plot, which will help.

Luckily my allotment committee has been very lenient and encouraging. But now we have a waiting list for the site, so maybe it will behoove me to look more like I'm up to something...

[SarrissUK]

I think, if you can get enough cardboard off your neighbour or from a nearby farm shop or something like that, you can do no dig through just mulching with cardboard in the autumn and let it rot down very slowly, and plant through it in the spring. Then just topping up with cardboard or paper (can you get shredded paper from somewhere?) should keep weeds at bay, which I think is a huge benefit of no dig - you spend less time on weeding, and therefore can spend more time on the actual plant care etc.

Ask neighbours for grass clippings, their cardboard and paper that they'd send for recycling too

[Logunner]

I also pick up any free newspapers and lay them out and water them. They actually take longer to rot down than the cardboard.

[jonahjonah]

Just a quick update as we get into our first full year on the new plot. The baby's not so new now and we're going slow and steady on the plot as the weather allows. I don't have an incredible "after" transformation photo, but here's our current status:



We got our fruit trees and bushes, strawberries and rhubarb moved and they're all looking like they suspect spring is upon us. I have been weeding some areas, applying spent compost from pots, and planting out garlic that I had potted up at home in the greenhouse when I couldn't get down to the plot in the winter. Our site also came into possession of some woodchip from a neighbor who needed to access the site to take down trees, so we've been using that on top of black weed membrane to create a few paths. The plot had previously been divided into borderless raised beds surrounded by moats (or whatever the non-medieval gardening equivalent is), so we're putting paths over the built-up weedy areas for this year and doing bit of leveling to make the plot less treacherous. We'll revisit paths next year after we've had a chance to use the plot in its path-of-least-resistance form this year. As you can see, we still have lots of ugly black plastic around, but there are some chitting potatoes, some overwintered flowers, and a few other bits that are eagerly awaiting a place on the plot. Still hoping to get most of the plot into productive cultivation this year, but it's been a bonkers year so far, so who knows what to expect.

[SarrissUK]

How lovely to hear you're still going! And what's your answer to your question now? What were you thinking getting a plot, and how do you feel about it now?

[jonahjonah]

How lovely to hear you're still going! And what's your answer to your question now? What were you thinking getting a plot, and how do you feel about it now?

I originally asked if any plots were available as our first plot was really not great. Very shady and filled with tenacious flowering plants and grasses that had made a go of growing there and were not to be easily shifted. We had been on there a couple of years and it was a lot of work prepping with very limited area to grow annual vegetables. My husband really lacked enthusiasm for it and the plot was starting to wear on me. I thought it was time to either move on to a better site or perhaps just move on, given the limited time with the arrival of the baby. I really wanted a place to grow as our back garden doesn't get a lot of sun and isn't very large. So that was the thinking in taking a new plot on despite the challenge of having a young, sleep-averse baby.

The verdict is: best decision we could have taken. It gets us outside, the plot is so much more tractable than our old one, and it's a combination personal trainer/therapist some days.

In other news, we have lots of cardboard tucked inside the dilapidated shed at the moment and have unearthed a few bags of compost among the weeds. We'll set up a little no-dig bed on one of the uncleared areas as a trial. Another aspect of the coming growing season that I'm looking forward to!

[lottie dolly]

Well done you,good luck.

[SarrissUK]

That sounds great Jonah - I'm so pleased you did carry on, especially if it helps with mental wellbeing when you have little children. It can be a struggle to keep a clear head, and every little helps