Covering up the allotment

[MancGardener]

I plan on covering up about 1/2 of my allotment (125m2) for the main bulk of the year. Where would the best place to buy this from be?

[Aberdeenplotter]

Why on earth are you covering it up? If you don't have the time to cultivate anything else, plant spuds which need very little looking after once planted. The dense foliage also keeps weeds down.

[rustylady]

^ ^ ^ Wot he said. WHY???

[MancGardener]

I want to cover it up so the weeds don't grow anymore!

[donnakebab]

Are the weeds still there or have you dug the area over to eliminate them. If the earth is now bare then cover for now and plant when you are ready, or sew some green manure. No reason why you shouldn't plant if the weeds have been dug out.

As AP says, throw in some spuds, you'll always get a crop of some sort and you can easily hoe between the rows until the foliage suppresses any weeds.

[alldigging]

How to make a lazy bed for GROWING VEGETABLES - YouTube

This!

[MancGardener]

Are the weeds still there or have you dug the area over to eliminate them. If the earth is now bare then cover for now and plant when you are ready, or sew some green manure. No reason why you shouldn't plant if the weeds have been dug out.

As AP says, throw in some spuds, you'll always get a crop of some sort and you can easily hoe between the rows until the foliage suppresses any weeds.

The weeds are still there.

[donnakebab]

If the weeds are still there then you will have to cover with as many layers as possible to deprive them of light, especially perennials like dock and thistle. Layers next to the soil could be cardboard, newspaper, animal bedding (if you can get it) anything that the worms can do their stuff on, with a top layer of either woven black plastic or weed control fabric. This could take a year or more. The later 2 won't stop the likes of thistle on their own in my experience.

Do it now if you haven't already. If you don't cover now they will just get bigger and bigger...until they are up to you waist within about 4 weeks and you won't be able to cover them without chopping them down to ground level. Hard work and they are sucking up all the nutrients as we speak.

Good luck.

[Farmer_Gyles]

The dense foliage

dense foliage from spuds???? i have never ever seen dense foliage on spuds .... and certainly never anything that will suppress weeds ....

[donnakebab]

What spuds are you growing?

Mine look like a miniature amazon forest when they are growing.

[zazen999]

Cover with cardboard, buy a few bags of pumpkin and squash seeds and plant them through the cardboard with about 3-4 metres squared in between. Let them grow all over the cardboard and spend your time tackling the rest of the plot.

[Farmer_Gyles]

cover over anything you can't dig over right now .... uncover it when you're ready to dig ....
you can get cardboard almost anywhere, but soak it and hold it down with rocks / pots of stones / bricks etc to make sure it doesn't blow away
if you want a LOT of weed control fabric, contact an upholsterer .... they use exactly the same stuff on the underside of sofas etc .... they may be able to supply a 100m x 1.5m roll for about £40 .... otherwise you'll be buying small rolls from garden centres at a fiver a time .... again, hold it down with bricks or whatever ....
don't aim to leave half the plot covered for most of the year .... aim to work the ground when you get round to it (when you have the first half under control) ...

[donnakebab]

Make sure the cardboard is a few layers thick. Dock and thistle are very persistent on my plot unless you have the time and energy to dig them out. They will poke through one layer of cardboard, and weed suppressing fabric.

I got mine from a well known internet site.

[Aberdeenplotter]

dense foliage from spuds???? i have never ever seen dense foliage on spuds .... and certainly never anything that will suppress weeds ....

I'm astounded at this comment. ^^^^ Potatoes planted at 27" centres between the rows will easily cover the ground between the rows and exclude light. It's one of the reasons why spuds are such a good crop for helping clean up a weedy plot. That coupled with the constant moving of the soil.

Part of my question as to why stems from the fact that this is someone who has taken over a p[lot that seems to be in fairly good order and then gaily sets out not to grow vegetables which is what it is provided for and instead proposes to cover part of it up.


I would have been supportive if the plot had been in a mess or if this was half way through the growing season but we are at the optimum time for preparing and planting.

[zazen999]

I would have been supportive if the plot had been in a mess or if this was half way through the growing season but we are at the optimum time for preparing and planting.

Having just seen the blog - I totally agree with you. [Yes, it happens sometimes!]. Looking at the state of it - it would be well easy to keep on top of that this year. Not every allotment is a mess and needs doing a bit at a time.