To rotavate weeds or not?

[Areti Woods]

I've just taken on my allotment plot, which is currently covered in a mix of nettles, purple deadnettles and some grass. I've had conflicting advice from my allotment neighbours - to clear the weeds first (which will be backbreaking, the plot is 20m x 11m) or to rotavate and allow them to be dug in.
What's the beast approach? Are there pros & cons? Thanks in advance

[nickdub]

Rotovating will work, but it has to be repeated and repeated at least 7 or 8 times in a few months. Just rotovating perennial weeds once is a waste of time and effort.

The other approaches are :-
1) weedkiller
2) Forking the weed roots out and separating them from the soil
3) excluding light using cardboard or black plastic

Obviously these can be combined, or used on different areas and each has its own pros and cons.

[nick the grief]

You don't have to do it all at once.cover it with black plastic and work on a strip at a time. rotavating will just chop up the roots and the mor pernicious weeds wil just multiply. dead nettles are shallow rooted relativly and you can pull those out but the grass is probably couch grass and that needs to be dug out I'm afraid.

But if you do it little and often its surprising how quickly you can clear some ground.

[peanut]

I follow Charles Dowding's No Dig Gardening. It's brilliant. Have a look at his website.
I say mow it all, mark out your beds, cover with cardboard and then top with approx 6" of compost. You can then plant directly into our new beds.
Good luck

[Jungle Jane]

What about rotavating & then covering it with cardboard so it can’t regrow? I don’t have an allotment,I’m in a garden I imagine weeding it all would take ages but if you broke the plot up into several areas,cleared one area each season,you’ll have space to start planting,Rome wasn’t built in a day is a phrase I like for everything

[Plot70]

I had an area that was covered in bind weed.
I dug it down to bed rock level last year ahead of winter squashes vineing over it. Some of the bind weed has grown 2 foot ling shoots from under the bed rock. I have had to literally weed the bed rock.
It is going to be used for deep root crops.
Couch grass it very difficult to get rid of without masses of chemicals or a lot of work.
The roots are best carted away for nutrient extraction and composting on an industrial scale.

[Snadger]

I follow Charles Dowding's No Dig Gardening. It's brilliant. Have a look at his website.
I say mow it all, mark out your beds, cover with cardboard and then top with approx 6" of compost. You can then plant directly into our new beds.
Good luck

From what I have seen of the Charles Dowding method he always starts off with pasture land devoid of perennial weeds.

The other thing is jou don't know what buried underneath. It could have been a bonfire site, a stone dump or worse still a broken glass dump!

Nicks idea of dig some plant some and cover what you don't get dug is a good one. Once you have dug the whole plot and got rid of the perennial weeds,glass, large stones and any other rubbish, you can then establish a no-dig garden.

[SimpleSimon]

I follow Charles Dowding's No Dig Gardening. It's brilliant. Have a look at his website.
I say mow it all, mark out your beds, cover with cardboard and then top with approx 6" of compost. You can then plant directly into our new beds.
Good luck

No dig is great but just a few small beds is an astronomical amount of compost. So it just isn't feasible for a new allotment holder unless they have incredibly deep pockets or lots of time to build up the material..

[Areti Woods]

Thank you for the suggestions. I guess there’s no easy way to do this and eliminate all the perennial weeds at the same time as I’d prefer not to have to keep repeating the job. I’ll most likely do it section by section as Nick suggested. The ground is really wet at the moment, I’ll cover it while I’m waiting for the sun to come out for more than 10 minutes! I’ll definitely look at the no-dig approach too. Definitely need to think of this as a project with many stages. Food for thought... 😊

[Mark Rand]

I guess the other plot holders wouldn't approve of using formalin to sterilize the entire plot?

[Areti Woods]

I guess the other plot holders wouldn't approve of using formalin to sterilize the entire plot?

Is that a weed killer, Mark? I do use weed killer occasionally in the garden on flowers but try not to in the veg plot.
’sterilise’ sounds quite extreme. Would that also strip the goodness from the soil?

[Nicos]

I guess the other plot holders wouldn't approve of using formalin to sterilize the entire plot?

I’ve actually never heard of using that before and had to look it up!

this goes back to 2015 but having read this , I wouldn’t consider using it even if it were commercially available!.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/c...formalin-rules

[Snoop Puss]

Mark, have you seen formalin recommended for use as a weed killer rather than as a soil steriliser? I've never heard of this and I wouldn't recommend it either. Formaldehyde is a carcinogen. Breathing in the fumes does you no good. You'd kill off micro and other organisms. It is used to disinfect seeds, so evidently does nothing to destroy weed seeds. As far as I can tell, very deep-rooted weeds would survive.

I can't imagine other plot holders or an allotment committee approving of its use.

[Mark Rand]

Yes, it does really "sterilize" the soil IIRC it was one of the only recommendations for treatment of honey fungus infestations. Probably should have put a smily on the post!

But, if there are perenial weeds, is a weedkiller a viable option to knock them back quickly and reduce the work needed for subsequent control?

[Compostman2]

No dig works for me.

Yes it can be a lot of compost but you do not have to do all the plot in one go, plus after the first year you only need 1 inch to feed the soli.

Rotavating cuts the roots that you don't want & if all not removed will spread & grow.

As for what is underneath how is it that important, surly it is the growing medium above that is important...Thinking grow bags on patio here.