Totally new - with not much of a clue !

[TheGaffer]

Could anyone tell me how big a rod is ?!

I've just got a plot which is 10 rods and it looks huge!

Also, its just been ploughed so I was going to take the fork to it and break it down so it was level etc - but what would be the best things to start growing ?

I am a COMPLETE novice (33 years young and used to playing football at the weekend instead of growing!) so ANY advice will be more than welcomed !

[coomber]

hello the gaffer, welcome to the vine you've come to the right place!
would help if you put your location on your profile

[MaureenHall]

Hi Gaffer

5.5 yards is a rod, pole or perch. I remember when I was a little girl at school learning my "times tables" and how many inches in a foot, feet in a yard, yards in a mile etc (that was in the olden days of course). I still had to look the answer to your question up on t'interweb though

Welcome to the vine, you'll get loads of help and advice here - sadly no help with digging and weeding though!

[Demeter]

I had to learn both - we did metric at school but that might as well have been martian at home, so I ended up thinking mostly in feet and inches anyway!

This web page is quite interesting.
Measures for Measures

So is this one:

"Medieval ploughing was done with oxen, up to 4 pairs at a time. The ploughman handled the plough. His boy controlled the oxen using a stick, which had to be long enough to reach all the oxen. This was the rod, pole or perch. It was an obvious implement to measure the fields, such as 4 poles to the chain. A BBC webpage about allotments says that "an allotment plot is 10 poles" and claims that "A pole is measured as the length from the back of the plough to the nose of the ox". I suppose that if you wanted to control the front ox, you needed a pole long enough to reach! The perch was used in the reign of Henry II (1154-1189), the pole since the 16C, and the rod since 1450. In the 16th century the lawful rod was decreed to be the combined length of the left feet of 16 men as they left church on a Sunday morning."

Imperial Measures of Length and Area

So now I know - my allotment is (I reckon) 5 rods only, a mere half-plot - as it's about 22 yards by 5.5 yards. In fact I think it's a little bigger than that, more like 22m by 5.5m or so (125sqm)... I guess the "margins" are for paths and don't count? Egad what would I do with a whole plot?!

PS I am assuming that when we say "rod" we mean "square rod"? i.e. 5 rods = 1 rod wide and 5 rods long?

[Two_Sheds]

That's brilliant.
My plot is measured in pea sticks or bamboo canes