Esther , welcome to site , nice having allotment close to home , I have to drive to mine about 10 minutes so not to bad. Please feel free to ask any questions , books are good but nothing like practical experience and I have had some really useful info , looking forward to see pictures
Gardengirl , noticed in your post you mention " ginger " ? Is that correct , hope you are keeping well
did hope to go to plot today but heavy rain ☔️ perhaps over weekend
Do any of you allotmenteers do anything so wild as a jointly owning a rotovator with others on the same site? I reckon with five or six people we could get something adequate for around £50-60 each.
Hi All! Just been to inspect my new allotment. Turns out it's a chunk of virgin wilderness that will need a rotovator on it asap. Apparently, the allotment group there have one, so I can hire for £10 or so a day. I'm attempting to attach pics. All the grass is mine, but none of the structures around the edge! It will get afternoon and evening sun and all the usual wind of the west coast. I can build sheds and polytunnels, but can have no ponds, animals, bees, etc. It's for growing only. It'll take a long time to do, but that's fine by me!
Hi BobFlannigon, a few of the guys on our sit have their own rotivators, I never use one, even when I first took over my pot and it resembled Esther3's!! We have a bad case of horsetail on our site and rotivating would make it worse.
Esther, its worth taking the time planning your site first, then strimming all the grass down and covering it with tarpaulin or cardboard. You can then take your time digging and making paths/raised beds etc. We have mini ponds on our plots (washing up bowls set in the ground) home enough for a few slug munching frogs!
Thanks to Doris, I have a broken green house, the glass flew all round the garden in dangerous shards!My polytunnel got ripped but that was easy to stick with tape
Had a good 4 hour session on Wednesday, weeding, digging and re lined and straightened all my paths, looks a lot neater, even got to mow them too! Can wait to start sowing, too cold here yet.
Esther3 careful if the grass is couch grass thick white roots and if you are going to use a rotovator it will chop it up to small pieces and grow from those - nice plot area like Ginagibbs says plan plan plan
Ginagibbs went to Aldi today got some seed sowing compost will start seed soon, thought someone on here had a pond out of washing up bowl - so I brought one to have a small pond too great idea, what have you put in the pond?
ALDI I brought seed compost x 2 liked it last year, slow release fertiliser some mixed flower seeds and some plug plants 6 trailing white petunia they look good and other bits
Hi ginagibbs, thanks for the encouragement. Thought I'd lost my marbles when I got home from the viewing, but then realised that every allotment probably looked like this once! How did you find out about the horsetail? Did others tell you? It's hard to see on my site what's what just now.
GWRS yep ginger that is what main man got for us to plant and try - never tried to grow it before from B&Q
Esther3 the tall weeds on your plot are fat hen does seed it self around abit but should come up easy, yep all allotment start like that over grown at least you can put your own mark on the area
Went to the allotment today bit of digging lots of bramble roots, have some exciting news we spotted a blue t** bird checking out the bird house, not long sice they have been up, hope they move in
Later went to inexcess brought some seed trays - good strong ones, just to wash out green house and other seeds trays I have
Bob did hire a rotavator once for garden that is probably the easy way to use them - you have to think if it gets stolen it would be a lot of money lost - someone on our site had one stolen and tillers that is what they are after when the break in
Posts
Esther , welcome to site , nice having allotment close to home , I have to drive to mine about 10 minutes so not to bad. Please feel free to ask any questions , books are good but nothing like practical experience and I have had some really useful info , looking forward to see pictures
Gardengirl , noticed in your post you mention " ginger " ? Is that correct , hope you are keeping well
did hope to go to plot today but heavy rain ☔️ perhaps over weekend
Do any of you allotmenteers do anything so wild as a jointly owning a rotovator with others on the same site? I reckon with five or six people we could get something adequate for around £50-60 each.
Hi All! Just been to inspect my new allotment. Turns out it's a chunk of virgin wilderness that will need a rotovator on it asap. Apparently, the allotment group there have one, so I can hire for £10 or so a day. I'm attempting to attach pics. All the grass is mine, but none of the structures around the edge! It will get afternoon and evening sun and all the usual wind of the west coast. I can build sheds and polytunnels, but can have no ponds, animals, bees, etc. It's for growing only. It'll take a long time to do, but that's fine by me!
Hi BobFlannigon, a few of the guys on our sit have their own rotivators, I never use one, even when I first took over my pot and it resembled Esther3's!! We have a bad case of horsetail on our site and rotivating would make it worse.
Esther, its worth taking the time planning your site first, then strimming all the grass down and covering it with tarpaulin or cardboard. You can then take your time digging and making paths/raised beds etc. We have mini ponds on our plots (washing up bowls set in the ground) home enough for a few slug munching frogs!
Thanks to Doris, I have a broken green house, the glass flew all round the garden in dangerous shards!My polytunnel got ripped but that was easy to stick with tape
Had a good 4 hour session on Wednesday, weeding, digging and re lined and straightened all my paths, looks a lot neater, even got to mow them too! Can wait to start sowing, too cold here yet.
Esther3 careful if the grass is couch grass thick white roots and if you are going to use a rotovator it will chop it up to small pieces and grow from those - nice plot area like Ginagibbs says plan plan plan
Ginagibbs went to Aldi today got some seed sowing compost will start seed soon, thought someone on here had a pond out of washing up bowl - so I brought one to have a small pond too great idea, what have you put in the pond?
ALDI I brought seed compost x 2 liked it last year, slow release fertiliser some mixed flower seeds and some plug plants 6 trailing white petunia they look good and other bits
Hi ginagibbs, thanks for the encouragement. Thought I'd lost my marbles when I got home from the viewing, but then realised that every allotment probably looked like this once! How did you find out about the horsetail? Did others tell you? It's hard to see on my site what's what just now.
Thanks, Gardengirl, I'll be really careful about clearing the ground. Plan a lot and do a little bit, as you say.
GWRS yep ginger that is what main man got for us to plant and try - never tried to grow it before from B&Q
Esther3 the tall weeds on your plot are fat hen does seed it self around abit but should come up easy, yep all allotment start like that over grown at least you can put your own mark on the area
Bob , a few on the site have rotators , personally don't use them as I have some horse tail and it would make a lot worse
Esther the best advice I can give is do a section at a time , so many on our site try and do it all in one go and give up
Weather should be OK tomorrow so spending whole day at plot
Gardengirl must look into ginger
?
Went to the allotment today bit of digging lots of bramble roots, have some exciting news we spotted a blue t** bird checking out the bird house, not long sice they have been up, hope they move in
Later went to inexcess brought some seed trays - good strong ones, just to wash out green house and other seeds trays I have
Bob did hire a rotavator once for garden that is probably the easy way to use them - you have to think if it gets stolen it would be a lot of money lost - someone on our site had one stolen and tillers that is what they are after when the break in