“Decent shape” was a little optimistic…

[PeterW]

When I started to put the plan into effect, I discovered that meanwhile rather a lot of weeds had appeared in some parts of our plot.  In particular little marestail shoots had emerged everywhere, there was some bindweed and some of the innocent-looking tufts of grass had the long white roots of couch grass.  Some parts were better than others, and there we planted onion sets and potatoes. 

We built a raised bed with 15cm deep pallet wood sides on one patch of grass, and then laid seed potatoes on the grass and filled up the bed with some very well-rotted compost from the previous owner’s heap.  This new bed is at the front of our plot, next to the track through the middle of the allotment, so it generated quite a lot of interest in starting a no-dig bed on grass among our neighbours and passers by.  No pressure there then!  I’ve realised that I probably planted the potatoes a bit deep, but they seem to be able to grow from quite deep within a compost heap, so I hope they’ll make it up to the surface.

Meanwhile I had been offered a tonne of farmyard manure from a local farm, so I decided to make use of it to start killing off some of the perennial weeds.  I carefully dug out marestail roots and the largest clumps of couch grass, ignoring the annual weeds.  On one of the beds (we should end up with 9 4m x 1.35m raised beds on the plot I put a couple of layers of cardboard down on the soil (it was a bit too windy to put it on top, as Charles recommends, and I had nothing to weight it down) and then 10cm of manure on top.  I buitlt some pallet wood sides for that one too.  On two of the others I put 10cm of muck straight on the soil.  It’ll be interesting to compare the two approaches.  One of the 30-year veterans of the allotment commented that the manure was nicely rotted, but one of the committee members said that plants don’t like too much manure, so I hope I haven’t overdone it.  The manure is still a bit clumpy, so instead of sowing carrots there as planned, I think I’ll plant out the runner bean and pumpkin that I have started in modules, and then plant broccoli and kale later in the season when the manure has broken down further.  I’ll put the carrots in one of the beds where the weeds weren’t so vigorous, in the finer soil where I think they will cope better.  Now I just need to scavenge more pallets to finish off the other raised beds and make a couple of new compost heaps…