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Hello,
Proud new owner of an allotment here, and having spent a couple of months tinkering, have discovered no dig and am devouring the books!
My question is this:
The allotment is on a medium slope and is heavy London clay. It’s very overgrown with couch grass, plus various other weeds. The ground is also quite uneven, from the previous bed layout as well as hummocks due to old bags of soil or compost. The allotment site gets large deliveries of horse manure mixed with straw, and we’ve bought some non-woven fabric, so are planning to lay 5cm or so of manure over the ground, then cardboard then the fabric, and leave for a year to kill off the weeds. However, I’d love to even out the ground beforehand, and also remove the old bed definition. I’m thinking of strimming then rotavating to break up the soil enough to be able to move it around, knowing that this will chop the couch grass up, but given we’ll be covering up afterwards, wonder if it is OK. I’ve read the bits about not disturbing the soil, which makes a lot of sense, but am struggling with whether the desire to sort out the topography trumps not disturbing the soil, as this is realistically the only chance to change it.Many thanks for any thoughts- on any of these plans! And apologies if I haven’t yet read something that covers this.
Its a good question.
I don’t like rotovators but this could be a chance to use one for the levelling you describe. Mulching will then help the soil to heal and rejuvenate.
If there is lots of couch, make sure your non-woven fabric is light excluding.Wendy, sorry your upload failed, there is a 2Mb limit so do please try with smaller.
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