This week I have just paid for my second year on the allotment £25 which is so incredibly reasonable I still can not believe it. I should rather say my wife paid as I never have any cash in the house. This reminded me of how much I have been able to get done in a year.

When I got my plot and was shown around it by the site secretary it was clear they were annoyed with the state it had been left in by the previous owner, it was almost entirely covered in weeds and grass and didn’t look very much like an allotment at all. I saw an opportunity!

Couch grass (Elymus repens), Ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria) and Bind weed (Convolvulus arvensis) The trifecta of weeds most gardeners would least want in the soil. I have the lot, throw in thistles, stinging nettles and brambles and it made clearing the ground a bit of a nightmare. The only way through it is to do it.

With a fork and spade I began to slowly turn over the soil and remove as many weeds as I could by hand, I found I needed to double dig for most spots as the weed roots went deep. It is important to try and keep the roots intact when removing them as all the first three species are able to regrow from even the smallest sections of root. Do not be tempted to use a petrol rotavator to do this as it will just chop all the roots up and next year you will be in the same mess.

Using this method I eventually cleared the whole site (I have only just finished digging over the last patch this week). My advice is clear a small patch well and grow in that, rather than trying to clear a larger area, less well and leaving more weeds in the ground to have to carry on dealing with again and again. The ground that I didn’t get a chance to clear I covered with whatever I could get my hands on. I used large sheets of old plywood that I was able to pinch from a skip, and some old tarpaulins I had lying around. Anything to block the light out and supress the weeds until I was ready to deal with them.

The results of this work last summer, in all honesty were mixed, some beds were better than others. The Bind weed and Ground elder you will never be rid of, but I was happy with how much I had beaten in back from where I had begun. Throughout the summer I found the best way to stay on top of the weeds was little and often, daily if possible, going down and just pulling out any weed that showed its head above ground.

During this winter I have gone further on my weed elimination journey, trying the no dig method of gardening now the site has been dug.  

This involves the laying down of thick carboard to produce a weed barrier on which a thick layer of compost is laid to further produce a barrier and give you something to plant into. Now I try and do everything on my allotment on a budget and seeing many of the YouTube gardeners buying in huge rolls of uniform carboard wasn’t going to work for me. Luckily just down the road from our house Is a large garden centre that always seems to have mountains of carboard stacked out the back, and they were more than happy for me to take some. I employed the same method here as with the digging over of the ground. Lay the carboard and cover with compost well in smaller area first, rather than spreading too thinly over a large area. Plus, I found out the hard way that the carboard does have a tendency to wonder off if not covered over.

Using the cardboard, I aimed for a layer at least two thick all over, making sure I hadn’t missed any holes where handles and things tend to be cut in the side of boxes. Once the cardboard is spread out it you want to cover it over with compost fairly rapidly or as mentioned before the carboard tends to all end up blown against the hedge and torn up. I made this mistake, over estimating how much compost I had made the previous year which covered barely a whole bed (about 3m2) and then had to wait a couple of days before I had my dad come and help me with a van to pick up a dumpy bag of compost. So, my suggestion would be to lay out the cardboard when you have the compost there ready to go or be prepared to have to lay them out twice.

For the compost it all depends on how much you want to spend, my aim is to not spend too much money on the allotment, so I found the most cost effective way to buy bulk amounts of compost is to go to council compost centres. Here I can get a ton load for about £30 which if I was to buy for a garden centre a similar amount would be closer to £300. Now I am very pleased to say that I can get compost at will as I have just got my first trailer.

As the spring gets going I can see that the ‘No Dig’ method has not been completely successful so far, as I am seeing some, a lot less mind, Bind weed and Ground elder coming through, but I am hopeful it will have reduced so I can just keep on top of it again this summer.

I imagine by next winter I will be trying the next great idea or will succumb to the method of a neighbour here on site, ‘Spray it all’.