Unused allotments

I have 4 sites near me and on all of them there are unused lots i can tell becouse they are overgrown like jungles and have been from begining of last year.dont the council check these sites at all ?


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Its the same on our allotments Roeder apparently there's a waiting list!!! yet over half the allotments are overgrown with weeds, know our secretary shows prospective people around but they don't seem to want them if they're too overgrown, suppose with peoples busy lives they don't have the time to clear them, also some holders start off clearing them then give up,ours are covered in brambles if the council had a mass clearup maybe they'd be able to let a few more??

 

I'd like all allotments to be in use, but I think there are mitigating circumstances some of the time (maybe in your case, maybe not?)

Administrators may be busy, or inefficient (no excuse for the last, but ...)

Plot holders may be ill. If I had tended a plot for 20 years, got it to be "just-so", and then fell ill for a protracted length of time I would not want my plot taken away from me - unless I was never going to be able to tend it again. In these circumstances other plot holders will often tend the plot in the interim ... but not always of course

 

I wonder how likely such folk would be to actually stick at owning a plot then? I appreciate that clearing brambles, and digging the ground, can be an arduous task, but handed-to-them-on-a-plate is not the answer either.

having said that I am a firm believer in helping Newbies in ways that mean they are less likely to give up in the first year (e.g. advice on things to grow that are more likely to have them say "That was worth it" then "Lot of effort for 'nought")

Maybe the question is "How did the plots get to be in that state in the first place"? That is going to be Admin's fault ... ought to be Kit Inspections several times a season and plots that fail being put on notice and then kicked out (barring mitigating circumstances) so maybe a case for Council to sort the plots out because they got into that state through mis-management?

But I know diddly-squat about allotments / management.

 

I watched successive tenants keep failing on a plot that was rotavated for the first tenants, getting more and more overgrown with brambles and thistles taking over until I got so fed up with it next to us that I took it on after the last tenants were chucked off. It only took about a week to get it sorted, but that seems to be far too much hard work for lots of people.

Overgrown plots can be full couch grass, annual weed seeds, bindweed, etc. and superficially 'clearing' them can give completely the wrong impression of just how much work is still required to restore it.

 

Indeed. However, if a plot has been an allotment for Donkey's Years (and well worked) the soil will be in fantastic condition, once the weeds have been conquered, so every chance that such plots will crop well, once under way.

Council ought to be able to safely [not also kill surrounding plots, but they would employ professions to do it reliably] kill everything with Roudup, or even SBK in the Autumn ...

 

Its always our fault

 

They'd probably get it wrong and spray before the bindweed sprouted, or not spray a sufficient number of times. Even if they did, the incoming tenants could get their seedlings smothered with annual weeds, eventually give up and the whole expensive process would need to start again.

What I've always done is strim/brushcut, rotavate several times in hot weather to burn up roots, mulch out large areas, planting through the mulch and only exposing small areas of bare soil at a time, either for spuds or closely planted stuff sown in pots/cell trays (to give them a head start) put in immediately after cultivating or removing the mulch sheet.

This 'Mypex' type sheeting from Wilkos costs £7.50 (it was £8.98 last year) for a 2 x 6m sheet so costs 62.5p/m2 and is really heavy duty weighing 133g/m2. The cheapest alternative I can find costs £54.55 incl P&P from ebay for 50 x 2m, so 55p/m2 for something much thinner (102g/m2) http://www.wilko.com/accessories/wilko-mulch-sheet-2mx6m/invt/0299006 (I got a whole load when it was reduced to half price)

That's how I managed to 'tame' that plot next to us.

 

Personally I blame "gardeners world" and the like.

How about a TV programme about a person given an allotment covered in couch grass and bindweed.
Give him a fork and spade and show us what it takes.
But that would be boring, lets just cut to the planting bit, and the harvesting.

On my site they decided to give it the round up treatment, they did it about August last year, first thing they did was cut it all down with a brush cutter, then applied the weed killer, (assume it was glyphosate), things went a bit brown.
Then a nice "lawn" appeared, which they "rotavated in", a few weeks ago.
New people are appearing, but for how long? Once the weeds start growing.

On my new bit, I hit it twice with Glyphosate last summer, all I have left is some bindweed roots, its easy digging.

 

Yes, there's 'Gardeners World' and the real world. It would be great to see somebody showing how to deal with a really overgrown plot. I've had to use a chainsaw to get through massive dog rose stems & scrub. It doesn't take much googling to find threads about taking on overgrown plots, and how they're going to get it sorted and will post pics. Then it either goes dead or resurrect the thread when the bindweed appears and then it goes dead again.

 

That is sooo true Kristen our house is built on old allotment land, and yes it took a lot of clearing before we could plant anything but the soil is so good with all the improvement over the years everything grows brilliantly

 

Our council seems to have just one person in charge of allotments i phoned her a few weeks ago to get on the waiting list and she said there is 1400 letters to be sent out to people on list to see if they are still wanting to be on it !!!!
Lol i must be the 1401st on the list


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Going of the subject a minute rotavating tilling and digging kills the soil on a new plot the best and easiest on the back way is to cut all weeds and grass down to soil level lay down several layers of wet cardboard minus the sellotape put down a mix of compost manure and topsoil wet it again then a 5inc layer of woodchip mulch from a tree surgeon and that is it i did it with my garden and i never have to dig it water it or get many weeds any that do appear easily pull out as the soil in time gets realy soft.


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Yeah, if the contractors are told causally to "spray it once, and soon", but contractors instructed to sort it out would get it to a manageable state.

There are also those "we do it for you" Yuppie allotments - where basically you turn up and just pick your veg Probably bring your friends Tarquin and Peregrin and a bottle of something chilled around to have a look at the allotment where you "grow EVERYTHING we eat" too but in all seriousness in locations where such Punters can be found that would get the plots round too - sufficient money paid to enable the plots to be recovered.

I agree that "sheeting it" would be best, and a crop like Squash can be dot-planted through the sheeting at quite wide spacing in the first season whilst the weeds are being starved of light to death. But average allotment is 250 sq.m. so might be seen as quite an outlay? Probably why carpet et al gets used as a substitute.

There's a female presenter on one of the "gardening channels" (YouTube or somesuch) who did that I think. She became very popular a couple of years ago, but I didn't like the shows much. Unprepared (no script) so delivery, whilst seeming natural, missed numerous salient points and so on, but no doubting her enthusiasm, and she showed what was required to actually get the job done - and that you didn't need to be a back-row Rugby player to be able to do it either.

 

Its "a" way, highly debatable if Lasagne methods are the "best" way or suit all situations.And I would disagree very strongly with your view that "rotavating tilling and digging kills the soil on a new plot"