Anyone with an allotment?

Nice roasted too

Thanks all, will give all them a go. Pickling will be good, we'd be eating coleslaw for ages if that’s all we did with them, but some will be in salads soon. Hadn’t thought about roasting but will give that a go too.

Anyone actually done no dig? One end of our big bed is particularly shallow and I'm shifting a load of graded soil out of my garden at the moment (not checked acidity, but some of it seems quite good as it's under a huge Oak which sheds loads of leaves every year).

Current plan is a layer of cardboard, 6" soil, chuck some horse manure and/or green compost on top, then put it under plastic for the winter. Will this be likely to be ready to plant in to by spring?

@not4sale does no dig I think.

We've done that, built some raised beds last winter- just put them straight on the grass, covered with cardboard, horse poop, rabbit poop from the neighbours, bit of soil from another bed and a bag of compost. Worked fine this year for lettuce, beetroot, kale, strawberries, beans etc. There's a good video of Charles Dowding doing this somewhere.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OIojWdJz0RE

Might be that one

Charles Dowding is the world’s most relaxing man. He always seems uncommonly chilled and good natured in his videos. Must be spending his life outdoors growing stuff.

Ah yeah, it was his site I was reading. We have raised beds too, might top then up as well as they're only about half full at the moment

I experimented and grew some outdoors and some in the greenhouse this year, we've had a much better crop from outdoors than in the greenhouse. My suspicion is that's down to the fact they get more water.

Apart from the Yellow Submarine's all of these were picked outdoors yesterday. We went a bit this year with 6 varieties and about 30 plants in total!

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Made a load of pasatta this week with Black Cherry, San Marzano and some Gardeners Delight.

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No-dig bed started. I'm gonna need more soil/shit

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That’s looking good. My biggest barrier to doing no-dig is not enough access to free manure. I grabbed about 20 large bags of it on Monday which will need composting, but it’s a trip in the car and can’t gather enough for the whole thing. Could use a friendly farmer dropping off a couple of tonnes for not much money.

Yeah it's going to be a fair bit of work initially, but gives me a convenient place to use the soil. There's a horse stable a short car journey away that has a fairly endless supply of manure, apparently some of it's fairly well rotted if you dig a bit so that'll be stage 2.

Fire, soil sieving and the first signs of life in our green manure bed.

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I want to motorise my trommel. Any bright ideas for a high torque motor for not too many pennies? New ones are quite spenny

no dig

I do but only in a few selected beds (6 x 3 ft ).
Its taken years to get them established and successful.
To do any more I'd have to have over half the plot producing compost material all the time.
No matter how much compost/manure you put down the soil is always trying to revert back to its original state.
Worth it though.

Started a no dig bed tonight, onions and garlic have gone in.

That's the only real issue with no dig having somewhere to keep this vast amount of composting material.

Just had our first morning at our new plot, given a shed by the Association which is pretty sweet. Also spent a nice time playing guess-the-tree – looks like we have elderberry, quince, plum/damson and an apple tree.

Loads of nettles etc to clear, but apparently the plot was dug over not that long ago so shouldn't be too terrible a job.

All the above is definitely putting me off no-dig for now, think we'll just get some really basic stuff on the go. V encouraging to see how much success our neighbours are having with grapes, squash, etc

Had a fairly productive couple of hours this afternoon. Built a frame, covered with netting and planted some spinach, lavender and onions.

Spinach cage

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As a counterpoint to the no dig. Anyone got any rotavator recommendations? Considering grabbing this small one off eBay , but worried it may be a little small for tearing up the shittier half of my allotment. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/263547802636
Ideally would prefer something second hand and local.

A quince tree? Top score :)

Where are you based?

I have a Wolsey merry tiller. It’s very old but like a steam train through soil

Bedfordshire, so probably nowhere near. That’s the kind of thing I’m looking for. Cheers for the offer, though.

Wolsey merry tiller

vicious looking thing :)

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