Anyone with an allotment?

Tentatively planted some lettuce and kale. Which will probably get eaten.

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Transplanted some wild strawberries into a tray

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This fire soon got a lot bigger.

So me and my wife sat there drinking cider until it got very dark.

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These look great, hopefully that will keep stuff off them

The only down side is under the glass is hot.

Anyone on here looking for a petrol mower it’s a Honda Izzy 21” works perfectly just too big so now got a 16” one, £100 in Walthamstow cheers k

Just been allocated an allotment. Anyone tried no dig? A farmer friend mentioned it and swears by it and who am I to argue with a man of the soil?

Also, what can I plant now which will be ready to crop this year? I'm fairly new to this.

No dig, that's interesting, whats that?

Advice from a farmer is all well and good, but given how much they spray over their crops there's literally no comparison between a field and an allotment

Well he does his allotment organically. This dude seems the main name in no dig: https://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/ he's all over youtube, I'm just starting out.

https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/no-dig-method

I practice no dig at my allotment the idea is not to damage the soil structure, I can turn the top 5”-8” without alter the structure, I’ve never had any issues and don’t see the point in mixing the sub soil with top soil which happens with digging especially double digging,

I just use raised beds. The soil in Lincolnshire is full of clay and awful.

We did this with our allotment for 5 years or so (until we have it up). We put in raised beds first, then went for a no dig approach for them. Lots of organic matter added every autumn, then let the worms do their thing.

It’s hard to say if it improved things but we had no problems growing stuff and didn’t miss the hard digging work that we had to do when we took the allotment over.

Depending on the soil and what youre growing I think the no dig would work fine. Things like onions, carrots and artichokes seem to grow pretty much anywhere.

did no dig this winter in the garden for the first time, mulched with well rotted bark chippings that were under a bird roost so lots of guano, barley maltings from crate brewery, leaf mulch from victoria park and horse manure from lee bridge road stables, plus homemade garden compost from the compost heap, a layer of each over the whole garden, probably 50+ rubble sacks full in total

in autumn i hope to green manure with rye and alfalfa they'll do the digging for me as they root well and break the soil up, that plus the few hundred worms i add to the soil from the compost heap each year should allow the soil to become more healthy, feed your soil and encourage all the bacteria enzymes and fungi to do their thing will allow plants to get more out of the broken down soil

I’m another no digger. I had little choice since I wanted to establish a polytunnel and veg patch on old pasture. Year 1 but working great, will post pics tmrw. YouTube Charles Dowding as others have mentioned and you seem thirsty would you care for a glass of Kool Aid?

Brought the beast out yesterday to get between the potato rows...

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Left a strip of green manure and never seen so many bees...

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^^ no "no-dig" for you then?!

Rain stopped play here. Just got straw under my strawberry plants, netted one section too.

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^ where the bin is will be runner beans if/when this rain clears.

Just sort of scumbles the first four or five inches; clay much further down

I think that's technically no-dig then?

I tried a Lasagne jobby for my runner beans. Pulled a load of Mares Tail root first but it should be tricky for owt else to get through 2 layers of cardboard & manure.

Result! We've secured two more half plots. Lot's of work to do but all good.
In the meanwhile, now have first garlic, mange tout, gooseberries, baby spinach, sorrel, parsley, kale and dill today :) and early potatoes nearly ready.

All this no dig chat is interesting. The soil is poor on our plot, but we have a fair bit of horse manure and I've just acquired a chipper, that means I should be able to make a fair bit of green mulch. If we laid that down in autumn with alfalfa on top, that would theoretically sort things out for next year right?