You may remember from my previous allotment update that the last time I visited our allotment, I was overwhelmed by the size and volume of the weeds. They were half my height and as dense as rainforest (!) – you couldn’t walk through them and the raspberries were growing over the path so really you couldn’t even get into the plot.
In the image above, I’ve already started to pull out the weeds in order to even get into the plot – so this is after about 15 minutes of weeding. By the way, there’s an old flat-packed greenhouse under there that we didn’t get a chance to put up before the weeds took over!
We’ve got ‘fat hen’ weeds on our plot which, although rather good at growing, aren’t as difficult to deal with as ‘mare’s tail’ or nettles. It’s a case of pulling them up by hand and they have fairly shallow roots so they come out of the ground easily.
It’s just the volume that was overwhelming. The weeds covered one of veg patches at the back of the plot, enveloped the greenhouse frame on the ground, grown over our small raised beds and surrounded all the trees in the orchard.
After a couple of hours of hand-pulling, and the sun setting in the meantime, this was the result of my epic weeding session. See, there’s the flat greenhouse! And an orchard! And a path!
I’m so happy with how the allotment looks now – sure it’s still casually messy and there are still smaller weeds on the ground but at least now we can walk around the space and start preparing the plot for our next lot of planting.
As a reward, we harvested some raspberries from the bushes, which are bigger and more productive than ever. I’ve been freezing some for the winter but, of course, we’ve been enjoying them fresh too.
Currently growing:
Lots of pumpkins and squashes – I don’t remember planting so many seeds in the spring but they’re doing well and we’ll have plenty of pumpkins this autumn – ideal for the kiddies to carve and for us to eat as pumpkin soup like last year
Beetroot – There will always be beetroot on our plot because I love it so much and eat it almost every day. Plus. I much prefer my own pickled beetroot vinegar recipe to the shop-bought jars.
Raspberries – The autumn fruiting bushes will keep producing plenty of raspberries so we’ll continue freezing them until we can’t fit any more in the freezer!
Parsnips – I thought that the rabbits had pulled up all our parsnips this year. While that’s true of the carrots (never mind, maybe we’ll re-rabbitproof next year!) the parsnips have survived and we’ve been pulling up a few for dinner this week.
Potatoes – We’re finishing up our second earlies and there are still two rows of main crop potatoes in the ground, ready for winter (and maybe our Christmas dinner!).
Butternut squash – I’ve never grown butternut squash before and I wasn’t sure if it was even possible with our weather here but they’re growing well and we just harvested our first ones to try this week.
Sweetcorn – Space-wise we couldn’t plant too much sweetcorn this year but we’ve been enjoying eating them fresh over the past couple of weeks.
How have you been getting on with weeds at your allotment or on your home veggie patch? What tips do you have to minimise weeds growing or to prevent them from coming back? Let me know in the comments below.
