[oldsod]

Hi, I'm a new plot holder. I have 20% of my ground under control. And 50% under plastic. the grass underneath is quite long. i was thinking of burning it off with a flamethrower and then rotavating the ground afterwards? is there any reason why not?

[DD.]

Welcome to the forums.

Depends on the type of grass - if it's couch grass, it won't do any good, you'll chop up the roots & re-plant 10 times as many!

[oldsod]

Thanks DD

It's not couch grass.

[peapod]

Id not recommend rotavating, unless you can do it a few times over the course of a few weeks (Richy, another one of the mods, can tell you more about that)

If you have lots of nasty pernicious weeds it will chop them up and leads to the bits left sprouting and creating havoc.  Ive never tried burning myself

[oldbean]

Just keep mowing it so it's not too rampant. Then you can deal with it as you have time.

[Ivor Backache]

I can't think of a single reason for using a flame thrower on an allotment. At this time of the season I would skim the grass and put to oneside. Dig the garden with a spade, but  you may prefer to rotovate. Reuse the turf in bean and potato trenches to help conserve the moisture. Or you can leave it stacked and it will self compost for next season.

[Kristen]

I have burnt off grass which has been killed with weed killer before rotavating - otherwise it gets wrapped round the tines.  Although I expect mowing the (dead) grass might have been good enough).