Well, Sunday was interesting!
First off, I was a little intimidated by the fact that previous owner (at least two years ago) had left a load of blackberry bushes to run riot - I have a serious amount of hacking to do with the loppers and the machete to gfet anywhere near ground level and see what's what. Looks like there's two types - the traditional wild ones and some cultivated ones, which have smaller thorns and purple leaves.
In amongst them are a large number of raspberry bushes that look in quite good condition.
Half the ground is just grass cover - although the grass is 6" high, it looks remarkable weed-free (considering the plot next to mine has Comfrey roots all over it) - however there are about five large rhubarb plants (seemingly randomly spaced) which I will have to dig out and move somewhere.
Met the old chap who owns two plots near mine and he said that the fruit trees provided them all with rich pickings in the past two years when no-one was around - I of course said that any spares would be offered around
![happy :)](https://chat.allotment-garden.org/Smileys/green/smile.gif)
He was also very free with advice and offers of help - in particular he has more than enough wood he was going to get rid of that he said I can take to make into a compost bin, so that's handy! His name is Doug - which of course reminded me of the joke "what do you call an allotmenter with a spade in his head . . . Doug"
Plans are two-fold:
1. Cut back the thorny fruity stuff HARD and get to ground level to see exactly what I'm up against - burn the cut-offs.
2. Trim the grass back to a razor-cut and then turf it out and dig over the soil (again, to see what I'm up against) - inlcuding getting those flippin' rhubarbs out.
Then see where I go from there.
Anyone got any advice?