[Anton]

I have had an adze for years but generally use it for keeping down weeds, breaking up hard soil and for stripping the top grassy surface off before digging. I have never thought about actually digging with it. How is that done exactly?

Anton

[Anton]

How do you use an azada  for digging exactly?

Anton

[Anton]

sorry I didn't think the first message had appeared.

Anton

[yorkiegal]

oops. just realised it was another forum which reccommended Pexton's lol. Still thanks to whoever mentioned the mattock.

[Matthew Gayles]

I inherited a very weedy and in places, grassy plot last year. Ive used all the methods recommended here. Ive glyphosphated, covered with cardboard and carpet and used a mattock (occassionaly the head would come loose and fly across the plot!). All very labour intensive and time consuming. But all worthwhile. The mattock is great for stubborn weeds and grassy areas, knife through butter but does require a bit of grunt - my arms didnt half ache the next day! Finally i co-opted another plot holder to attack the last area with a rotavater. End result - one half of the plot done by hand in 8 months, one half the plot glyphospated and covered (6 months) then rotavated in one afternoon. I prefer the later method.

[yorkiegal]

Well I spent an hour with the mattock this afternoon. It's so much fun! You're right that it's like a knife through butter. Would have spent longer there but my dog started to eat the shed.

[Yorkie]

 

Pextons is great.  It's just down the road from me unfortunately ... 

And I get 10% off any gardening products with my lotty association card!

[angelavdavis]

It's not the soil  that's tough. It's the grass that's been growing on it for about 5 years. I've strimmed it all but it's a nightmare to get through. A fork works best but it's going to be very slow going. Think I'll get the weed killer out.

Sounds very similar to our plot except we also had problems because we got the plot in midsummer and the soil was absolutely rock solid - you couldn't get a spade or fork in it! The majority of the plot hadn't been cultivated in living memory!

I didn't really want to use glyphosate as it still needed weeks to work and we took the plot over in mid-June so didn't have this time to spare if we were going to get our monies worth of crops from it that year.  

We ended up using the lasagne bed method, covering the grass with cardboard first.  We used weed suppressing membrane on the paths and topped the lasagne beds with membrane, planting through this for our squashes, brassicas, etc (which we started off in pots first).  Everything did really well because the black membrane helped the fertile stuff in the beds to warm up.  We then turned the beds over in winter when the soil softened up and could remove the pernicious weeds which hadn't been killed off by the lasagne bed method.

I then used glyphosate sprayed through the neck of a cut off lemonade bottle over individual weeds in spring time where stuff had sprouted between the paths and new beds.

[allotmentann]

Yorkiegal, I am glad that you managed to get hold of a mattock and that you have been able to make some headway with the grass. I try and do a little of my grassy area each time I go. It doesn't feel quite so bad as spending a whole day slogging and seeing not too much for my efforts!
Angela, I am always inspired by how hard so many people on here have had to work to get their plots into good condition. It seems that, no matter how bad plots are when people inherit them, they can be turned around and made productive. The lasagne method seems to be such a good idea and is certainly not something that I would ever have thought of doing before finding this site.

[angelavdavis]

Angela, I am always inspired by how hard so many people on here have had to work to get their plots into good condition. It seems that, no matter how bad plots are when people inherit them, they can be turned around and made productive. The lasagne method seems to be such a good idea and is certainly not something that I would ever have thought of doing before finding this site.

I must admit Ann, I hadn't used the concept before taking over the allotment - we did it out of desperation!