[Dimblebee]

Hello Everyone! Can you tell me what you’d do please?

We’ve used up all the cleared space in our allotment and today I went to finally try and dig over a patch to plant out sweetcorn. Horrible!!! We’d covered the ground with black plastic but the ground is a mass of roots: double handfuls of thick root under the flattened grass in each square foot. I’ve had a first go at digging over about 6’ x 9’ to plant out our corn seedlings but I know there are so many roots left!
What would you do? I think my options are this:
1) try and find a way to cover the soil and plant on top (no dig style)
2) just give it a go , plant them and try to weeds-I’m not sure we’ll be able to pull them up without damaging the corn roots.
3) plant through weed suppressant membrane?

We’ve got a couple of bags of manure to dig in.

And another question. EVERYONE on our allotment has planted them only 1ft apart in a grid of 12-20 plants. ALL the advice that I can find says 1.5 to 2 feet. Should I plant them closer together?

Thank you for any advice you can give.

[AnneB]

Hello Everyone! Can you tell me what you’d do please?

We’ve used up all the cleared space in our allotment and today I went to finally try and dig over a patch to plant out sweetcorn. Horrible!!! We’d covered the ground with black plastic but the ground is a mass of roots: double handfuls of thick root under the flattened grass in each square foot. I’ve had a first go at digging over about 6’ x 9’ to plant out our corn seedlings but I know there are so many roots left!
What would you do? I think my options are this:
1) try and find a way to cover the soil and plant on top (no dig style)
2) just give it a go , plant them and try to weeds-I’m not sure we’ll be able to pull them up without damaging the corn roots.
3) plant through weed suppressant membrane?

We’ve got a couple of bags of manure to dig in.

And another question. EVERYONE on our allotment has planted them only 1ft apart in a grid of 12-20 plants. ALL the advice that I can find says 1.5 to 2 feet. Should I plant them closer together?

Thank you for any advice you can give.

Spacing at 12 inches apart is fine.  The big thing is to plant them in a block.

It does sound as if your planting area is not in an ideal condition just yet .  What weeds are they?    I don't think planting through membrane will work very well with sweetcorn.  As the plant develops the base gets quite big and the plants often develop sideshoots called tillers.
If you have no other spot to put them I would just plant them and see how you go, weeding as new ones appear. 

[snowdrops]

Cover with thick brown cardboard,making sure you overlap all the edges, thoroughly wet the cardboard & cover with your manure & any other well rotted mulch,trample it all down & water well again. I think you could plant through membrane if you cut a cross to plant through,but I would melt the edges with a lighter or something otherwise it frays. I also ‘plant’ a 2 litre plastic bottle with the lid removed & the bottom cut off to water into once the plant is established . You will only need to keep round the stem weeded.

[New shoot]

You are going to need a lot more than a couple of bags of manure if you want to do the no-dig approach, so it depends how much other stuff you can get your hands on to lay a decent layer of mulch.

There is another option.  Couch grass is a survivor,  so you will have roots left even if you have had a go at a first dig over.  Plant the sweetcorn further apart as you planned to, but in a block.   Also plant a trailing squash plant or pumpkin to cover the soil and let it roam around the sweetcorn stems. You can pick up tendrils of growth and move them into the area you want them in, if they try and escape out into other parts of the plot.   If you have weed membrane, you can use that as well, but you will have to cut a decent size hole for each sweetcorn plant.

 The squash or pumpkin leaves will keep the grass down and weaken it, so just pull out what you can when it appears without digging too much and damaging your crops.  You will have to lean in to pick your sweetcorn to avoid trampling the ground cover, or tiptoe in carefully, but it is do-able.  I used this very successfully when taming my big plot.  That was a sea of grass and i couldn't get the whole lot clear the first season I took it over.  It was not perfect and I had the odd tufts of grass here and there, but I got crops 

[Dimblebee]

Thank you so much for your advice!

We have one squash plant already that I can put in with them and might try a pumpkin too.

We’ll see how it goes this year and then perhaps try and source more mulch for a no dig section next year-there’ll still be a bit more grass and brambles to go!

I’m also going to try and source some plastic bottles from somewhere to try the watering method, at least for the squash.

I love this forum. You’ve been a great help. Thank you!