I've had a new (half) allotment for two months now. Just starting to put things in.
I have had a decent sized garden before, rotavator, grown veg & cut the grass, tended to flower beds etc, and all OK.
HOWEVER.
I have never, ever come across a domestic or agricultural piece of ground that is so heavily contaminated as this allotment plot.
It's absolutely appalling. The plot had been vacant for some years; "weed control fabric" of various sorts had been used by the previous tenant, and the furry "non woven" cloth had bald patches on it and was in pieces, the woven black do-do (thank you automoderater) had been cut, frayed, with strands and fibres escaping into the soil; there are plastic labels, plastic cable ties, fragments of "damp proof membrane", bags, netting, strimmer line, plastic covered wire and all sorts of other general detritus in the soil.
I pulled up as much cloth, which had been anchored to the ground from below and above by growing things and put it in the bin. All the other fragments of pegs, cloth, sheet, net, bags etc. I pick out and bin as I find them.
BUT it's a lost battle. Rotavating allows some fibres to be removed, since they build up on the blades and can be removed; it's the frog hopping halfway across the pond, halfway again, and again, and which will never ever reach the other side - there is no way on God's earth that all the plastic can ever be got rid of.
So it will stay there, and fragment; be degraded by the sun and turn into tiny fragments, be dug over and rub into pieces, whatever.
I feel like putting up a big sign: "CONTAMINATED LAND".
The result is of all this (pardon me) "do-do" is nanoplastics - tiny fragments or fibres of wretched plastic which will be almost forever in the soil, which will be taken up by plants, especially but not limited to root vegetables, and eaten by us, and get into our bodies, and be part of us forever.
I look around the other plots. Wretched weed control fabric is abundant. Wretched polythene sheet, turning to wretched flakes and getting mixed in with the soil. Bits of wretched polytunnel plastic, wretched plastic labels, wretched plastic nets of all sorts, fibres from old polypropylene and other wretched plastic carpets, you name it, the filthy stuff's in the soil.
BAN IT!
I have actually considered giving the plot up. I don't think I want to eat nanoplastic, and yes, while it's present in some farmland, it's nowhere near as bad a problem there, the contamination is at least an order of magnitude less. And one of the reasons for having an allotment is to grow "clean" food! GAH!