[rachaeldreamer]

I aquired my allotment late last year, and spent much of the first few months weeding and digging and digging and weeding. Now, finally, my veg are growing and soon to be eaten - yippee!!
One of my many questions is this - the soil is very clayey(?), what can I do to improve its' quality for next year? Someone suggested adding sand, but I'm not too sure?
Help please
rachaeldreamer

[SnooziSuzi]

Hi Racheal and welcome to the forums.

THe best thing you can do to open up the soil is to dig in lots of organic material ie compost / manure.

this opens up the soil and in clay soil it helps with drainage and on sandy soil it helps to retain and feed the plants.

With clay you really need to dig deep and incorporate quite a bit, even put some gravel in if it's really claggy but not too much otherwise you'll end up with a gravel bed and no soil!

Another handy trick is to build raised beds to help with drainage, this would be done in addition to adding the compost etc.

Try not to walk on the soil particularly when wet because it'll just clag together and will end up really compacted.

Good Luck!
Su

[richyrich7]

Hi Rachael welcome to the forums    

Some good advice from Suzi cant really add much, except try a dressing of lime it will help the clay break up but don't put it where your growing your spuds next year.

[rachaeldreamer]

Thanks Su and Rich for the advice.
Yep, will try the compost route - covered the plot with manure early this year, but it seemed to encourage shed loads of weeds - perhaps the horses had eaten too many seeds!! LOL!!
Gonna cover the earth with carpet to discourage the weeds this Winter!
Cheers.

[Yorkie]

If you can use another covering instead of carpet (e.g. thick cardboard, weed suppressant), I'd suggest that you think about doing so.

Although some books recommended carpets in the past, carpets contain chemicals which leach out into the soil from the dyes and glues.  

Additionally, they are also a nightmare to dispose of, can disintegrate if left for a number of years, or have weeds grow through them and mat them down.

Some sites now ban the use of carpets altogether for these reasons.

[crowndale]

The manure I inherited also brought in a load of anual weed seeds, I know it was the manure becoz there has been none on the plot in years and many of the annuals this year are very diferent to last years (though similar to everyone elses this year as we have the same manure supplier!).  Guess its the down side of 'real' manure rather than prescreened and bagged up stuff you get at b&q and other such places.

[rachaeldreamer]

Thanks Yorkie for the carpet tip - I must admit, when I took over the allotment, some of the carpet left behind was very difficult to remove - weeds growing through it etc!!
Weed suppressant? What would you reccommend and where could I buy such things?
As you can tell, I'm still green rather than green fingered! LOL!!
On another note, my onions and garlic are the tastiest I've ever had - no more Asda veg for me!

[cootuk]

Our local supplier has 'high temperature composted manure blended with composted and fine screened forest bark' which I was going to use to help break up my clay soil.

[Yorkie]

I've a range of weed suppressant stuff that I've acquired over the last couple of years.

They range from fairly flimsy 10m x 1m perforated black plastic from tesc*'s, which has done about 3 seasons, to woven stuff 10m x 1.5m which I was going to buy online but ended up getting at my local nursery.

Many of the big stores such as B&Q will also sell strips of weed suppressant material; it depends how much you need to cover and how much you want to pay.  I'm sure that others on this forum will have better ideas and some links for you.

One thing to avoid, though (as well as carpet   ) is solid black plastic.  It doesn't let water or air through, with the result that the soil gets stale and all the beneficial bugs are killed off.