[Janeymiddlewife]

As it's obvious to all that i am a newbie clearing my plot i have been the recipient of much (sometimes conflicting) advice.
As much of it is a mixture of grasses, including couch - I have been strongly advised to do the following
A) Dig it all over and bury the turfs then rake it out in the spring (Bill 78 years young, my lovely row rep)
B) Fork it all out and compost it (which is what I've been doing slowly)
 Ken
C) Get a rotavator on it (not keen on that - where are the seeds going?) - margaret
D) Glycosphate it and cover it with plastic until the spring - Chris
E) Sod the glycosphate just use plastic - Fred
F) Strim then dig -  can't remember their name!

All lovely well meaning people, who go away shaking their heads as i carry on - perhaps i'll have to try 2 or 3 different approaches as an experiment - anyway what are your opinions please!??

[richyrich7]

Errr all of the above    no seriously depends on your weeds if its just turf then A) bury the turfs at the bottom of your trench as you dig upside down.  

[vegmandan]

I would Glyphosate it first if you have much couch grass then do what Richy says once the couch has died.

Trouble is, Glyphosate only works properly when stuffs growing so It may not work well at this time of year when the grass is pretty dormant. :cry:

[SnooziSuzi]

...and wet, don't forget that the instructions say to do it on a dry day, and I'm not sure we'll have many of those between now and springtime  

Personally, I'd go the hard work route and turn the tops over, dig what's underneath to loosen the soil and then cover it with black plastic or anything that will exclude the light until springtime.

[Quetzal]

i thought the 'dig it over and bury the grass at the bottom' idea was generally used when you double dig - i.e. go two spade depths deep?

I did that with the smallish beds that I dug in my back garden, but this year, when we got an allotment, I decided i'd rather go one spade deep (it's ~6x the total area that I dug last year) and so I'm composting the top growth, but council-tipping the roots I'm digging out (a lot of dock), rather than burying anything

[Minty]

Our plot is just couch grass and we've took the approach of taking the turf off the top and stacking them upside down and then digging over the remaining soil and taking all the rest of the roots out by hand.
It's slow and boring work but the bit's we have cleared so far are staying couch free but the bit's where we just dug over without taking all the roots out,the couch has just come back up again as even the smallest bit of root just sprouts up.

There are plot's on our site that had couch and the plot owners either had them scrapped and turned over with a digger or rotavated them and the grass is all back twice as bad in no time at all so we are sticking with the slow approach,it's like the tortoise and the hare.

[cawdor2001]

For me glyphoate is the quickest and easiest way to kill the grass, a necessary evil when you first take a plot on, after that you don't really need it on your plots.  However that does not get you out of digging.  If you want to do something now, and you will for sure,  then dig it over(way too cold for glyphosate and plants going dormant), take out as many underground couch rhizomes as possible (let them dry a bit and burn) and then cover it for the Winter. Then next Spring remove the covers on bits you want to do something with and preferably let the grass grow (as you will not have got it all) and then glyphosate it when it is warm, say April and then plant a week later (glyphosate will be inactive so no damage to anything you plant).  I know it is a pain to wait for couch to emerge before planting anything but if you don't you will be weeding the stuff all season and as it will be in amongst your crops you will not be able to get to the rhizomes so it will keep coming back. Each to their own but that is how i did it at the start.

Cawdor

[SnooziSuzi]

IMHO it would be better to burn the dock/dandelion etc (ie anything with a tap root) rather than put it in the council bins;  they may reach a higher temperature than our allotment bins but I'd feel a bit guilty if I subjected them to that  :oops:

[Bombers]

You can't get Couch Rhizomes out unless your ground is fairly dry/friable.
You need to pick 'em out whole. Otherwise you'll leave little bits in the clods, and it'll come back just as strong in spring. I personally, do not use Herbicides, but then I've only got 1/2 a plot so not too much to dig over.. I prefer a blank canvas come spring, so its painstaking digging for me.
..... But then I like digging. :salut:

[Salmo]

Cawdaw's advice on digging and glyphosate is good. Close strimming and raking off loose grass will make digging much easier.

The glyphosate will work now but I doubt if we will get suitable conditions to apply it. It needs the leaves to be dry, a still day to avoid spray drifting on to other plots and 6 hours of dry afterwards.

A small area done well should be your aim.

[GrannieAnnie]

Turkeys!!!

As we didn't have the time or the money to build the turkey shed, Brian cleared out his big workshop and we put them in there with a big pophole door onto my veg garden.  they had a third of it, then another third and today the last third, and they have eaten every single weed, incuding all the nettles and docks.  There is nothing left standing!  Lots of poop, which once the turkeys have gone, I'll cover it all with plastic and let the worms do the rest.  Oh and because of all the mud, today we covered half of it in straw, to help keep them clean, so that'll all get rotted in too over winter!

[Janeymiddlewife]

Turkeys!!!

As we didn't have the time or the money to build the turkey shed, Brian cleared out his big workshop and we put them in there with a big pophole door onto my veg garden.  they had a third of it, then another third and today the last third, and they have eaten every single weed, incuding all the nettles and docks.  There is nothing left standing!  Lots of poop, which once the turkeys have gone, I'll cover it all with plastic and let the worms do the rest.  Oh and because of all the mud, today we covered half of it in straw, to help keep them clean, so that'll all get rotted in too over winter!

That's a brilliant idea, but as we're not allowed livestock on our lottie I'd have to smuggle them in under cover of darkness - build an enclosure, then get them out before dawn & remove all evidence
think it's back to the digging.....

[GrannieAnnie]

Oh well, seemed like a good idea at the time!!!!!        

[compostqueen]

I'm clearing mine slowly with black sheet mulch, the heavy duty stuff.  I don't dig or use weedkiller or a rotovator

I found that not digging I don't bring weeds up to the surface. I brought some couch up when I pulled my spuds up and I burned it

[PinkTequila]

On grass and buttercup etc. I find that gvlyphosate works fine at the moment, it is once it drops below 7 degress C that the time comes to out it away. It is justless effective the more we get into Winter, we are in a mild spell at the moment so it wil work. Saying that, I think the answer it to double dig the plot, digging in the turfs as you go, but it can be back breaking.