[Ghost]

Hi everybody

Could I please have some advice?

I've had an allotment for a few years, I don't use all of it due to working full time blah blah blah. I have 3 beds, I use 2 & leave 1 empty each year. The 1 I leave empty obviously still gets weeds on it so I keep having to dig it over. I find digging the beds the most annoying part of having an allotment because it's so time consuming & the soil is heavy clay. I'm thinking of buying some weed control fabric for the empty bed. So basically my question is........if I dig the bed over & then put the fabric on it for a year, will the soil be nice & ready to use when I take it off or will I have to dig it again?

[Yorkie]

You will probably find that you will need to fork it over to loosen the soil underneath, but you shouldn't have too many weeds.

If you're leaving it for a whole season I'd recommend that you get the woven stuff rather than plastic or flimsy fabric.  Plastic does not let air or water through to the soil, and UV light can break down fabric quite fast.

P.S. Welcome to the site Ghost, feel free to pop into the Welcome forum and tell us a bit about your growing

[Ghost]

Thanks for the reply.

Do you mean something like this:

link

Long link edited to stay on the page - Yorkie (mod) 

[Ourveggiepatch]

Hi

we tried weed control matting fabric stuff that you get in the garden centres - totally useless and total waste of money.

We went to Scats  Country Store (I dont know if you have a branch near you) and bought Silo Sheeting, comes in various sizes on a roll.  Its black plastic, we had it down now for nearly a month and the neighbour had it down for nearly 3 and his weeds all dead, he has lovely soil.  Its loads cheeper than weed control matting and everyone on our site uses it.

We have heavy clay soil so have dug then laid the silo sheeting down.  only issue is you must have lots of bricks, patio slabs on top as it will blow away in the wind.
We have heavy clay soil, the plot was recently ploughed about 2 weeks before we moved in, first thing we did was put the black weed suppressant control matting down but the weeds still grew under it.  Also the stuff from B+Q altough was megga cheep compaired to other shops it was also megga thin.  We found the matting broke up easily too and where we haven't replaced it we have lovely holes in it now.

Hope this helps

OVP

[Yorkie]

That's the sort of thing - depending on the size of your bed it might be worth going for a wider width as it's less likely to get blown about as OVP said

[pedro]

try alplaz.com

[peapod]

Any chance you could get a large sheet/s/boxes of cardboard? Much cheaper, and will rot down over the course of the year ready to be dug in with your fertilisers

[savbo]

couldn't find alplaz but screwfix has got woven fabric cheaper than the eba*y site and no postage if you order over £50...

getting some this week...

M

[DD.]

The company name is mispelt, that's why.

Try:

http://www.allplaz.com/acatalog/Weed_Suppression.html

[savbo]

thanks DD.

Hmm is this better than the screwfix stuff...?

decisions decisions

[DD.]

Got my UVI polythene from them, couldn't buy cheaper at the time.

[savbo]

my screwfix fabric arrived the other day (along with some lovely golden screws to refill my trade case, saddo...). It's Tenax and seems pretty good, weave is tight enough and it's a roll folded to 1m so it's easier to store.

Let's see how it works on the plot...

M

[meterman]

dont cover all season dig rake allow weed seeds to germinate and to grow on for a few weeks then cover to kill then remove rake to bring new seeds to surface and start again this will make less weeding the following year also if planting brasicas dont disturb the soil as they like firm(rock hard) soil just dig planting holes.