Clearing The Patch

So last saturday we signed up for our allotment and then on sunday we spent a couple of hours clearing.

Before I left on Sunday I sprayed a bit of weedkiller on some of the big offenders (the kind that becomes inactive when it hits the soil) and then crossed my fingers that the rain which hit in the middle of the night had started after the specified six hours on the container.

I paid another visit on Tuesday in pouring rain and high winds, mainly to see just how much wind hit it with it being on the end and next to a farmers field and also hung up a bag of bird seed on a hook and checked the weeds. Not much sign of imminent death.  Turns out there are two big trees which shield the wind a bit and I hadn't even really noticed them.

Talk was of hiring a strimmer and getting rid of it all to see what the blank canvas looked like.  We decided against it because there is a dilapidated fence down parts of the boundary with next door but under the grass and lots of hidden metal wires which I really didn't fancy hitting me when they were strimmed.  My decision was to get a pair of long handled lawn shears. B&Q had a 20% off weekend so I wanted to wait and buy them plus some other bits including chicken wire for the fence at a cheaper price. 

The little man had a day off school on friday so we spent an hour digging up some weeds between a fence post and then dug up some thistles.  Still not much sign of dead weeds.

Saturday with newly purchased lawn shears in hand we embarked on a 2.5 hour clearing session.  The husband dug all the way down the length of the fence posts ready to dig a trench and bury the first bit of the chicken wire fence  to prevent rabbits etc.  That's a job for next week.

I took the shears to the big grass and weeds on the growing part of the plot. 

Got lots of roots to dig out this week but I needed to get rid of the gazillion feet tall nettle stalks first.

Then we managed to pull up most of the rotten boundary fence with the help of the shears cutting the very overgrown lawn as we went.  Those hidden metal wires were a proper pain to get out. 

Yesterday we had another 2 hour session and hubby tried to dig\around the rubbish heap so we can eventually burn it all.  He found what we can only presume is part of the roof of that flipping pigeon building next door hidden under the weeds.  It looks lots better for clearing that bit and will look lots better once this pile is gone.

He also spent a bit of time pacing out the boundary.  We put some string up to what we thought was level with the post the council had put up for marking the plots out for the meeting.  I then spent my time with the shears trying to define a line. Found some daffodil bulbs growing there so they should be nice in the spring.

So after a week this is a then and now piccie. 

Of the other people at the meeting I have so far only seen evidence of one of them doing anything active with their plot.  I don't know if our neighbours are just waiting for the pigeon loft removing before they do anything.  I'm hoping they will be around soon so we can talk fencing.