Whats everyone's view?

[ina]

Ah no - I do plant them relatively deep, but then I earth them up... But if they only grow above the one I planted, that still doesn't get at the soil further down, you are right. Still, I don't see any sense in disturbing soil that deep. It might bring up sub soil, if the top soil layer isn't too thick. As long as there isn't any layer down there that needs breaking up, I think it's better not to go down too deep. And even then it's better to just BREAK the hard layer rather than bringing it up to the top.

[hedgewizard]

We're getting away from the point. Charlie, it depends what you're going to grow. Keep the council chappie happy by getting rid of anything that's just plain rubbish, then whack everything you don't want down to ground level with a strimmer. Cover any ground you don't want to cultivate straight away with something 100% light excluding - old carpet, two layers of cardboard, ground cover fabric (if you're covering a lot you can buy it in rolls), whatever. Overlap by at least 10cm as couch will find the joins. Then peg or weight the whole thing down. If you use natural materials you can then cover the whole lot with a layer of mulch, and the whole thing will rot down in a year or two and of course you can plant right through it.

Mulch is a tricky one - if you can't get free local stuff try ringing your local recycling centre and see if you can blag a load of "recycled mulch" - this is all the organic waste from the "active materials" skip roughly composted down but not yet screened or anything. You can't count it as organic but it is very cheap. I blagged 20 tonnes of this for £70 last year, though it took a lot of talking... it was £40 for the mulch, £10 for the truck driver, £10 for the transport supervisor and £10 for the bloke in charge of the amenity site. Shhhh. If you can't get any sense out of the amenity site people try the parks department, since they're the ones that use the stuff for mulching floral displays and so forth.

The alternative is to buy or hire a weeding flame torch and kill all the top growth, but even then you're going to have to kill couch at intervals as it's really persistant and difficult to shade out.

That ought to keep the council happy!

[Millymollymandy]

In my experience the spuds grow above the one you plant
Nev

That's what I found so puzzling last year - I've never read anything that forewarns you about that!!! But this year I know what to do!

[ina]

We're getting away from the point.

Haven't you noticed yet how good we are at that? Just as well you are keeping us on the straight and narrow .

[hedgewizard]

Yes, so be good or I'll make you sit up front with teacher.