Selfsufficientish.com

Work commitments and continual rain have kept me away from the allotment for a couple of weeks. Until yesterday...

Jeez!

It feels like 12 months of hard work has been undone in a fortnight! Where I had freshly seeded weed-free beds I now have 3 ft high nettles in neat rows. The seed company must have put nettle seeds in the packet instead of lettuce!

Enormous clumps of knee-high thistles have appeared from absolutely nowhere and as for the mare's tail...

Why do weeds grow quicker and more successfully than crops?

At least I thought my beans were doing well until I looked again;

Yes, bindweed!!

Best get those wellies on...

Ah that happened to me when I had my lottie, didnt get down there for 2 weeks and I stood there and cried! I couldnt believe the mess.

Im now container gardening, its much better having it right there and you can see whats going on and act

I always wondered why in this age of GM crops, why didn't they do something useful and cross bindweed with lettuce? Not big into GM crops but I'd be willing to make an exception if they could make bindweed edible!

kind thoughts
Deb

hi 4 candles
do you mulch? we tend to start off seeds in trays, then transplant them into the permanent raised beds, that are regularly mulched with layers of straw, compost or horse manure. we have few problems with weeds in the beds, only from the weedy paths encroaching. (i leave the paths weedy for soil cover, to reduce drying out and erosion, plus many of the weeds are edible).

At least you can eat the nettles!

Sorry couldn't resist,we have a constant battle with the blighters to the point we have to resort the strimmer or we couldn't find our patch.Did you know nettles are all related??I pulled up loads of metre squared when we moved in to make our patch and they were all joined to one another and it is the same now we are clearing for the chicken run.

Hi Clare, shall i send a recepie for nettle wine?