Growing your own - is it worth it?

[gradus]

The invasiveness of the squash family can be a virtue - good way of covering a lot of ground while getting to grips with other areas - and of course having produce that will store well for the lean months of the year is an important consideration. You do have to keep an eye on their empire building tendencies though I agree.
Spuds do indeed wriggle about - but if they can't get into the soil properly that may bring them to the surface, which is most definitely not desirable as green potatoes are useless(unlike green tomatoes).

Re spuds wriggling etc How do my fellow gardeners grow spuds?
I've found that forking muck/compost into the top spit then a slip trench for the potato with a handful of growmore thrown in works well. It's certainly quicker than the old-fashioned methods. Sometimes I don't bother with earthing up the plants of early vars, admittedly I get a few green ones but not enough to worry about. For maincrops, same method but I still earth up as (I hope) the tubers will be bigger.
I suppose that I've just got bored with all the rigmarole of planting spuds and there are always so many other things to do.

[Jonathan]

Thanks doversoul, it is certainly very peaceful stood on the allotment with the fields nearby and the sounds of birds and nature! Despite the hard work, it's oddly relaxing.

Wiggling potatoes - I didn't know about this!

[cloughie]

I've found that forking muck

Probably a lot of that on allotments!

[gurnemanz]

Re spuds wriggling etc How do my fellow gardeners grow spuds?
I've found that forking muck/compost into the top spit then a slip trench for the potato with a handful of growmore thrown in works well. It's certainly quicker than the old-fashioned methods. Sometimes I don't bother with earthing up the plants of early vars, admittedly I get a few green ones but not enough to worry about. For maincrops, same method but I still earth up as (I hope) the tubers will be bigger.
I suppose that I've just got bored with all the rigmarole of planting spuds and there are always so many other things to do.

In my garden I made a vegetable bed on a bit of land that had presumably been pasture for centuries before our housing estate came along - a foot of of heavy topsoil then solid clay. Potatoes were recommended to break the soil up a bit. I hadn't heard the term wiggling" but this seems to have taken place. I haven't grown them every year but after over 30 years the soil is now workable. Adding material from the compost heap has also helped. This year's crop has been pretty good and should keep us going well into October. Clay is obviously great for moisture retention in dry summers.

I adopt a lazy approach to planting and use a bulb planter to make a hole and pull the soil out and then fling on a bit of growmore. I do think it is worth earthing up, which is best done when the soil is damp after rain.

[gradus]

Probably a lot of that on allotments!

It can occasionally be forking hell.

[oddoneout]

I used a pretty minimal approach to potato growing, partly thanks to having light land which didn't need major cultivation. A trench with something at the bottom - compost, comfrey leaves, grass cuttings, depending on when I was planting and what was to hand, drop the seed in and cover over. I didn't earth up as such but did try and keep the space between the rows slightly lower to make watering and access easier. Ideally there would be further applications of comfrey or grass cuttings around the plants to help with weed suppression and moisture retention, but such things weren't always to hand or maybe not in sufficient quantity for all the plants. In any case the most important factor in success of the crop(apart from absence of blight)was adequate water - whether piped or rain. I also tried various versions of surface growing/no-dig, some of which proved quite successful. Heavy duty cardboard as a mulch with tubers dropped into holes cut into it proved particularly good - surprisingly longlasting, good at weed suppression and moisture retention. Chucking waste plant material( I collected grass cuttings from a couple of neighbours and also was given some waste straw) on top helped to hold it down and as the worms gradually worked their way through the cardboard they took the plant material down as well.

[Dave2002]

We've very recently taken on an allotment so I may well be asking questions more frequently here soon! It's taken hours so far to remove the nettles and the Mares Tails (which apparently are an absolute swine to get rid of so we've been ripping them out as much as possible and will grow things over the top of them as the roots go down about 2 metres, apparently). It's been fun so far!

Mare's Tails - or Horsetail - https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=257 - are an absolute b*****r. We have them in our front garden - never completely eliminated them. One suggestion is "never let them get past Sunday" - in other words pull them/dig them out as soon as they appear. This does keep them under control, but requires constant vigilance. I'm not sure if any weedkillers really work on this pest of a plant, but that would only really be an option in new patch.

If you're growing vegetables you probably will be going over the soil periodically - say every year at least, and could dig the weeds out, though the particular invasive weed might actually multiply if the roots are broken into fragments. I suspect that a very ruthless approach is needed to completely eliminate it. I always try to burn any fragments I pull up, as I think that leaving them around is likely to encourage further growth.

Good luck with this - and if anyone has really good tips I'd be glad to know. Our front garden does have membrane put down to discourage weed growth, but the horsetail goes down below that and can come up and pierce the sheets. If our garden wasn't already somewhat established I'd dig it up, and then perhaps apply weedkiller, dig it over, and use a flame thrower, but as it is the issue is one of management rather than complete elimination. I'd love to eliminate it, but over several years I've not succeeded.

[oddoneout]

I'd dig it up, and then perhaps apply weedkiller, dig it over, and use a flame thrower,

And it would likely still reappear - and after all that effort you'd be even more annoyed.
When I moved into my current home there was a large,long, conifer hedge at the house end and a sizable rubbish dump at the other end of the garden. In between were some small beds with some horsetail clumps, and grassed areas. Within a matter of months of taking down the hedge and removing the rubbish said prehistoric plant appeared in those areas too. I think that rather than having spread they had been there all along but were kept 'under control' by the competition. On the allotments my neighbour had a strip of ground between his polytunnel and the boundary between our two plots which he didn't cultivate but just hacked the weeds and grass down every now and then. He then decided to clear it for use and so dug and cleared it, and then used weedkiller a couple of times to finish off the couch grass and bindweed. The horsetail which had been there in small quantities said 'yippee it's all ours' and completely covered the area. Another attack with weedkiller only succeeded in damaging the tomatoes in the polytunnel.

[Dave2002]

The trouble is:

Definition of weed: a very successful plant.

As you note, this particular weed has been around for a very long time, well before we came along.

[oddoneout]

The trouble is:

Definition of weed: a very successful plant.

As you note, this particular weed has been around for a very long time, well before we came along.

From a US Geological Survey bulletin.

The root system
commonly is extensive; Equisetum sylvaticum growing on the tundra
was found by Malyuga (1964, p. 72) to have roots at a depth of 150
cm where permafrost occurred at a depth of 60 cm.

Can't help thinking it's time to find a modern day way of using this amazing plant.....

[gradus]

Bob Flowerdew usually suggests cutting back and smothering regrowth with something like carpet so as to exclude all light and eventually, this apparently works as it does with most other plant nuisances. I've always understood that the problem with glyphosate on things like Mares Tail is not that it doesn't work but the difficulty of getting the glyphosate past the silica defences of the plant - it just runs off and can't penetrate the outer layer of the plant which would imply that cutting the stems and applying high strength glyphosate will eventually win through, quite a task though on a big patch of the stuff but I see on the Wyevale site that trampling before using glyphosate breaks stems and aids absorption.

[Dave2002]

That might work in an undeveloped plot, or one which is being redeveloped. If I adopted those ideas in my front garden it'd be the plants I want to keep which would die first - either by trampling or by the chemicals.

I think the "never let it get past Sunday" approach has been the best to date - but for new plots other strategies may be better.

[oddoneout]

Bob Flowerdew usually suggests cutting back and smothering regrowth with something like carpet so as to exclude all light and eventually, this apparently works as it does with most other plant nuisances. I've always understood that the problem with glyphosate on things like Mares Tail is not that it doesn't work but the difficulty of getting the glyphosate past the silica defences of the plant - it just runs off and can't penetrate the outer layer of the plant which would imply that cutting the stems and applying high strength glyphosate will eventually win through, quite a task though on a big patch of the stuff but I see on the Wyevale site that trampling before using glyphosate breaks stems and aids absorption.

Carpet has its drawbacks. If plants manage to grow through it(couch grass with its sharp-pointed stolons is good at that) or on it(seeds germinating) then lifting it when the ground is wanted can be a major undertaking; many allotment sites ban its use for that reason as it makes life very difficult when plots are abandoned and the carpet starts to get incorporated into the plants and soil - getting lengths of unbreakable yarn wrapped round cultivator blades is no fun and polyester doesn't make good compost. There is also the matter of chemicals in the carpet leaching into the soil, which is why it is not now organic practice.

[gradus]

It's the time of year when the nurseries/garden centres clear stock and offer some tempting buys. I bought a couple of established multi-shooted Hedychiums for £5.99 each and a very well established olive tree about 8 feet high for £50. Wyevale have been known to reduce all seeds to 50p a packet so worth checking when £3.99 is charged for some F1's.

[ardcarp]

and a very well established olive tree about 8 feet high for £50

Can you grow olives successfully in the UK?