The allotment was abandoned for almost two years before we picked it up, so there's a daunting amount of weeding to do. In some parts the grass is knee high and the wooden border surrounding the vegetable plot is mostly hidden by the overgrowth.
The plan was just to rip up the long weeds by hand then start hitting it with a hoe, turning over the soil and pulling out any weeds and roots that get churned out.
After a couple of hours of whacking the ground, one corner is mostly cleared.
The rest of the land has a long way to go...
We knew we wouldn't be able to clear everything in one day so we planned to get at least the vegetable patch and a corner for the tomatoes cleared. The more difficult areas we can deal with a bit at a time.
However, around 7 hours later we managed to clear much more than we expected and the land started to look somewhat tended to.
While turning the soil we found handfuls of white bulbs. Most of the knee-high weeds we were pulling out turned out to actually be garlic: planted eons ago and had begun to spread throughout the allotment. We decided to keep a few of them on the left, as well as a patch of mint in the bordered plot.
Inspired by the layout of other alottments, we decided to make a late afternoon trip to the DIY store to see if we can get some stone flags to create a walkway and to section off the different parts of the lot.
We soon found ourselves driving back to the alottment with around 400kg of concrete slabs bottoming out the rear suspension. Three wheelbarrow trips later, things were starting to take shape:
We decided to call it there for the day, pretty satisfied at the transformation that had taken place since the morning:
