Landshare – Our new field
Hugh F-W's campaign delivers 1 whole acre for growing grub. But there's work to be done
Jun 11th, 2009
We break ground on our landshare field
Daisy got an email from a nice man called Patrick who had registered as a landowner on the landshare website.
Patrick told us he had a field next to his house, about an acre, and that we were welcome to grow things in part of it.
Excitedly, we walked the two kilometres down the hill to his house and knocked on his door, but not before admiring the amazing awesomeness of his own garden.
Patrick’s garden looks like something you’d find in a well managed Northumberland stately home, and I hope that over the summer he’ll let us post a picture of it, and maybe talk about some of the highlights.
Anyway, back to our field, (technically not our field, but the arrangement will work out as some kind of private loan/allotment type deal.) It hasn’t been touched in over 20 years so on the plus side, its organic. The downside is that it is thoroughly overgrown with all kinds of weeds.
We borrowed Patrick’s strimmer to attack one corner, and an hour or so later, we had cleared a patch. As you can see from the picture, the earth is really nice, very crumbly not too clay-like and not too sandy. A quick PH test revealed the ground to be neutral to slightly acidic.
Our Landshare field, untouched for 20 years
The plan at this stage is to keep visiting now and then, dig more of the ground over and clear it of rocks, stones and weeds.
Once we’ve cleared a reasonable patch we’re going to set aside an area for planting out some of our leek seedlings, and I am hopeful that we can get a good asparagus plot going in the south-facing sheltered corner.
It is a beautiful spot, and hopefully over time we’ll share it with a few other Landshare people. Before we do that, I’ll tell you how I intend to establish a good asparagus bed.
i too have literally just today agreed to take on someone’s overgrown garden to grow veg, as part of a local transition initiative scheme. as more of a hypothetical gardener up until now, i find myself faced with a rather overgrown patch and my green principles – yet lots of advice out there seems to involve energy hungry things like rotavators and suchlike for tackling these kinds of patches. i wondered if you might include some very green ideas for new gardeners tackling overgrown patches, as seems to be happening with relatively regular frequency through landshare and similar schemes?
Hi Emma,
We’ve been trawling the internet and various books for solutions and answers to this very question. Particularly ones which might involve us not having to do a lot of hard work, and getting quick results. The simple answer is that its not possible. If you don’t want to put too much elbow grease into it then you can certainly cover a patch of overgrown land with an old carpet or tarpaulin. Over the course of a year, this will block out the sunlight and prevent anything from growing underneath, and should kill off just about everything. One issue with this is that sometimes you can get rats or snakes nesting underneath so be careful when removing it a year later.
The best way to clear a piece of land is using the “keep fit” method. Get a decent spade and start digging. An hour of solid digging in the garden should burn anything up to 500 calories an hour depending on your own work rate. The great thing about digging is that it gives you the chance to get intimately acquainted with your land; you will get to know how compacted the soil is, what kind of soil it is, what the distribution of stones is like and how prolific the perennial weeds are. All these bits of information will help you really improve and prepare the soil for planting. An added bonus with digging is that you can remove perennial weed roots in big chunks, and hopefully not leave too many behind. Rotavating has a habit of tearing these roots to shreds, leaving lots of little annoying plants to dig out for a couple of years to come.
Final note: Whilst digging does burn calories, you MUST make sure you are a little bit fit and well prepared before you do a solid session of digging. I honestly recommend a little stretch and warmup beforehand, maybe 5 minutes of general tidying up that involves you bending down and picking little things up, moving things about enough to get the blood pumping. Also remember to drink plenty of water during that hour to replace anything that you might loose through delicate perspiration. (On a hot day, where you might sweat like a trooper, keep an close eye on hydration levels.) Don’t over-exert yourself, and if you feel a nagging pain in your back, or any twinges then stop immediately and go home and rest! If you have a big patch, its far better to break it up into little jobs and look after your back. Last but not least – if you are going to move large shovel-fulls of dirt around, then remember to keep your back straight and bend your knees when lifting!
Hope this helps, and do let us know how you get on!
Just to throw another website into the mix, there is also Spareground http://www.spareground.co.uk
This website also allows users to advertise or search for any unused land or garden etc for growing veg.
It is also available to use for all aspect of space including parking spaces, driveways, storage space greenhouses etc.
Worth a look in addtion to Landshare anyway!