Preparing an Allotment for Winter - Black Membrane or Green Manure?

Preparing an Allotment for Winter - Black Membrane or Green Manure?
By Ray Richardson

As winter approaches and you have harvested all the crops and have some bare patches, what can you do to stop weeds and make your Spring workload easier. You have several choices:

1) Weed Membrane

A black woven membrane that covers the plot and once anchored down will exclude light and let water and air through to the soil. This covering will stop all weed seeds germinating over the winter period. The membrane is very tough and usually UV light resistant and can be used over and over again. In spring it will absorb heat and pass it onto the soil thus warming up the bed ready to plant spring crops, no weeds to remove so a fast start to the season.

You could also dig in some manure before covering with membrane to enrich your soil over the winter period.

2) Black Plastic Sheeting

Works in exactly the same way as the weed membrane but black plastic sheet will not allow water through. It is ideal if you are in a heavy rainfall area and the rain leaches the nutrients from your soil over the winter period. Black Plastic sheet can be purchased in several thicknesses depending on how tough you need it. For most allotment purposes 125 micron(mu) or 500gauge thickness is ideal.

It can be pegged down with either steel or plastic pegs every 1.5meters or weighed down with soil or bricks around the edges

3) Green Manure or Cover Crops

On an allotment green manure or cover crop is primarily grown to add nutrients and organic matter to the soil. Typically, a green manure crop is grown for a specific period of time, and then ploughed into the soil while green or shortly after flowering. Green manure crops are commonly associated with annual cropping systems that want to remian sustainable. It is also an alternative to the fallow cycle of crop rotation, which left the soil unplanted or 'fallow' to allow soils to recover.

Green cover crops can include legumes such as cowpeas, soybeans, annual sweet clover, vetch, sesbania, and velvet beans, as well as non-leguminous crops such as sudangrass, millet, sorghum, and buckwheat.

Leguminous plants are often used as manure crops for their nitrogen fixing capabilities, while non-leguminous crops can be used primarily for weed suppression and addition of biomass to the soil. Green manures usually perform multiple functions, that include soil improvement and soil protection:

Leguminous manures such as clover and vetch contain nitrogen-fixing symbiotic bacteria in root nodules that fix atmospheric nitrogen in a form that plants can use.

Green manures also increase the percentage of organic matter (biomass) in the soil, thus improving water retention, aeration, and other good soil characteristics.

After plouging the manure plant decomposes into the soil re-introducing nutrients that are found in the soil in a particular form such as nitrogen (N), potassium (K), phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and sulfur (S). Microbial activity in the soil also leads to better soil structure or aggregation. Soil that is well- aggregated has increased aeration and water infiltration rates, and is more easily dug than non- aggregated soil. The amount of humus found in the soil also increases with higher rates of decomposition, which is beneficial for the growth of the crop succeeding the green manure crop.

Author: Ray Richardson
http://www.myallotmentplot.co.uk
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