Before I start my 5 minute hate, the good news: the first flowers on the strawberries are out and everything I’ve planted this year is coming along fine. But today, I saw my first potato leaf and that’s sent me off on one…
In the 3 years I’ve had this allotment I’ve not planted potatoes. I think they take up loads of space and are relatively cheap in the shops, so I’ve been concentrating on growing soft fruit and vegetables that are expensive, or don’t travel, or we didn’t get enough of in our organic veg box. So every year I’ve had potatoes springing up around the plot (and even managed to get a fair haul of potatoes) but I don’t want them! Half of them that I dig up are pink fir apple and these knobbly things have bits that break off readily.
Not sure that I can put the plants in any order of weediness. The first three are the most problematic.
- grass
- horsetail
- potatoes
- brambles – they scare me with their habit of rooting wherever they touch the ground
- comfrey – if it just stayed in a nice patch I’d be happy, but the roots have strayed all over the plot. When I’m digging up the errant plants, I dread the crunch of roots breaking
- nettles
- creeping buttercup
- sticky william (galium aparine and its many common names from plantlives.com)
- raspberries – shallow roots have gone all over the West end of the plot.
- dandelion
18 Saughton Mains, no more! 