Rotivating for success - a beginners tale

The weekend rotivating has become immovable.  Firstly booking a day with fellow allotmenteer from No 7, secondly spending time to organise a rotivator for the weekend for free - these things do not come cheap, weighing in at about £150 for the weekend.  Allotmenteering is all about recycling, making the best of what you can get your hands on.  It is not about spending hundreds and hundreds of pounds in an attempt to turn a patch of weed covered heavy clay scrubland into the garden of eden.  So, with everything in place, a small matter of icy winds and near freezing temperatures was not going to put me off.  With said machine in the back of the van, children, wives, grandparents, friends, friends' children wrapped up, ready and enthusiastic, off we went.

The Rotivator itself is a cumbersome, heavy lump of metal that takes two decent sized men to lift and two people to push/pull.  Our plot is a few minutes down a thin grass path, meaning that by the time it arrived at the plot, any worries I had about working sub-zero had vanished.  Within an hour or so of getting the thing fired up, we had a good 7m x 4m plot cleared and churned and with a little practice I had mastered my turning, stopping,  starting and making the machine work for me rather than fighting to get it to go in a straight line.  At this point the children complained of being cold and bored, as did some of the grownups, leaving a final faithful three remaining.  It was at the point when only I and my neighbour, lets call him Oli for arguments sake, that the mishap occurred.  Oli, while still mastering his rotivating skills and while I was not watching, managed to drive said machine off the end end of our plat and alight it in a small, but sturdy fig tree.  And that's how it happened!!

Anyway, all in all a successful morning.  We have now cleared the majority of the plot and can crack on with the next stage.  What I have learnt is the rotivator is all very good, but it has only started what we need to do.  One of the old boys told us no one had turned the lot over for the best part of 20 years and we should dig it before rotivating - sadly this was after our rotivating had been done so we now look forward to weeds a plenty.  The soil is very heavy and digging from scratch would be near on impossible.  Rotivating has made it easier for us to do some proper digging and get the beds in.  It is not the answer to my prayers, it would seem there is no replacement for blood sweat and tears.  I'm also now one spade and one fork down.  The middle prong of the fork snapped after 5 minutes,  the handle of the shovel snapped not that long after.  The shovel was free, the fork a present from my Dad for Christmas (boooo!).

One thing that is already growing is artichokes.  There are loads of them dotted around with no real method.  My idea was to dig them all up, maybe split some off the roots and rehouse them in something that resembled a straight line.  What I did not know but do now is the roots can grow to quite a size, some of the larger plants developing roots the size of those associated with small trees - god only knows how long they have been there for.  Anyway,  a compromise was reached in so far as some were dug up and the patch where most of them were will now be the artichoke patch, thus removing the need for unnecessary artichoke cleansing.

For now, no more.  Next up is some good planning,some good digging and some reading up on what's good and easy to get in the ground next month - suggestions welcome.