I took on the allotment two years ago now, and it was entirely brambles (hence the name BrambleHammer, that i use when posting on allotment message boards).
Hacking back the brambles in that first year was tiring but actually a lot of fun. Initially I used a petrol hedge trimmer, but in the end found that diving in with gloves and pruning clippers at the base of all the brambles I could reach, then hauling them out with a rake was the way to go. Fortunately for me I have a strong back from spending my teenage years as a competitive oarsman.
After getting the surface growth burned, digging out the roots was a major job, and boy did those roots go deep. I was lucky enough to have about 60 cm of topsoil sitting on a subsoil of yellow clay, but some of those roots went way way down into the clay. After excavating my first clump of roots down all the way, I decided to just dig down as far as the sub-soil and then cut off the deeper roots.
In the first autumn I only managed to hack and burn a small area before the weather set in, but succeeded in getting a late crop of radishes and lettuce that made me feel like I was getting somewhere, and sowed some parsnips in the ground and some purple sprouting broccoli.
Come the first spring, I managed, with help, to clear away a much larger area, perhaps 2/3 of the total area of the plot. I did some early salad under glass, onions from sets, garlics, and early potatoes. The potatoes in particular were awesome. I hopped down to our local beach every morning for a couple of weeks with two buckets and a fork and got lots of seaweed mulched on top of the potato bed, and that combined with a very nice spring meant I had a massive crop of early potatoes, you'd struggle to find soil between them!
As the spring wore on, I started with the peas, and then the beans, Harvested a lot of very nice broccoli (I actually have never been able to stomach broccoli before, finding it tough and bitter, but this home grown stuff was tender and with a much deeper spectrum of flavour), and kept sowing and harvesting successions of salad vegetables.
For three glorious months, I was eating well from the plot, and Tescos were not getting my hard earned pennies.
Come early summer, in went pumpkins and sweetcorn. Then came the rotten 2008 summer. The sweetcorn was very disappointing, and from 8 plants I only got 2 edible pumpkins, the rest just rotted while only the size of a golf ball. Frankly, I got into a bit of a sulk and let the plot go for a few months. Disasters. While veg were doing badly, but the weeds are made of sterner stuff, and long dormant seeds that were in the soil sprung up with glee.
Come the second autumn, I had almost as much of a daunting task as I'd had when getting started. The soil was full of bindweed and couch grass, those bramble roots I'd left way down there at the sub-soil level had sent shoots up. I even found nightshade! Over the autumn and winter I've practically had to double dig any time the soil got dry enough (fortunately I have only a very light clay), but it has been worth it. Come the 4th week of February, I had a week off, and was able to finish the job in fine style.
So, this spring I have taken a few gambles: I'm mostly gambling on there not being another frost this far south. I've had broad beans, onion sets and garlics over-wintering, and I've now sown six rows of first early potatoes, some salad veg under glass, two rows of parsnips, two rows of peas, a row of savoy cabbage and another of red cabbage (my favourite thing), and indoors I have trays of leaks, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and red onion (300 of them! I've gone a bit mad on the onions).
My plan, optimistically, is to be able to put something on my plate from the allotment every meal. If I was able to have some bees, chickens and goats, then probably the only things I'd have to buy would be flower, oil and salt, but alas the council says a big fat NO to livestock. :(
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