For a few years now I have not been seriously digging.  When I took over the bottom half there was a lot of water running on it from the springs so I had to do some serious drainage.  The best way I have found of draining the allotment is to dig down about three spits and then to add lots of brushwood, shreddings and even logs.  This seems to keep the soil open and allow water to pass through the soil without coming to the surface.  It seems to have worked very well because there is no water on the bottom half although there is a stream flowing down the trackway next to the allotment.  Since I did this last year, I found that mixing the soil seems to have increased the yield from this part of the allotment.  I had four rows of Early Onward peas that had a fairly remarkable crop.  We still have margarine tubs full of them now.

I repeated the exercise in November last year burying a rambling rose from one of the houses that back on to my allotment.  It was seriously taking over the trackway.  I cut it back and buried it so I am hoping that this will aid in the drainage too.  I did not dig a small area by the shed because there were still some of the annual flowers flowering.  Now that they have well and truely died, I will dig these in and try to raise the allotment here to the same height as the rest of this area.  I will probably use some of the brushwood and shreddings  to do this but make sure they are buried very deep down.  This is the exact place where the water was running across the allotment all of last winter.  There is absolutely no water at all this year, however I still want to raise the ground about another 30 cm. if I can.  I have to be careful not to bank up the soil onto the shed though.  It will only encourage it to rot.

I have painted the shed with Cuprinol or whatever it is called.  I didn’t buy it.  It was given to me.  Well, I have painted it on the shed about three times and I still have half a can left.  I am blowed if I am going to throw it away.  It is a nasty old chemical and would only pollute the world.  I will continue to paint the shed  until it all goes.  I may well paint the bean sticks and the poles holding up the wires for the raspberries.   I still haven’t moved the raspberries from the top half to the bottom half.  This is starting to irritate me because it is getting a little late to start moving raspberries.  I will have to do it though because I have planned to grow runner beans where the raspberries are now.  I have already moved the large water butt although in the move it developed a big crack in the bottom and is now useless.  I will use it to store things in and get another bigger one.

On the top of the allotment, I usually just hoe the few weeds off and cultivate the top couple of centimeters with a claw cultivator and then plant into that without digging.   This year though I will dig quite a lot of the allotment.  I am going to dig in the green manure and possibly add a lot of leaves or other organic matter depending on what people leave in the bins by the gate.  I hope the bloke with the shire horses brings another big load of horse manure.  No matter what is in it,  it is all grist to the mill; particularly three spits down.

So, do I do a no dig system or do I begin to double and triple dig again?  I might just run out of time and have to revert to no dig.  The brassicas  like to have a firm soil to grow in.  I think that this may help to deter the cabbage root fly ( Delia radicum ).  So I am not too worried if I cannot dig  the brassica area over.  I have not walked on it since I took the beans and the sweetpeas down last year, so the worms would have had time to soften it up a bit.  Going over it with a hoe, claw cultivator and rake will be good enough to prepare it.  I will also be liming this area I think.  It has not had lime on it for about four years now.  A good liming will help  to prevent club root (Plasmodiophora brassicae.)  I keep to a strict rotation and it has been about four years since I grew brassicas  on this part of the allotment.  Now  that I have the bottom half, I will be able to have a six year rotation.  It makes rotation much easier if each of the beds were equal in size.  This is why I am moving the slabs on the top allotment and making it exactly the same size as the other beds.  I will also relay the path to the tap, taking out the topsoil and replacing it with stones to make a soak away under the path.

This should even things up so that I do not have those irritating little areas where it is not worth planting anything.

I will  have to find somewhere good to plant my viburnum because it is just where I will be altering the path.  There are a lot of bulbs there too which will have to be moved.

This reminds me.  I need to take down the large plastic bags to put my old brassicas in to bring home and put into the green bin.  I should not have left the stumps in the ground because it encourages Plasmodiophora brassicae to spread throughout the soil.  I think that spores from this fungi can stay in the soil for a number of years and it is a devil of a job removing it from a planting area.    I have been fairly successful in keeping it off the allotment until this year.  I have found that the new soil that the council bought has club root in it.  I just hope that it does not spread through the rest of the allotment.

I don’t burn the stumps.  I really don’t think that a damp, smoky, foul smelling fire will be good enough to kill off club root spores. So taking them home to put in the green recycling bin is the best option for me.

Mixing the soil through digging seems to be effective in distributing and reestablishing nutrients from lower in the soil towards the top.  No  dig might be alright for a few years but I think that a jolly good digging once in a while would increase yields - especially after twenty eight years of continuous cultivation.

I am still getting really good crops off the allotment though so I can’t  be getting a lot wrong…

I have no clubroot on the allotment now but I continue to make sure by liming the area where the brassicas are going to go and rotating religiously.  I lime the soil primarily in the spring, March or April, before planting the brassicas.  They will not go on that area of the allotment again for at least 6 years.  (I have divided the allotment into 6 roughly equal plots) You have to be careful to rotate other brassicas like radish, rocket, turnip etc because they can be infected with club root as well.  You must not leave infected stumps in the soil overwinter.  This just adds to the problem.  As Percy Thrower used to say : An untidy garden invites pests and diseases.

One of the best things about sharing information on the internet is the speed at which you learn new things.  The advance of more natural ways of doing things is amazing especially for the allotment grower.  Thanks a lot Christine for the comments. 

If we can develop new varieties of vegetables that are resistant to diseases then this will help us to produce good vegetables without having to resort to synthetic chemicals.  I will not recommend anything that I have not tried myself, however there are some club root resistant varieties of brassica.  I am one of these gardeners that usually does things at the last minute.  I’ll nip down to the garden centre and get the same old varieties every time without looking for new things in the catalogues. 

I have grown Kestrel and Sante potatoes this year.   They are nematode worm resistant and have performed very well indeed.  If you need a resistant potato then this might be the way to go.  They are resistant to white cyst eelworm Globodera pallida and the golden cyst eelworm Globodera rostochiensis.  The new Sapo blight resistant potatoes did eventually succumb to  blight but the tubers have stored very well with none rotting.  I cannot say that about the Sante though.    I am replacing my ancient gooseberry bushes, whose variety I have no idea about, for gooseberry American mildew resistant varieties like Invicta. 

Almost 27 years ago someone on the allotment gave me some gooseberries and raspberries.  I have been growing these ever since.  They are only now beginning to crop poorly and making me consider getting new ones. 

I am going to continue buying pest and disease resistant varieties. 

I think that I had better look at the catalogues a little more carefully.�

For my 100th post I thought that I would put some photographs of the allotment on here.  Yesterday I got my first handful of beans off the Aintree runner beans.  I got a couple of buckets of sweet peas off as well.  That is why there are not many on them.   The weather is very overcast but not cold.  22^oC in the shade - not that there is much sun today.   

As you can see the allotment is beginning to become very green and there has been a lot of growth.  This lower half allotment is new this year.  I had to clear quite a lot of weed off it before I started to plant.  I double dug it all right up to the Onward peas. 

Comfrey growing well in the foreground and beans and sweet peas in the background.  You can’t see the pumpkins between the beans and the comfrey.  This is number 26. Number 25 starts by the shed. 

Carrots are under the enviromesh, beetroot next then two rows of annual flowers as companion planting. 

Then there are 10 lines of leeks interspersed with companion planting. 

You can just see the pumpkin in the foreground. 

Courgettes are big but not producing yet.  Lots of flowers but no courgettes.  Kelvedon Wonder peas are nearly finished now but you can see the Early Onward in the background starting to fruit.  Running alongside the sweet corn is a row of nigelia as a companion plant.  The shed is on Eric’s allotment not mine.  The plum tree is mine though. 

Sweet is corn growing well.

Please note that the weeds are on a public path between allotment 25 and 26.  Number 25 is my old allotment.  Behind the rhubarb there is a new blackberry plant and along the supports are a new line of raspberries.  If you look at the post that you can see going into the ground, there are two grape cuttings that are growing really well.   In the background you can see Florence fennel, radish, rocket, lambs lettuce and spinach.  There is also poached egg plant.  Not much yellow on these flowers though.   There are quite a few apples on the Granny Smith.  You can see how much I have raised the allotment using concrete slabs.  In the far background there are the brassicas.

And here they are winter cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, cabbage and broccoli.   I have left the nets over them to keep the cabbage white caterpillars off them.  I will have to drag some more soil around the stems at the weekend because they are getting quite big now and might start falling over.  I don’t really want to stake them because I have used all my stakes for the peas. 

The Sapo and Sante potatoes.  There are some Kestrel potatoes in the foreground and these are starting to go over now.  The tops look good but this is no indication of how big the potatoes are. 

The Kestrel potatoes are just going over.  I will have to start to harvest them next week.  I will plant Caliente mustard here after they have been taken out.  In the background you can just make out the blackcurrent bushes.  They have cropped very well this year. 

In the foreground are the Meteor peas that replaced the winter onions.  In the background are the onions interspersed with tagetes and a row of chamomile as companion planting. 

 

The onions are growing much better now but there is still some distortion in the foliage.  You can see two lines of parsnips in the background.  Not many weeds at the moment. 

This is what you can do with double digging, horse manure, chicken manure and comfrey liquid. 

I will be raising the new allotment up as high as the old one.  I will use turf, leaves and lawn mowings initially but will also continue to use horse and cow muck.�

I would say I have lost about 50% of the onions now.  They have contorted foliage and then they start to go brown.  Some are rotting and some just go crisp.  It is really hard to keep them going.  I gave the ones that are left a good watering with comfrey liquid which always seems to perk them up a bit. 

Several people on the allotment site have given up and taken all their onions out.   I don’t really want to do that though. 

I will see if I can keep them going until July and then they will fall over by themselves and start to ripen. 

Spraying them with aspirin did seem to help but not as much as I wanted it to.  The onion sets that I planted really late in May are growing well at the moment but I expect them to go down with this soon.

Everything else is growing well and a week away at a residential course with my school children did not mean that anything drastic happened.  It was not really very weedy either but I will go through the whole allotment with the hoe today. 

The strawberries are coming now - it must be Wimbledon time again.  The slugs, woodlice and birds have had their share as well but still enough for me.  I am still eating the February sown lettuce.  I really should cut down on the number I plant.  All the other lettuce is hearting up and needs to be eaten.  The spinach and the rocket have gone to seed so I am going to sow them again more or less in the same area but swap them around.  The lamb’s lettuce is not going to seed so I will use that until the new lot comes. 

The sweet peas are coming on well.  They are about 60cm now.  They are producing three flowers on each stem at the moment so I am taking these off to encourage them to produce four flowers on each stem.  I watered these and the runner beans with comfrey liquid.  The cut comfrey in the butt has rotted down very quickly, as it does in summer, so I am going to put some more in today.  I sometimes take out the unrotted stems of the comfrey but most of it rots down to a black liquid and comes out of the tap with a strong coffee colour. 

Very little American mildew on the gooseberries now so I think I will have a fairly clean crop this year.  I will let them grow a little bigger and havest them in July.  I use them in pies and jam.  However, they make a good pudding just on their own.  The desert ones I tend to eat down the allotment. 

I cut the blackcurrents hard back last year so I did not think that I would get very many this year.  I was wrong there are quite a few on the bushes and they are starting to ripen now.  I will leave them until the end of the month and then start to pick them.

I decided to hoe under the brassica netting but it was too difficult so I took the lot off.  As I was going along the lines I was hoeing up the plants.  Not a lot of people do this but I think that, if it does not also discourage cabbage root fly, it helps to support the plant when it gets bigger and is likely to fall over.  I leave the netting on even though the brassica plants are quite big because it prevents the cabbage white butterflies reaching the plants and laying eggs. 

When I finished putting the nets back on the brassica plants, I looked over at the carrots.  There was not much weed in the enviromesh but I thought that I would have a go at them regardless.  I bury the edges of the enviromesh in the soil so it is a bit of a job taking it out and then putting it back again.  I am growing Flyaway carrots and these are suposed to be carrot fly resistant.  However, I like to protect them with the enviromesh as well.  I took up the enviromesh along one side of the rows and tried to hoe.  This was not successful so I hand weeded.  I obviously had missed quite a few weeds in the rows because they were tucked between the carrot plants.   I weeded more carefully and put the enviromesh back neatly planted in the ground along its edge. 

I watered the peas, sweet corn, onions, lettuce, pumpkins, runner beans and the sweet peas with weak comfrey liquid.

This time of year there seems to be only weeding and watering to do.  I will have to prick out the June planted lettuce into pots.  Nevertheless there is not much else to do particularly.  After the hectic spring, summer is more mellow - until the harvest…

I went to the allotment especially early today to try to get everything done.  Needless to say I did not get half the things done that I wanted to.  First I finished off the brassica patch.  I finished off weeding the lettuce and then planted some Galleon autumn cauliflowers.  I only put about six in. 

I decided to weed under the brassica netting with the onion hoe.  I took the netting off first.  The onion hoe is useful because not only does it help to weed but I also draw up some soil around the plants.  I doubt if it helps with cabbage root fly but it does help to make the plants more stable. 

I decided then to go and plant the pumpkins in the bottom third of the new allotment.  I am trying to get the horse radish out of this area and although I have forked it over several times it is still coming up.  I have planted ten plants.  I doubt if I would ever use that many pumpkins, if they  start to fruit, but they are ace at ground cover.   I will just let them cover this area.  I doubt that it will shade out the horse radish though. 

I wound up the runner beans because the cold winds had unwound them and several were on the ground.  Most of them are about 2′6″ or more now. I went around the sweet peas and took off the side shoots and tendrils.  The best thing to tie them up with is garden wire.  I hand weeded as I went.  This takes much more time than you think.  I watered all the plants that I had done with comfrey liquid but I still have one more row to do.  I will do those plants tomorrow. 

I still have loads of Gardener’s Delight tomatoes so I decided to put them up some old concrete reinforcing wire.  I doubt if they will do any good but I had some room next to the sweet peas.  I watered these with comfrey liquid too.  I buried a dustbin about 4 inches into the ground here as well to stop it from blowing away.  I am going to keep my sweet pea tools in it so I can get them easily. 

The middle third of the allotment had got a little untidy.  Lots of chickweed and groundsel had started to grow.  I am going to plant leeks here so I have not done much to it at the moment.  I had to do something today though or the chick weed would have gone to seed.  I gave it a good hoeing over and just as I did the sun came out.  I thought rather than rake up the chickweed I would let it dry out in the sun.  So I left that and had a look at the carrots.  I had sown them under some enviromesh and they were becoming swamped with weeds.  I took one side of the enviromesh off and weeded along each row.  Not hard work but very time consuming.  When I had finished, I gave them a watering of comfrey liquid and covered them up again.  I didn’t thin them out because they are still a little small and I like to eat the thinnings for salad.

I hand weeded the beetroot but they were fairly clean of weeds so there was little effort there.  However, something is nipping off the ends of the leaves.  I have no idea what.  I don’t think that it is slugs or snails.  If you have any ideas, could you let me know.  The beetroot plants are still very small and last year recovered when they had managed to grow larger. 

My back was aching after all this bending down so I took myself home for dinner.  I made a lovely salad using the rocket, lettuce, spinach, radish, and lambs lettuce. 

Tommorow I will be planting the peas, red onions, onion sets that Dad gave me, the rest of the tagetes and some of the leeks.  I will rake over the middle third of the new allotment to take off the chickweed and prepare the ground a little better for the leeks.  After that I think that I have finished for a while and will do Dad’s garden. 

I will be meeting with the council representatives tomorrow at 3pm to disguss whether the soil on the new allotment will have to be replaced because of this pollutant.  Tony says that he does not really want them to replace his soil because he has been working it for over 18 years.  I would think the same if they wanted to replace the soil on the old allotment.  25 years of work have made that soil very good.  They would also have to replace about 4′ of soil because that is how deep my topsoil goes down.  I will keep an open mind until I hear what they have to say.�

After spending two days away relaxing, I thought that I would be able to come back and the weather would be kind so that I could get some serious gardening done.  I should be so lucky.  It has been pouring down all day.  Never mind. 

First thing I planted some peas in the modular trays with some mychorrhizal fungi.  Then I sorted out the seed bag to make sure that I had planted everything I was supposed to.  I had so the bag is sorted out now.  All that is in there are the green manure taire  seeds.  There are no problems in the garden greenhouse.  There are even flowers on the gardener’s delight tomatoes.  I am keeping the windows closed at the moment because of the cold wet weather. 

It did stop raining for a short time so I decided to go up to the allotment.  It was very wet when I got there.  The wind had taken the netting off the brassicas so I had to put that back on.  I really should have hoed before I put the netting back but I had done it before I thought. 

I hand weeded the onion bed and took out the eelworm infested garlic. They have formed some little bulbs about small tulip size which quite surprised me.  I took these home and left them to dry out in the greenhouse.  I decided to plant the camomile where the garlic is so that when the garlic comes out there will not be a gap in the bed.   I pinched out the growing tips of the camomile so that it will start to bush up.  In a little while I will be drinking camomile flower tea. 

I watered the onions with comfrey liquid. 

I then went onto thinning out the parsnips.  I hate taking out perfectly good parsnips but to get really good long ones this is the best thing to do.   This first thinning spaces the parsnips to about 6″ apart.  It was good to do it today because the rain has watered them in again.  Usually I water them so that they are not too disturbed when I thin out. 

After this I started to earth up the potatoes again. The blackbirds keep scratching away at the mounds to get at the worms so I have to do this regularly.  I have earthed up the Kestral but I still need to do the Sante and the Sapo ones. 

This is when it started to pour down.  I had a go at doing some more hand weeding in the salad area.  I cleared this area of weeds and then decided to check the radish to see if there were any worth taking back.  There were.  I am going to plant another row or two of these radish because they are a lovely one.  I took out the rest of the radish row, weeded the area and put in 6 autumn cauliflowers. 

By this time I was thoroughly wet through and decided to go home for a shower and a warm up.�

I went up to the allotment after work today.  I wanted to get all the brassicas in.  Two varieties of broccoli, two of Brussel sprouts and two of winter cauliflower.  I don’t know what the cabbage is because they were some that Bill gave me.  I like freebies. 

Most of the plants were in 3″ pots so that when they were knocked out the roots would not be damaged.  Damaged roots are more susceptible to clubroot.  I put a seaweed and lime mixture in each of the holes (I forget what this stuff is called but it is a replacement for calcified seaweed) .  This is supposed to have lots of minerals in it and the brassicas seem to thrive on it.  The plants were then watered in with comfrey liquid.  This is all the nutrients that I will add to the soil for the brassicas.  Next year round about March or April I will water the cauliflowers with comfrey again. 

I have trodden on this part of the allotment quite a bit so the ground is very firm.  I like this because it means that, if there is a lot of cabbage root fly about this year, they will find it difficult to lay eggs through a compacted soil.  Secondly, a firmer soil means that the brassicas can establish a strong root system and are less likely to be blown over by the wind. 

I netted all of the brassicas against the pigeons.  The mesh is about 1 cm so it will also prevent cabbage white butterflies from laying their eggs on the plants. 

  Some people criticize peat free compost but I find it a cheap and effective alternative to peat based composts.   The use of mychorrhizal fungi makes this compost even more acceptable.   

Everything else, except for the garlic,  is growing very well in the allotment.  I might have the garlic out and put the camomile in its space. 

All the pumpkins have germinated and are growing well.  I may put some gardener’s delight in the allotment greenhous.�

I worked in the greenhouse first thing today.  I pricked out the chamomile and put out the sweet peas, runner bean, brassica, onion, and pea seedlings to harden them off before I put them into the allotment at the weekend.  I doubt if I will plant them all but definitely the sweet peas, lettuce, and peas.  The pumpkins I planted earlier in the week have not germinated yet.  I put a bubble wrap bag over them to keep them warm. 

In my travels about the country, I stay at a number of hotels.  They all seem to have these clear plastic cups.  So now I have started collecting them and use them to put over the 3 1/2″ pots.  I have got all the cucumbers, aubergines and cherry tomatoes covered like this.  It brings them on a lot quicker than the ones left uncovered in the greenhouse. 

Planted a new pot of lettuce seeds.  I plant on the first of each month and then I get a succession of lettuce throughout the season.  The March ones are already in the allotment, the April ones are ready to plant out and the May ones have just been planted.  If you plant seeds any closer than this you tend to get a glut. 

I had just got everything done when my sister telephoned and suggested we meet up at Ashworth Nursery with Dad.  It’s a good afternoon out so I fetched Dad and we went down had a cup of tea and a meal in their restaurant.  I wanted to get some lawn fertiliser, lime and canes so we wandered around looking at the plants.  We ended up at the shop and searched around for the fertiliser and lime.  Found the fertiliser but could not see the lime.  I will get some from the allotment shop so I am not worried.    

I really do object to having to pay £20 for lawn fertiliser.  I  think that it is a big rip off.  If I don’t use it on my lawns then they stick out like sore thumbs because everyone else has pristine lawns and not a daisy to be seen.   I like daisies. 

So I didn’t get down to the allotment.

Hey am I famous?  I have been mentioned by the Telegraph! 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/main.jhtml?xml=/gardening/2008/04/25/garden-allotment-blogs125.xml 

You have to scroll down to the bottom of the article.

Hope that I don’t give anyone breathing problems!

                   One of the main reasons that I decided to take on this new half allotment was to make me do a little exercise and loose about 6kg.  Well today I did well.  I have dug about 25′ of the allotment right the way across.   Not sure when I started in earnest but it must have take me about three hours of sustained digging.  I bought myself a new stainless steel spade several weeks ago and this was ideal for digging with.  It does have a long blade thought and I have to shift about twice as much soil as my other spade would shift.  It started raining as soon as I got to the allotment but it was only drizzly so I decided to carry on. 

Several quite heavy showers later and I had finished down to the slabbed path.  I had a bet with myself because I didn’t think that I would do it.  It was a little miserable. I think that the thrush is nesting quite close because it was down on the allotment looking for slugs and snails.  Just the thing.  I have finished the comfrey bed.  5 lines of comfrey 2′ apart.  It takes up about ten foot of the allotment.  This is pure hardcore and I could not get a spade or fork into the ground more than 6″.   Best to put comfrey here because I doubt if anything else will grow well here.  

As I was digging, I had to take out the horse radish.  Now this is a serious plant with a seriously impressive root system.   I doubt that I will have got all of the roots out but this will be done during the year.  I am not sure whether to plant the roots again or put them in the green bin.  I never use the roots to make horse radish sauce so there is no point in having it.  I thought of using it like comfrey but the leaves do not break down as easily as comfrey.  In fact I was raking up the fibres from the old leaves yesterday.  I would need them to rot down much quicker than this. 

I am really glad that I did not take the potatoes to the allotment.  It was far too wet and cold to plant them.  That was with a south westerly wind as well.  The wind did blow a bit too. 

I took out Eric’s old cabbage plants.  They were riddled with club root.  I will not be planting brassicas on this part of the new allotment for a few years. 

I have decided to put the sweet peas where I have dug over.  I will have at least two rows. Two or three tree posts will give them stability.  I will use canes to make the basic structure and then use string to hold them up.  If you plant the string when you plant the sweet pea, the string is trapped in the ground.  You have to use nylon string though or it will rot off.  I will put the runner beans here too.  Two tree posts at each end should be enough to keep the beans up.  (I know, I know, I have said this before.)

This morning I pricked out two trays of lettuce.  I don’t need that many but I hate throwing away seedlings.  I planted some more peas in those sectioned trays.  Kelvedon Wonder are the ones I am planting at the moment.  I need more pots. The brassicas are the next to need pricking out.  I like to plant them in individual pots because they are less prone to club root when they are put out.  I think, and this is only a theory, that preventing the roots from being damaged stops the fungi from entering the root when the plants are very young.  If you are careful when knocking out the plants from the pots, the root ball stays intact and none of the little root hairs are damaged.  There is no way in which club root fungi can enter the plant. 

Everything is still alive although the cucumbers seem to be a little taken aback by the frosts.  Maybe it was a little too early for them Tone…

I went down to the allotment this afternoon to continue to ‘dig’ over the bottom plot near the car park.  About 6″ below the soil there is a thick layer of hardcore that Eric and I put there when it was a car park. When the contractors came in they did not make the car park as big as we had.  So it’s my fault that the hardcore is there and I cannot complain.  It will be a great place to put my comfrey so I am not really concerned.  I decided to bury all the weeds in a 4′ trench. This included docks, dandelions, and couch grass.  Most people believe that they would be able to reach the surface from this depth and continue to grow.  They never have before.  I cover them with some turfs and then put the soil back on them.  I am also digging out horse radish but this will sprout from roots at this depth.  I am taking the horse radish out completely.  I will plant it again in the corner with very little soil but lots of hard core. 

I have kept all the nettles Urtica Dioica as well.  I am going to plant them in the hardcore with the horse radish.  I have no idea which will win out.  I am transplanting the comfrey into the area where the soil is a little deeper.  I will probably use the area that I have trenched for the runner beans. 

The nettles will have two purposes.  They will provide a good habitat for a number of different butterflies and will be used to make a liquid manure.   Nettles are quite good at taking up nutrients and I am hoping that the hard core rubble contains a lot of plant nutrients.�