Dig your plot in Autumn and early Winter. It means less work in spring. It is the ideal preparation for an allotment. You also expose slug and snail eggs and nasty bugs for the birds to eat and to keep your pest population down.
Invest in a good hoe and use it regularly during the growing months of Spring and Summer or the weeds will soon take over your plot. A stirrup hoe - with a push and pull action - is a very good tool to use. You can hoe your entire plot in 20 minutes. The weeds will dry and die on a sunny day after you have hoed them.
Work out a rotation plan - at least keep your crops moving round the plot; to grow the same crop family in the same place year after year is to build up a reservoir of disease and pests.
The compost heap is an essential on the plot - almost all your garden waste (except horsetail, potatoes and potato plants, and brassica roots) should go on. Good compost is an art in itself. Look at all that produce you are taking off your plot, see all that stuff you are taking to the tip - it comes from the ground and your soil will need replenishing, the easiest way is through composting. It will save you many a wheelbarrow journey to the tip.
Slug control: Slug pellets are less than 5% poison (which lasts perhaps 48 hours), and 95% bait (which attracts slugs in for weeks afterwards).
So why not try a few natural methods first? For example:
keep your plot clear of "slug hotels" (waste wood, stones, buckets, pots, plastic bags - all those cool damp places the slugs love)
use your hoe regularly - especially in spring and early summer;
learn to recognise slug eggs, and their breeding places; and destroy!
use beer traps, or half grapefruits (emptied or removed regularly)
If you do use pellets use sparingly yet often. Don't carpet your beds in them as that is a waste of money. Put a dozen pellets on a bed 5 metres by 2 metres every other day. Never pile them up, scatter them.
Comfrey tea - grow a bed of comfrey (best to get the variety Bocking 14, which will not self-seed and become a weed); good in compost, as a green manure. Or fill a bucket with comfrey leaves (or nettles), cover with water, and leave to stew for a few days. The foul-smelling liquid gives an excellent plant food. Leave it for 2 to 4 weeks, and you will have a very potent brew, which should be diluted with at least 10 parts water. Comfrey grows in the tip so harvest the leaves from there.
Don't leave patches of bare soil - try a few of the green manures available. They are a very easy way of maintaining soil fertility and a healthy soil structure; well worth experimenting with.
Adding manure and compost can alter the acidity of your soil - it is a good investment to do a pH test, even with a cheap kit from a garden centre. Add lime to bring your soil back to a healthy level for your plants - it's best to add lime just before your brassica, as it also controls club-root.
Hints and Tips - Getting a New Plot Started
Your new plot is a weed and bramble infested jungle? Don’t worry, most new plots are! Trying to clear it all, in one super-human effort, can be pretty demoralising - better to clear a manageable “bit”, and get that working really well.
Best time to start? Definitely autumn or early winter - give yourself plenty time to clear and prepare beds for the new growing season, and you'll have the time in spring to invest in sowing and tending your crops. If you start in spring, it's a bit harder to juggle the time you need to do both tasks well.
Mark your plot out into beds - 4 foot wide by any suitable length; the idea is that you don't walk on your growing soil, but can easily reach everything in the bed from the path.
In which case, clearing is probably a digging job; lift as much of the weed cover as you can, and use it to start a compost heap; use the fork and your hands to remove as much of the weed root systems as you can.
Alternatives - a rotovator? But beware, it will chop every weed into hundreds of little pieces, each of which can become a new weed! Or try a light-proof covering like wed fabric, or mulch, of thick black plastic or thick layers of cardboard and/or newspaper). Or weedkiller.
Take it easy; don't overdo it, or be over-ambitious. Better to clear a small bed really well, and have good crops from it; cover the unused part of your plot with weed fabric, and come back to clearing it later in the season.
Don't be a nuisance neighbour and allow your weeds to seed. Most complaints the Committee receive are about the weedy plot next door shedding seeds onto people's plots. If you cannot get down the plot to weed then please tell us or we shall send you a letter which costs your Association time and money which could be better spent elsewhere.