The good weather in November has allowed steady progress on winter tasks. As crops have been harvested the cleared ground has been dug over. This means less to do in the spring.

Once the annual load of mushroom compost is on site, I'll start to dig it in to next year's potato section. This is done by taking out a trench about nine inches deep. The removed soil is piled up on a vacant piece of ground. The bottom of the trench is then forked over and a layer of compost added. The next row is turned over to cover the compost and the process repeated. Finally the last open spit is filled with the soil removed at the start. I'll do a few rows at a time; it is quite heavy work.

Weed growth at this time of year is slow so not much time has been spent hoeing and weeding. I usually visit the plot twice a week but some weeks that has dropped to one visit, mainly for harvesting.

Weeds will always be with us. New plot holders are often astounded by the speed at which weeds take over their plot when they have carefully dug it over just a few weeks earlier.

Unlike many crop plants, weeds are survivors. They continue to grow under very adverse conditions, survive drought, flooding and being trampled on. Worse, they produce hundreds of seeds in a short space of time. Some of them, like couch grass, will spread by strong underground stems. Even a small piece will soon grow and thrive if left in the ground. They also compete with crops for nutrients, moisture and light.

One of their worst properties is the ability of their seeds to remain viable in the soil for up to forty years. Another is the ability of these seeds to survive a typical allotment compost heap. Many new plot holders make their first compost heap with all the surface weeds from their plot. But these weeds have already produced a huge number of seeds. When the compost is used, particularly as mulch, the weeds just love the rich soil that they find themselves in.

It's a bit of an enigma, but the best way of having no weeds is to have no weeds. Regular hoeing and hand weeding is needed to kill weeds before they produce any seeds. But the vast number of seeds already in the soil will germinate as soon as any working of the soil brings them near the surface.

It's a war of attrition. Short of total sterilisation of all the soil in the plot, these seeds keep coming to the surface. However, diligent attention to weeding means that no new seeds enter the ground and, as time goes on, more and more seeds come to the surface, germinate and then get weeded out.

Sadly, there are other ways that weeds invade a plot. Many of them, like dandelions, produce seeds that are carried by the wind, often for miles, before they land on a plot. A major source of these weeds is from plots that have become derelict. On a warm summer's day the air can be thick with floating seeds.

So regular hoeing and hand weeding has to continue. One helpful thing about weeds is that their green colour makes them easy to spot even when they are small. They are most easily dealt with at this stage. The good news is that you can win; no weed will survive when it has its head repeatedly chopped off.

B. A. Plotter.