[Penninehillbilly]

Just sent you a pm
 
did I actually miss that photo earlier? must be going blind!

[pgkevet]

I know this is going to sound patronising but it isn't meant to be. If it's only half an acre and you plan on fruit trees, soft fruit bushes and a decent amount of veggies then most of your problem is solved. I know i went OTT with my veggie patches and will downsize them but I alternate between two 1/4 acre patches. One patch grows enough spuds for OH and myself with more tha enough to give away and throw away the duds and small un's etc. I've stil got 2 sacks of onions in the barn as well and there's more tha neough leeks, carrots, parsnips and brassicas about to see us until the early glasshouse salad stuff.. and that's despite trying hard to give lots away.
What it really depends on is what the land i actually like..in terms of depth of soil and soil type. I see no point in making raised beds if the soil has enough depth.

If you stick in a dozen apples, 3 pears, 4 cherries a few nut trees some plums, gages. a medlar, 2 sweet chestnuts, a walnut ... even if it's for future generations.. well you'll just be mowing between them anyway. then there's the soft fruit... a dozen blueberries, half a dozen each sort of currant, some honey berries, raspberries, josterberries, thornless blackberries, gooseberries..... that plot will look quite full soon enough. What mowing with a push petrol job can't keep down can be spot treated later.

And if you can get away with fruit trees on it then you can probably get away with a glasshouse or polytunnel too...

[spandit]

Personally, I'd get it mown as short as possible then peg out some cardboard or carpet to mulch the areas where you're going to plant the trees. I don't like all this spraying with chemicals.

Get in touch with some local tree surgeons and they'll probably be only too glad to dump woodchip on your land to cover the cardboard with. I have a friend whose business pays quite a lot of money to get rid of waste cardboard so getting hold of large amounts is pretty easy.

[JosieMc]

Thank you for your advice.  Not patronising at all.  I have this vision in my head I have to get the ground perfect and have completely got rid of the thistles and nettles for good (or as good as poss) before I start planting anything.  But are you saying I should just start planting and then mow around?  I guess I just need to plan what is going where, cut it right down now and clear it and then start with a couple of veg beds and put some trees in?

I know this is going to sound patronising but it isn't meant to be. If it's only half an acre and you plan on fruit trees, soft fruit bushes and a decent amount of veggies then most of your problem is solved. I know i went OTT with my veggie patches and will downsize them but I alternate between two 1/4 acre patches. One patch grows enough spuds for OH and myself with more tha enough to give away and throw away the duds and small un's etc. I've stil got 2 sacks of onions in the barn as well and there's more tha neough leeks, carrots, parsnips and brassicas about to see us until the early glasshouse salad stuff.. and that's despite trying hard to give lots away.
What it really depends on is what the land i actually like..in terms of depth of soil and soil type. I see no point in making raised beds if the soil has enough depth.

If you stick in a dozen apples, 3 pears, 4 cherries a few nut trees some plums, gages. a medlar, 2 sweet chestnuts, a walnut ... even if it's for future generations.. well you'll just be mowing between them anyway. then there's the soft fruit... a dozen blueberries, half a dozen each sort of currant, some honey berries, raspberries, josterberries, thornless blackberries, gooseberries..... that plot will look quite full soon enough. What mowing with a push petrol job can't keep down can be spot treated later.

And if you can get away with fruit trees on it then you can probably get away with a glasshouse or polytunnel too...

[devonlady]

And you can tell your children that they were born with a thistle spudder in their hand. Or are children not so gullible these days

[Bramblecot]

Could you spend the £750 on fencing with stock net, and then put a few store lambs on it for the season?  They won't eat the old thistle stems but may keep on top of the new weeds.  I took over a small overgrown patch 2 years ago and the sheep have turned it into a lawn .  But don't plant young trees if you plan to put sheep in there .

[JosieMc]

Well the land has stone walls on 2 sides and a farmers fence on the other so I'd just need fencing / electric fencing for one side.  Might look into that! 

[pgkevet]

Thank you for your advice.  Not patronising at all.  I have this vision in my head I have to get the ground perfect and have completely got rid of the thistles and nettles for good (or as good as poss) before I start planting anything.  But are you saying I should just start planting and then mow around?  I guess I just need to plan what is going where, cut it right down now and clear it and then start with a couple of veg beds and put some trees in?

I'm saying that you'll be digging holes for trees and either weed those holes (or turn deep turfs upside down in them) and you'll be digging/weeding beds (or spraying them down and rotorvating or covering them with topsoil etc) and those processes will be dealing with most of the area anyway. The rest if kept mown very short will stop weeds flowering and producing more seeds and the mowing itself may eave an acceptable lawn as is.  Why try dealing with the whole plot first when you'll be processing most of it again anyway.

My starting point would be to look at soil depth and type... if deep enough then raised beds are unnecessary. Soil type can be manipulated.. lime or acidifiers, mulches and sand or manure .. whatever it needs.

My lawns here (about 3 acres) are just what used to be mixed wild flower and grasses meadow.. kept mowed it's fine . Leave an area and it'll look docky and nettly quite quickly but get back to mowing and it looks fine. My veggie patches are just ploughed up same meadow... got a good depth of soil here. But no-one had added nutrients and had been mowing for hay for any many years.. land was a bit nutrient bare for veggies. I have solved that wth a combination of some 20 tons of rotten horse manure, several trailer-fulls of tree chippings and a couple of years of top-dressings with cow muck. It's still weedy land.. those seeds would be there for years.  I alternate my growing patches.. one used for the veggies and the other fallow. The fallow one gets sprayed down at the end of summer, then ploughed and left over winter before being harrowed and rotorvated for the current years planting while the previous years patch gets mown off and muched from the winters veggie leftovers and allowed to be fallow for the season.. All those weed seeds germinate again and it becomes meadow(ish) while i spend the season chucking chicken waste, chippings etc on it before the autumn spray down and plough. I run the topper over it if docks/nettles looks like they'll flower. Another 7 or 8 years it might stop being so weedy.

Yeah, I could have double dug those 2x 1/4 acres, hand weeded them, created compost heaps etc and still spent all my time weeding the veggies because of the legacy of seeds in the soil. I'm too old and knackered for that

[Penninehillbilly]

Josie - having a rough idea of where you are, I'm thinking the land faces west or south west, fairly high up, have you thought of planting a windbreak as well?
That was one of the first things I did when I cam up here, the relief of getting into the lee of these hedges is amazing.
You may find you're limited in what top fruit you can grow. soft fruit does well.