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If I were you, Lincolnshirelass, I'd hire a heavy-duty rotovator for the initial dig - getting the whole area done quickly to prevent the vultures from descending - and then buy a lighter one to use thereafter. Everyone is right about rotovators chopping and distributing weeds, but only if they're there in the first place - so good gardening practice and a hoe will deal with that.

The only problem which may crop up (although I've never come across it and don't know anyone else who has) is hard-pan, where a solid impermeable layer is supposed to build up at the deepest limit of your machine. It might be a complete fairy story because it doesn't occur with ploughing.

The other thing a rotovator does, unfortunately, is mince worms. They don't mind being chopped in half on the odd occasion - but every 11 days?? Hmmmm ...

Lincolnshirelass, I thought might like a little tip that you might use if you buy yourself a small rotovator. To save your selves some work when planting out or putting in seeds, what I do is rotovate a strip about 2 feet wide rake it out and plant out, or seed and then rotovate another strip and do your next planting, this way you do not have to dig and rake between the rows where you have walked.

Hi,
Well done on getting an allotment , they're very hard to get here in East Sussex.
Last year was our first year, (we are also on clay), we dived in with rotavator. A bit of a disaster that was,it got the soil turned after breaking two machines! but the bind weed came back in profusion. So eventually we decided to dig over and remove all weeds by hand, (obviously this took a great deal of time- but slow and steady wins the race) then cover with the thickest layer of muck you have ever seen, then cover with carpet. Together this seems so far to have done the trick.Then to get back into sowing we are peeling back a bit of carpet as required and sowing that bit etc and so on till all land is utilised,
Hopefully this will do the job, good luck
Becks

If you have any of the weeds that multiply by sending out roots in all directions, you just help the distribution of them with the rotovator... It chops up the roots, and each little bit makes a new weed. They are OK to use on weeds that spread via seeds.