Hi everyone

I'm new to gardening. Just been given my first allotment, and spent
a few days with a brush cutter clearing the dense undergrowth, and was
planning to spray the plot with weedkiller, cover it with black
plastic for the winter, and then start digging it over, and planting
things in say February. But have I overdone it? I've cropped the
vegetation so close to the bare earth that there's hardly any green
showing. I was going to use glysophate, which I understand can only
be absorbed into the root systems of the grass and weeds via the leaf,
and is destroyed by contact with the soil. So this seems to mean
that either I give the weeds a chance to recover before I can use
glysophate on them, or I need to find another safe weedkiller.

Any comments?

As you're planning to cut out the light with black plastic sheeting for several
months I'd suggest you save your money and don't bother with Glyphosate.You may
want to try leaving all the weeds where you've cut them, then covering them
with black plastic and leaving them for the bacteria/worms to compost down and
work into the soil. Ideally you'd want rainwater to pass through the plastic
to get to the soil. Any weeds that come up through holes/gaps in the plastic
can be spot treated with just a little glyphosate. You should have a clean
canvas to work with after a month or two. Any weeds that do come up after that
will be easy to treat.

Dave.