Kitchen Garden Forum

Same here Peter every bit of ground is sodden ,we had a committee meeting last weekend one of the things agreed was that all plots should have a water barrel for collecting water , before our allotment was extended we had one tap to four plots now we have thirty new plots with out a single tap the council will not pay the cost of a new pipe line so we have to look at different ways of supplying water as my plot has the last tap before the new plots I know in summer I won't have chance of using a hose pipe so now I've installed a waterbutt on a flooded plot

Robo, the difficult bit of extending is digging the trench for the pipe.
Has to be deep enough that folk don't dig into it, or, as happened on my site, rotovate it!
Unrolling plastic pipe and making connections I'd a doddle and back filling is the world's easiest job.

Persuade the younger fitter new plot tenants of the benefits of digging a trench.

We have two dipping tubs for about 15 plots. Luckily, we are down the steep hill from the dipping tub at the top, so we syphon the water down into our three very large water tubs which already collect the rainwater off the shed roof. For the first 20 years on this plot we had no water laid on at all and we soon got used to economising!

I spent a lovely morning today digging up the last leeks, kale and flower sprouts (they will all be chopped and frozen) and I noticed a strange phenomenon: there were lots of earthworms around the leek roots but hardly any at all around the brassica roots. I wonder why? The soil would have been almost identical, much enriched with manure early last spring.

It's not the digging Peter , our water company want £20000 to put a new pipe run in as the original one is to small to feed the existing taps when one tap is turned on at our end the water only trickles out of the taps at the far end if we tried putting another eight taps on the original pipe nobody would have any water

Spent today adding another water butt giving me 3 x 200lt (600lt).

It was suggested though that when the water gets hot it can be harmful to plants.

robo wrote:It's not the digging Peter , our water company want £20000 to put a new pipe run in as the original one is to small to feed the existing taps when one tap is turned on at our end the water only trickles out of the taps at the far end if we tried putting another eight taps on the original pipe nobody would have any water

Not a typo is it?
Twenty thousand.

No the estimate is slightly over

I assume therefore that you have toilets on site, cos they really are taking the piss!

The price is what north west water gave to the council as we are not a self governed allotment what we can't get an answer to is wether the water feed we have at present has a reducer at the meter to me it's easy to find out just take a spanner to it but we are not allowed we have had every excuse you could think of and a few more as well but we are hitting a blank wall

You could put in a borehole for that!

Geoff ,that's an idea ,we are applying for a grant ,one of our allotment ladies is really good at getting grants up to now she has managed to get us a communal hut, communal toilets ,an a container for a secure lock up ,I will suggest it at the next meeting

Starting to turn into a long old Winter......let's hope it changes all of a sudden, when it does decide to....

Ground has been frozen hard each morning since Friday, well the surface layer of mud at any rate!
Our pallet load of seed potatoes arrived Saturday morning and we packed them away in our insulated and heated potato shed. A 1" tube heater at the back and a 2.5kw fan heater with a frost free bottom setting by the door. It felt quite toasty by comparison with outdoors and the shop shed this morning.

Sarpo Miro had failed, cause not given, and Sentanta was the highly blight resistant substitute.

Your last line reads like a coded message, Peter....

Beautiful sunny day down here in Dorset - but the ground was frozen in the places I planned to work on lottie. Luckily I had loads of other unfrozen places to weed & sort so not a wasted journey & I made pretty good progress even with the help of the mutt! Might be a while until I can get down again if there is any truth in the weather report we are getting - blizzards in Dorset next week? Are they kidding? We can't cope with an inch of snow without chaos! Might have to dig out the stretchy clip on cleats for snow & ice I bought 10 yrs or so ago when we had a bit of black ice. Ha! Knew they'd come in handy for something!