Kitchen Garden Forum

Richard and Shallot Man

A word of thanks.
Today I arrived on the plot at 9.05am, spent 4 hours digging.

By 1:05pm felt cream crackered and came home. Had a cuppa, a sandwich and a kip whilst ostensibly watching an old B& W movie on tv.

Woke up to find film had ended so viewed this forum just after 3pm and smiled at both your posts, they actually gave me the inspiration to go back up the plot and do a bit more digging for an hour or so.

So, Cheers guys.

The plot we have was used for a general tip for around 17 years it was then included into our allotment the top was cleared but nothing else we have had it since november 2012 the amount of old bikes ,car bits ,asbestos and barrow after barrow of broken glass we have dug up has been unbelievable, the funny thing was when we asked the council guy would they provide a skip for all the rubbish we had to remove we where told to pile it outside of the gate and they would remove it 2 months later the same guy was complaining about the cost of removing it ,he then issued a letter saying we could no longer tip outside the gate but had to take the rubbish home this we ignored and we are still digging milk bottles and bits of old cars up as well as broken glass, i do take my own rubbish home but not stuff that we find while trying to make a plot out of a refuse tip, i still think the land should have been cleared and uncontaminated soil spread over it

Robo
I assume your plot is rented from the council.
I do tend to wonder if they are not somewhat leaving themselves wide open to litigation if they were not prepared to remove asbestos previously dumped on land they own before letting it to you.

Although they are keen on people working their plots they will not spend money, my plot is the only one that has not had drains installed in the last couple of years all the rest on the allotment have when I ask why I get all the excuses invented its strange especially as the bottom end of our plot was part of a duck pond in the past

Drains installed !!!! under allotments , Crikey!!

Sounds almost like forward planning for building purposes.

The drainage on our site is called 'a slope'

My neighbour with the greenhouse was up the plot yesterday. I was going to try and tackle the subject of the greenhouse roof overhang.

TBH, I then decided I really wasn't in the right frame of mind to try tackle the issue.

Field drains right across the allotment apart from my plot, the need for drains becomes aparant as the allotment is sat right where the puddling clay for the leeds to liverpool canal was made i bored down 3 meters with a 160 mm auger to try and get through it not a cat in hells chance

I complain about having to push everything up the slope to my plot but having heard about your drainage problems I will stop. Doesn't stop me wondering why they put the gate at the bottom of the slope and not the top as the road runs alongside...

MW

At least these allotment issues have stopped me moaning, I'm so fortunate.

I should not complain i was 6 years on the waiting list at least i have a plot the waiting list is still very long

The waiting list on our plots has dwindled to nothing the site manager has told me. The half plot I gave up last year is still empty. Are they going out of fashion?

MW

It's the same at our plot, the waiting list has dropped substantially & many newbies are not seeing through more than a season (if that long). Part of me is happy about it loosing favor as I get so cross when I see allocated plots being left to over run & blow weed seeds everywhere, but with our plot still under threat it would be good to maintain a reasonable waiting list to have more of a voice for the continuing fights.

If they still try to take my second plot in 2017 I will have one hell of a voice though when I maintain both plots cultivated & tidy & all around is dozens of plots just left - and they get their's cleared for them to start when I could completely hide in mine as the weeds were so high.

Westi

Of my town council's nine sites, two of 20 rod ehole site size, six have vacant plots, my site by accident of location and surroundings had a waiting list of five with probably two years in the queue from joining. The two diddy sites have two and three tenants respectively. Demand has peaked.

I believe our areas waiting list has now reduced from 7 years to 2.

I would imagine a lot of people just got fed up with waiting.

Went to the plot yesterday, wasn't a good start to the day.

Was trying to get a rotavator to start after 5 months inactivity, whilst fiddling with that I looked across the plot and noticed that a number of the 'Longor' shallots I planted 10 days ago had been pulled out overnight since Sunday. Definite signs of rat having chewed on one.

Replanted those and went back to trying to get rotavator started.
Eventually got it going but it just added more confirmation that my 'pulling power' is not as good as it used to be.

Like the rotavator, some muscles in my arms also had not had much use in 5 months and are still aching this morning.

To finish my plot visit off I noticed that my 'overwintered peas' experiment had come to nothing. Last time we checked they were 4inches tall under fleece tunnels, all that is left now is chewed stalks.
Good job it was only an experiment, time to dig them out and start again with some first early seed. Might sow some Meteor now.

Don't you just love those mice... I find net works better than the fleece for keeping them off as they don't seem to take the risk of getting tangled up. I use nets over low hoops to give protection to lots of things until they're getting going, on our plots jackdaws are little devils for pulling up shallots and onion sets. They will also unravel 'natural' string on the bean sticks so I use plastic string which they leave alone.

MW