Daft rules

[Jude]

Have just received my new allotment tenancy agreement which says we may not grow any plant or tree over 6 ft. tall.
This years giant sunflower competition is going to be a bit sad!
P.S. Can you 'cordon' grow runner beans? (not a serious question!)

[Johnboy]

Hi Jude,
See my posting to Peter (help I do not know who I am)
as your new agreement looks to be a classic example.

[Carole B.]

We're not supposed to grow anything that takes longer than 12 months to mature...bang goes the asparagus then. The irony is that the council came and took a photo for their news magazine article on healthy eating of one of our ladies standing in the middle of her raspberry patch and put it on the front page!

[jopsy]

the council obviously has no idea!
honestly!
we rent an adjoining patch we arent allowed to put any sticks in! or trees/shrubs!

[Jude]

I suppose that, at least, my new agreement is better than the old one which didn't allow strawberries or rhubarb either, you only have to spend 2 seconds looking round the site to see that nobody's paid any attention to the rules for generations!

[Tigger]

Why don't you send your council a copy of the article about allottments in Bristol (May's KG)?

[mandylew]

ours says that, but when I ask the coulcil to trim back some of the trees that overhang my plot and are at lears 30' high, I get no joy

Mandy

[lizzie]

You want to try where I am. We're not allowed to water with hosepipes, only fill waterbuts with them.

Not allowed trees over 8' high (i think it's 8, could be 6')

Not allowed to keep chickens, even though the council rules say we can.

There is also a fair amount of one rule for one and another rule for someone else.

And, by the action of some of them laughter, jokes and having a sense of humour is also banned.

I'll stick with sensible, common sense rules, but the rest of can bog off.

[Carole B.]

I never said we take any notice! I think they're just covering themselves against people sueing them for the loss of expensive plants if they decide to take the plots away.

[Tigger]

I'm tempted to repeat myself.......

[peter]

You want to try where I am. We're not allowed to water with hosepipes, only fill waterbuts with them.

You lucky lucky, lucky soft northener .

Not only do the angels widdle more on you than on me, but your allowed to fill your butt with a hose.

Down here, where the rain don't fall, we get four horse troughs between thirty or so plots and are only allowed buckets or watering cans.

I visited a bloke near Peterborough and he had a honda engined water pump and a drainage ditch (fenland variety) over the hedge from his allotment. Bet that wasn't allowed for a number of reasons, but he used it at about 5am.

[Chantal]

We are only allowed watering cans/buckets and have one stand pipe for 30 plots. I have to walk about 50 yards to fill up and am lucky compared to many who have to walk 100 yards or more.

We are not allowed sheds, greenhouses, or any permanent structures over 1m high.

We are not allowed fruit trees.

Our soft fruit must be at least 1m inside our boundary (an oft flouted rule).

We can't drive our cars down the track to our plots but have to park in the car park and walk with everything (a large barrow is a good idea).

We can't light fires when the sports field next to us is in use (usually at a weekend).

They're not bad rules on the whole, but some of you don't know how lucky you are!

[lizzie]

We've only recently had the hosepipe rule changed. That was a fight in itself. Some of them are that thick that they thought they'd use more water by filling a waterbut with a hose than if they used watering cans. The bloody things only hold 50 odd gallons so what's the difference?

Some of the rules are reasonable. We can't light fires between March and October for instance because there are houses around the site. That's fair enough.

There is still a lot of one rule for one and one for another.

Get's on my wick.