Query from anonymous

Dear Anonymous

Your Roedale contact is LowerRoedaleRep(at)googlemail.com. or you can go direct to the allotment officer at Brighton and Hove Council by phone or email. Any tenant has the right to contest a termination notice, but may not be given the right to appeal repeated notices, so if this is your first notice, you should be able to explain your position - if you have photos of the plot in good previous cultivation etc then make sure you see your representative/allotment officer and show them the evidence that you're not a slacker!

Labels: allotment-evictions, allotment-problems, allotment-terminations

Allotment problems

It’s not always fun on the allotment. Last night was our AGM and while that was actually a lot of fun, and I ended up being elected to a post of authority (you can just call me Madam Secretary from now on!) there was a significant amount of frustration expressed about some of the nastier aspects of being an allotment holder, so I thought I’d be honest about the trials and tribulations that were expressed at the meeting. In reverse order:

At number 3: The problem of people who won’t lock gates – this is a perennial problem at least as persistent as bindweed, and it leads to strangers wandering around the site and getting lost (and sometimes, getting locked in!) petty theft and vandalism and a general feeling of insecurity about leaving tools and produce on the allotment site.

At number 2 in the annoyance stakes – people who neglect their plots. We can all succumb to a bit of weediness or neglect at times, but this particular problem is related to people who wait until they get a weed notice, then turn up and strim and rotovate the entire plot, then do nothing until they get another weed notice … why do they have an allotment if they don’t do anything with it, is the cry from their neighbouring plot-holders? Why indeed?

Number one in the ‘allotment problem’ category – at least in the minds of those who came to the meeting – were dogs! It seems we have two large black dogs that are allowed to roam free on the site. Nobody present knew if they came from a nearby house or belonged to a plot-holder, but they have been galloping around one section of the site, trampling overwintering onions and causing mayhem. Bad enough, but the idea of coming across two large black dogs in the dark as you leave your plot in the evening is quite scary, and for some of our less mobile members could be really frightening.

We take our dog to the allotment, but always on a lead and when he’s there he’s secured on a running line on our plot so that he can’t annoy anybody. It’s really unpleasant to think that all the hard work people put into growing crops can be destroyed by one thoughtless person and two boisterous dogs – it’s not the dogs’ fault, of course. Just wait until we locate the owner – there will be some very honest expressions of annoyance to be heard!

I wonder what problems other allotment holders experience – anybody care to share their woes?

Labels: allotment-dogs, allotment-problems, allotment-vandalism, allotment-weeds

The celery tasting report

Okay, I’m having to admit a bit a failure here. The celery was a rather a bust. I think I need to do a lot more research into what you need to do to grow good celery!

The thing is, it has a fantastic flavour, but it’s very fibrous – even the blanched version. I suspect our mistake may have been not enough watering to boost the water-holding cells in the plant or possibly too much wind-chill (leaves get tougher when exposed to windy conditions so I think celery stems might too) but the good news is that the root (which in certain varieties is all the plant is grown for, at which point it gets called celeriac) takes absolutely wonderful!

So although the blanched stems are yellower and softer than the unblanched ones, they still haven’t produced the kind of celery you’d happily munch on with a slab of double Gloucester. On the other hand, they do make a great braised celery …

BRAISED CELERY RECIPE

Chop some onions and carrots into a pan and add enough vegetable stock to half-cover the vegetables. Bring to the boil and transfer to a slow cooker. Wash the celery and cut into manageable lengths (assume the person eating it will want to cut each piece in half to get it onto their mouth!) and place the celery on top of the veggies. Baste some of the stock over the celery. Cook on low for between 3 and 5 hours or until the celery is very tender, basting with the stock from time to time. Remove the celery from the pan with a perforated spoon and place in a serving dish. Drain the cooking liquid into a small pan and add 1 teaspoon of cooking wine then boil until it is reduced to a thin glaze and pour over the celery

Labels: allotment-celery, allotment-crops, allotment-failures, allotment-problems, allotment-recipes

Bird scaring

Birds are a nuisance. Lovely, but a nuisance, a bit like toddlers and puppies that haven’t been house-trained. And the birds have suddenly discovered that our allotment, which had been fallow for a couple of years, is full of goodies. So I started looking around for bird-friendly but effective bird prevention devices (we can’t afford a fruit cage this year, and anyway, we’d also need a broccoli cage and a cabbage cage and … etc).

And out of the blue, Santa web arrives! Actually, it’s called Scaraweb, and it’s been donated to us by a kind neighbour who ‘didn’t get on with it’ (her words). I can sort of see why she might not. While it is a lovely Santa’s beard kind of article in the packet, when you tease out the strands and spread it over the plants in question (as shown on the packet illustration) it does look rather as if your vegetable plot has been invaded by a giant spider or maybe a mutant silkworm. Anyway, it’s free and I’m keen to see how it works. I’m expecting snide comments and head-shaking from some other plotholders who aren’t in favour of these modern developments. I’m also nervous about the wind … we do get something close to gale force winds in spring and autumn and I’m rather worried that I’m going to go up to the allotment one morning to find it denuded of silky white webbing, and the allotment fence looking as if a giant Santa has collided with it!

Labels: allotment-birds, allotment-fruit, allotment-fruit-cage, allotment-problems

Allotment problems – dealing with the plot

And the plot may thicken, or flood, or have a lovely topsoil of hardcore and old asbestos tiles or be a kind of allotment thoroughfare over which everybody drives or walks, or it could turn out that the previous plotholder has grown a wonderful crop of onion rot, potato blight and carrot fly for many years!

It’s not easy to turn down a plot, especially if you’ve been on a waiting list for years and years, but what can you do if your heart sinks when you see the patch that’s up for offer? You might think there’s nothing to be done, but actually there’s quite a lot and over the next couple of weeks I’m going to devote some time to exploring how you can improve your plot offer, or negotiate it into something a little more like a vegetable des res.

This week – flooding plots!

These come in two types – the kind where the whole site floods and the kind where only your allotment and those nearby flood. If it’s the former, check the byelaws – allotment land is supposed to be ‘fit for purpose’ and if it floods every year your allotment association may be able to mount a complaint that leads to new land being assigned – that’s a long term process though.

If it’s only your plot and that of a few neighbours:

Get together to lay ground drainage and dig ponds – short lengths of pipe can be dug into the ground wherever there’s a slope so that they run the water off downhill and at the lowest point of the plot (hint, it’s where the most water gathers!) a pond will take most of the water off your land fast. A nice deep pond can be used for hand-watering in summer and if nothing else, you can enjoy growing waterlilies.

Lift solid paving – it’s amazing how much rain runoff happens because people have laid concrete, tarmac or paving slabs. Normally water takes 4 – 6 hours to soak the soil to subsoil level, at which point it is saturated and will start to flood – so that’s 4 – 6 hours of rain before flooding. But runoff happens within three or four minutes of rain falling on a non-porous surface, so if you calculate the area of paving slabs or solid paths you have, that much of your plot will start to flood after about five minutes – scary isn’t it? Of course that water will still soak into the soil, but it’s got up some speed by then and will tend to coast over the soil surface, eroding your topsoil and running as fast as it can towards the lowest point, where raindrops tend to hit and stick, and require a lot of water to fall fast to become runoff.

Raise your beds – even a few inches is enough in plots that are just a bit marshy, but up to a foot is necessary in really boggy areas. More than that is probably not going to be cost effective for you, although you might want to go to two feet, if you can afford the wood, the soil to fill them, and know that you’re going to stay on your plot for years to come.

Plant water-hungry plants – many crops are water hungry in summer, not so many in winter, when rain tends to be heaviest, so try to make your corner plants and hedges ones that will take up a lot of water: any bog plants will thrive, willows and elders take up a lot of water from the soil but remember that if your plot actually floods, it may not be safe to eat your produce, depending on where the floodwater has come from …

Labels: allotment-flooding, allotment-plots, allotment-problems