During hot spells in summer, some areas in the UK will be low on water, and the water companies in the affected areas will impose a hosepipe ban. So what is a hosepipe ban then - what does it mean?

The legislation behind hosepipe bans was put in place in 1945, and is directed on domestic users, to stop them from watering their gardens or wash their cars using a hosepipe. The aim is to stop these high useage activities to preserve water supplies and take the pressure of the water companies during peak periods.

So how does this apply to us as allotmenteers? Well - some UK water companies (like Thames Water) - class allotment plots as private gardens, to which the ban applies, while other water companies don’t. Hence allotmenteers in those areas will remain unaffected.

With the law being over 60 years old - some confusion has risen as to what you can or can’t do during a ban. According to the current law….

You’re NOT allowed to:

• Use a hose to water your lawn or plants
• Use a hose to water your vegetable plot
• Use any watering system connected to the mains
• Use a hose to wash your car or van

What you CAN do is:

• Use a hose or jet wash to clean a patio area, driveway or your garden furniture
• Use a watering can
• Use a bucket to wash your car or van
• Fill a swimming pool or pond

Double standards? Could be! But until further notice these are the rules that applies.

So how can you check if your area is under a hosepipe ban? The local media will more than likely tell you. Failing that - you can check the website of your local water company - who will also tell you about how the rules apply to you.

Technorati Tags: Allotment, Watering, Hosepipe Ban

It usually happens at least once every year. Summer comes around - it hots up - and plants in gardens and on allotment plots across the country starts lacking water.

At the same time - in a lot of areas in the UK - water becomes a sparse commodity, and its use is restricted by so called hosepipe bans.

There’s not much we can do about that. After all - come rain or shine - there’s nothing we can do to control the weather! What we can do is prepare for what it may bring, and use the ressources at our disposal as wisely as possible.

So what can you, as an allotmenteer, do to prepare for droughts? There’s a number of things:

• Make sure you dig in ample amounts of organic material during autumn/winter to ensure that your soil structure improves. This will help to keep a good level of moisture in the ground during dry spells, and make the watering you do last longer.
• Get as many water butts as you can on your plot - and make sure you collect water from the roof of your shed(s) and greenhouse(s)
• Plan ahead - and select plants that will tolerate dry spells. Many allotmenteers are now trying their luck with produce usually grown in the mediterranian region - with succes.
• Take steps to guide your water to where it matters - the roots of you plants! More on this later….

I’m hoping you can see you’re not fighting a loosing battle - as we’ll be looking at more details regarding watering over the next few days.

Technorati Tags: Allotment, Watering, Water

In the next few days we’re going to look at the subject of watering an allotment plot. At the time of writing these articles this could seem like a bit of a joke, since it’s raining quite a bit, and has been on and off for about 2 weeks.

Never the less - things can change quickly - and the months of July and August can turn quite warm and sunny. When they do, it brings to the surface a few issues for gardeners in general, and allotmenteers in particular.

We’re going to be looking at the following issues:

• Drought and hosepipe bans
• Recycling water
• Using water wisely

There’s a lot of things that can be done, now and in coming seasons, to ensure that you can maintain a good plot that will continue to give you lots of pleasure and good yields of crops.

I hope you’ll enjoy the series - find inspiration - and tips on how to make the most of your plot, drought or not.

Technorati Tags: Allotment, Watering, Water

Wooshhh! And before you know it - another month is nearly gone and over! The latter part of this june has been as wet as they come, which is good in one sense - and not so good in another. Well - at least for me that is!

It’s a well publicised fact that I’ve not managed to do all the work I’d have liked to on my plot these last few months, and so have not got everything out of it that I wanted to. I still have to do some planting as I move along digging - which is down to me being a bit stubborn - and wanting the plot to be dug over fully this season.

The main reason for this is that I’m probably going to struggle on the time issue even more next year - due to an addition being made to our family this autumn - but also because I have seen the benefit of digging the plot on the parts where I’ve managed to get it done.

The good thing about the rain is - obviously - that the plants on my plot gets the water they need, without much effort on my part. That is without a doubt a very good thing. And it has given me a bit of time to do some research and write a few articles to be posted on this site in the next week or so on the subject of…. watering! How ironic!

Well - summer could still be on its way - it could turn very warm, and in certain areas of the UK this means that restrictions will be put in place on the use of water, so even though it’s raining cats and dogs at the moment, things could well change!

On my plot this weekend I managed to get a bit of weeding done, I got those of my potato plants that needed earthing up seen to, and I picked a small bucket of raspberries that another plotholder on the site let me help myself to. This is one of the things I love about allotmenteering - the social aspect of networking and helping eachother out.

Technorati Tags: Allotment, Digging, Rain

Hello fellow allotmenteers

Though I must admit that Allotmenteer.co.uk can be said to bear evidence to the contrary - I’m still around - and well!

It’s just that life is very busy for me at the moment - as I’m sure you can appreciate with me being a gardener. This, together with looking after my family and trying to keep up with my plot takes up most of my time, and I have to say that after a busy day - sitting in front of my computer isn’t a top priority.

That being said - I will be back and strong as soon as things calm down a bit - and I’m gathering loads of information that I’m going to put up on the site later on.

On my plot I’ve put in my squash, marrows, potatoes, and planted out my sweetcorn and tomatoes over the last couple of weeks. My main problem is that I didn’t get all the digging done I wanted to in spring - but I’m adamant that my whole plot gets dug over the same during this season - so I’m quite literally putting seeds and plants in as I dig along.

Puts a bit of extra pressure on myself - but if it’s worth doing (and it certainly is) - it’s worth doing properly! This has always been my philosophy, and I don’t see any need to change that just now.

So as soon as things calm down a bit - and I’m sure they will - I’ll be back with a vengeance. Gives you something to look forward to

Technorati Tags: Allotment, Digging, Vegetables

Another weekend is gone - and it has been a busy one! I’ve been digging, preparing seedbeds, tidying up and I’ve started planting out!

Thursday afternoon I had news of another delivery of manure to the site - and so I decided to make the most. Finally managed to finish digging over one part of my plot (way behind schedule), but with my job getting busier time has been sparse.

Now I quite litterally put in plants/seeds as soon as I’ve dug the soil over - so I’ve had to let go a bit of my planning. I’m sure I’ll be ok though. The important thing is to get things done at the moment - and I’ve still got plenty to do.

I put in my raspberry canes in their final position, as well as my redcurrant. The redcurrant and the early variety of raspberries will not be producing a crop this year - but I’ve got things to look forward to then.

Also I have planted out my sons sunflowers - 28 of them to be precise - after just under half of them was devoured by snails. I hate the little buggers!

Finally, I managed to get my strawberry plants planted out. The majority of them will not be producing a crop this year, as they are first year plants, and they have been in the pots for by far too long. Some of them has set flowers in the warm weather though, and one of them had tiny fruits on it, but still I’m not too optimistic.

In the coming week I hope to be able to but my potatoes in the ground (the first early ones at least), and as well I’m hoping to be able to put in my marrows and sweetcorn after they have been hardened off during the last 10 days.

As you can tell there’s enough to do before I’m jetting off on another family holiday on friday afternoon. I just hope the weather will treat me kindly - though the forecast doesn’t look too good.

Technorati Tags: Allotment, Raspberries, Strawberries

While I’m a firm believer in living life today, here and now, I think it can be a healthy excersise to stop for a minute and look back at what you have achieved.

It gives you chance to celebrate your victories, learn from your mistakes, and more importantly plan what steps you want to take in the future.

This morning I have spent a bit of time looking at this site - and reflect on where it has come from - while trying to think of where I would like to take it.

Let me just say that I’m proud to be the owner of this site! I put it online in february this year - and considering the effort I have put into the site - it has performed very well indeed. It has consistently more than doubled its number of visitors every month, to about 300 unique visitors this month, and this is without doing any marketing at all what so ever.

I’m not going to rest on the laurels though. As long as there are allotment plotholders out there, with internet access, who doesn’t know about the site, there’s a job to do

Also - I would like to interact more with you - my visitors. While the site is mostly build around what is happening on my own plot, and me sharing things I’ve learnt in my short career as an allotmenteer, there’s so much more happening on plots across the country.

My intention is to build an online community for allotment plotholders, and people with similar interest, which means I would like to hear from you and have you sharing your experiences and points of view with other users of the site. The site already offers this functionality - and if you would like to take part - why not register and post a comment to this post and/or another post where you feel I’m missing something? Also - I’m open to any ideas as to how you think I can improve the site - just leave a comment.

Technorati Tags: Allotment, Allotmenteer, Community

What a week! Back into the daily grind? You bet! As you might guess, being a gardener, this time of the year is quite busy for me on and off the plot - yet I managed to get a good bit done. Not as much as I wanted to - but then - is that ever going to happen?

Started my saturday digging! I had the equivalent of 40 binbags of grass-cuttings - from the previous day in work - that I didn’t manage to get to the skip in time before they closed. Ah well - it will do for not having any other manure on the site until the end of the coming week.

I’m nowhere near done digging my plot over, like I intended to do, but I think I have enough space to put in the plants that I’m growing this year.

Once the digging was done, I went to see my college tutor, and check on the progress of the plants that I have growing in their greenhouse. They are coming on very nicely! The marrows and the sweetcorn has now been moved from the greenhouses to a polytunnel for hardening off, and should be ready for planting out in a weeks time.

I then moved my wormery from my back garden to my allotment. The main reason for this is that my son and his mates have a very hard time leaving the worms alone (!) - and then I have a wast amount of food for them on my plot anyway. Or so I thought! I found out that a lot of the bags of leaves that I gathered last year - and was hoping to use for worm composting this summer - has been home to lots of slugs and snails! They are now being dug in!

All in all a quite busy day - so today sunday I’m going to rest - and stay away from the plot! Should be interesting to see how I’ll manage….

Technorati Tags: Allotment, Digging, Wormery

Our little family break is over - time to get stuck in with the daily routine again - until I go away for another holiday in 3 weeks

You could be forgiven for thinking that I’m doing nothing but going on holiday. I wish! But then life would get boring - and my plot would end up overgrown! We can’t have that now - can we?

Well - as you would expect - things has kept on happening in spite of me being away. First thing is - the last bit of plants I ordered from Dobies (my soft fruit bushes) had arrived. Great! Although I’ve known for the bestpart of a month that they would arrive sooner or later, I’ve been to busy to really prepare for them, so they are now temporarily planted in one corner of my plot.

Back on my plot yesterday afternoon - and delighted to see that I’ve had a new neighbour! Last year his plot was completely overgrown with thistles that shed truckloads of seeds on my plot. Not this year they won’t! Had a small chat over the fence - welcoming him on site. He’s a great guy! A good bit of his plot is cleared and dug over already, though he’s only been on for just over a week, and it looks great. He’s trying to do things organically as well.

While we’re still waiting for some more manure to be delivered to our site, I had a chance to do some more clearing up. Finished clearing a space behind my derelict greenhouse, where the former plotholder put down some timber that has played host to more than a few bugs, slugs and snails. Not anymore!

A well I managed to start preparing seedbeds in the soil I’ve dug over in winter. First impression - my hard work has paid off! I hope I’ll have the crops to prove that later in the year as well.

All in all a good and productive afternoon on my plot. Hopefully I’ll get quite a few more of them in the next few weeks!

Technorati Tags: Holiday, Dobies, Allotment

Wow - the past week has passed by at a 100 mph - and I’ve been ridiculously busy, so there has been no time to make updates here on allotmenteer.co.uk.

First of all things are starting to get busy in my job as a gardener - since everything starts growing now - and demand for our services increase dramatically. Side effect - not much time for my plot either!

Secondly I’ve been down with a bug yesterday, saturday, which is normally the day I get to spend getting things done on my plot. This means that there’s not that much to report really!

Sunday morning - and I found a bit of time to pass on a few bits and pieces anyway .

On thursday I was back in college and had a look at the plants I’ve got going in their greenhouses. I’m absolutely amazed at how fast they have grown. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures - but the sweetcorn that I planted 2 weeks ago is now 10cm tall and are beginning to set their first set of leaves. Also the marrows are doing quite nicely. Only just breaking through the soil last week - they’re now small plug-plants - ready to be hardened off and planted out on my plot next weekend!

Yesterday I took my son to the allotment just for him to see the progress of his sunflowers that we planted a couple of weeks ago, and to give all the plants up there a good watering. He has got 40+ Russian Giant well on their way - ready to be planted out next week as well I think. We’ll than plant some more of his seeds - to get a succession of flowers.

The following week I’ll be away on a family holiday - so nothing new will be posted until saturday. Should be good to spend a bit of time relaxing, while meeting loads of new people and having fun with the family.

Technorati Tags: Holiday, Sunflower, Allotment