Welcome to our plot!

I'm Hazel, and in Nov 2006 my friend Jane and I took on a half plot at Hill Allotments, Sutton Coldfield - we want the satisfaction of growing and eating our own fruit and veg, and to improve our diet (and fitness!).

This is the story of what happened next...........

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Hill Allotment AGM 2011


Before putting a post together about the Hill Allotments AGM, I've needed to do a little technical jiggery pokery with the blog.

My blog background - of which I am rather fond - has stopped displaying, and investigations reveal that this is because the nice lady at delightfuldots where I had it from has decided that she now has better things to do than provide all and sundry with lovely blog backgrounds for free.

Then I spent an interminable amount of time going round and round in bloody circles trying to work out why my side bar had disappeared from the right hand side, appearing at the bottom of the blog page instead. Eventually I figured out the correct combination of words to use in the Blogger help site search box to reveal the way to fix this.

I will tackle the decision on what to use as a background another time, otherwise we'll have been here all evening with nothing to show for it.

So on to the AGM - it is always an excellent evening held in the clubhouse, and only the second occasion in the calender when the plotholders get together (the other being the Annual Show).

The business end romps along with reports on the Accounts, Health and Safety, Show Report and Secretary's report - and then we get to the nitty gritty issues like Site Access and Water Usage.

No one wants to see the increase in incidences of vandalism continue, or for the Council to take action against us on overuse of water, so breaches in the rules on gate-locking and water-profligacy have now become hanging offences, and don't say you weren't warned. Quite right too.

A final point before the fun bit of the cup presentations, photo competition and bun fight afterwards, was raised by Dr Bob, as 'green' a gardener as you will find on any site.

We've all had trouble with allium leaf miner (a bug which affects onions, leeks & shallots, causing the leaves to twist. The plants do sort of recover, but it ain't great - photo below courtesy of Lichfield Allotments).

There's no remedy, but Dr Bob suggests that all seventy-odd plotholders abstain from growing alliums for a period of - say - three years to see if we can eradicate the pest.

Reg-next-plot, a more traditional plotholder, can be heard spluttering into his beer at this point, and counters with the suggestion of using Armillatox to sterilise the soil, 'kills the lot, that does', at which point Dr Bob splutters into his beer, the Secretary points out that Armillatox is not licenced as a pesticide any more (cue Reg scowling) and - unsurprisingly - we don't come to any consensus on this issue.

The big picture of a secure site and sensible water use to keep our plots safe and our crops thriving is where we all agree - it's just some of the methodology of how to get there that we might differ on...

Takes all sorts though, eh?

5 comments:

  1. lol , lots of controversy then! snigger..... as for not growing leeks, nah! no can do! I use Environmesh over mine this year, worked a treat - I'm the envy of all the old fella's :) (well, my leeks are!)

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  2. Unfortunately Dr Bob is absolutely correct but you've accurately shown the 'problems' of allotments sites, and with 70 or so plotholders, there are probably 85 opinions.

    Good luck with your onions ......

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  3. I think for many crops, environmesh is an effective way forward, Trudi, (thinking of my poor carrot fly stricken carrots!)but at about 30 quids worth for enough for just one bed, it needs thinking about! There is also the faff factor of covering and uncovering the beds for weeding/picking.

    Ha! At least 85 opinions, Bilbo - and no hint of any sort of accord!

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  4. Would this be more economic

    http://www.gardening-naturally.com/acatalog/Enviromesh.html

    I used them ages ago and had v. good service. (OK they were having a sale and I couldn't resist and now have a rather large quantity of E. sitting in the shed waiting for me to get my veggie act together!)

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  5. Ha ha! Great minds, and all that, Bilbo - that was the web site that I had my prices from! Will look out for when they have a sale, I think!

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