Any Swindon Allotment holders about

[taurus]

I'm on the Dawlish site, Park North.  We have 3 water tanks which are turned off during the winter.  Parking/notice board, lockable gates and a site rep.  You can put a shed/greenhouse on your plot.  Manure not supplied, but there is plenty available if you can collect yourself fron stables around the area.
The council are suppose to maintain vacant plots and road and I understand the work is long overdue looking at the condition of the road (weeds)and vacant plots.  Unfortunatly, the allotments are at the bottom of the parks department  'to do' list is my conclusion.  There are 4 plots on the site that are still not worked due to people taking them on and then not turning up.  That is a fifth of the plots on site  And I no that Emma Burton is looking to speed up evictions of those that do this.  These plots could have been let several times over by the site rep as she is approached on a regular basis.  When sites where sold several years ago we where promised that the money would be used to up grade the sites left.  To be fair some sites have had work done, its the quaility of the work that has left a lot to be dissiured.

[vickibluemountain]

Hello!
After a very long wait, I am apparently due to get an allotment at the Crowdy's Hill site this year - hooray! Does anyone know when they are planning to open the site or how it's progressing? I'm keen to get started!
Vicki

[chriscross1966]

Hello!
After a very long wait, I am apparently due to get an allotment at the Crowdy's Hill site this year - hooray! Does anyone know when they are planning to open the site or how it's progressing? I'm keen to get started!
Vicki

I've just been given a plot on this site (it's a rum place to find BTW) and having picked up the key at the one-stop-shop council thingy went  up tonight to have a look... the plots are very small (about a quarter what I have in Oxford I'd guess) so this will be my last year for ridiculous acreage of squash, but the soil isn 't too bad, got some bits of broken brick in  it but this is swindon and the entire place used to be a brickyard.....best of all, my plot has no bindweed that I can see... a bit of grass, not all of which is couch, a lot of plantains some thistles and this thing that's a bit like a thistle, but no bindweed..... hurrah!... Will get the fork into it this weekjend and get some peppers, chillis, caulis and cabbages in, I've started off some more beetroot, might well try and transplant some gherkins cos they're going mad in the bed at home.....

chrisc

[taurus]

Hi Chriscross,
                    Congratulations !! 
Does the price reflect the size compared with your last allotment?  Where abouts is Crowdys hill ?  Perhaps you will get the chance of a 2nd plot. When they see how hard you work on this one.  It sounds in a lot better state than I got mine !! shoulder high in weeds and I made the worst mistake and cut it down then rotovated !! ::)The one thing I'm good at is telling people what not to do has I'e made most of the mistakes as there was no one to guide me.  Anyway enjoy.
                                     Regards Taurus

[Digeroo]

Welcome to A4A vickibluemountain congratulation on getting your allotment.  I do not know what Swindon has been doing but I have been keeping an eye on this site for some time and it was all nicely rotovated in April.  There must have been some delay and so it has had three months of weed growing.  The weeds have been well mixed up and stirred round already.  Such a pity since it could have been cleaned up by a nice crop of spuds by now.

I think the site was a school playing field.   The school has moved elsewhere. 

[chriscross1966]

THe site was part of a much larger original allotment set that is now part of the CH liesure gardens.... apparently it's a statutory site so the council got in trouble for closing it.....THe school up there is a Special Needs one and they've got a sort of animal sectiopni backing onto the plots.... will have to see if I can get some chicken and llama pooh for the site... was talking to a parent who hepls on the chicken rota through the summer and they seemed to think it woudln't be hard to arrange....

Anyway, I'm on plot 14 now and have started meetiong the other folks there.... bit shocked to fins I'm one of the more experienced growers there, all the folks I've met so far apart from Brian the dahlia and crysanthemum growing vintage horticultural machinery fiend (he has 125 assorted rotavators, powered scythes, two-wheeled tractors etc) have been new to veg growing.... Some of them were getting Brian in to plough their plots up with a classic old British Anzani Iron Horse with a single share plough fitted to it followed by what I think was a Norlene rotavator (like a Merry Tiller basically).... great to watch but given what i've been digging out the last thing I want through there b efore I've dug it over is a mechanical rotavator..... there's enough couch to make that impractical, though there's very little bindweed..... I've got a bunch of plants in and dug over about a quarter of my plot, and have agreed with the neighbours one side that we'll use a path as our boundary, that way a 2' wide path only costs us a foot each of growing space.... useful when you consider the plots are only 20 metres by 6 wide........

THe bit I've put 27 assorted peppers, aubergines and chillis in was about 1.8 metres wide but took a thousand litre bag of horse manureto make it even start to look like it might have some heart to it.... we've got about 8" of topsoil over a hard clay pan, so looks like I'll be doing some shuttling in the van to get a lot of horse manure (the stables will be happy) and compost in there... want to get some carrots sown, probably shift some more half-hardy stuff out of the polytunnel to free up some growing space and try and prep the ground to recieve beetroots once they hatch in their modules.... might look at putting the overwintering onions in there too, try and get some field beans into a chunk of it too..... ome Catawissa and welsh onions, get soome soil prepped for the garlics too.....

chrisc