Allotments 4 All

I'm very pleased that all the UK parcels have arrived on schedule and have brought such delight.

Thank you very much to everyone for your efforts and for furthering the very worthy cause of seed-saving, diversity and preservation of varieties.

It has been raised that the number of adverts on A4A is annoying and whether it's worth relocating the seed circle to avoid them.

While there was quite a lot of traffic on A4A, it felt important to be open to a wider number of people to join the circle. Now that the seed circle is almost the only activity on A4A that reason for staying is much less strong.

The only other forum that I know of which could provide a home is Growing Food Saving Seeds. This forum, if you don't know it, has been a source of great inspiration to me in the past and is full of interesting discussions and information, but has also been inactive for some time. However, crucially it's ad-free.

Please could you consider whether you think that making a move would be a good idea. I would hate to lose people because of a relocation but it seems that we have a committed and quite stable membership. It would be good to know whether you find the adverts annoying. I think it might partly be affected by what kind of device you're using as to how easy they are to navigate round.Also I think some people have ad-blockers. Advice about those might also be helpful. But if, like me, you access the seed circle on laptop, tablet and phone, that might not be practical. But thoughts please .........

Happy day! What a remarkable parcel this year. I'm so delighted to see some surprises in there. Thank you all so very much for your excellent contributions and for making this time of year extra special. Jan, as always, special thanks to you for the effort expended in organising this annual treat.

Season's Greetings!

The seeds have arrived! Thanks to everyone who participated and Jan for organising. I'm delighted to spot a few varieties that I already had on my  wish list. Very exciting!

My seeds have arrived too! Thank you so much everyone for another fabulous swap and Jan for all your hard work behind the scenes. 

It's arrived! I will be filling my advent calendar!! Taking my time to enjoy ,research and drool. I will over Christmas post some notes on my contribution.
Huge thank you to JanG for making this possible and everyone else for being so generous.
Wishing you all the very best for the coming season.

That is indeed a brilliant collection and just look at Markfield Rover's exquisit seed envelopes!  Oh WoW, just WoW!  Thank you Jan for the sneaky peek!

I'm pleased to say all the parcels except Ruud's older seeds have now arrived. I hope to get them in the post very quickly now. Three of you are interested in experimenting with some of the older seeds but as that parcel seems stuck with Royal Mail still I think it's best if I despatch the main seed circle seeds as they are.

It's a phenomenal collection of seeds yet again. I haven't counted them yet but the photo shows what each person will get. This in fact is my share out, roughly grouped by type, and of course each person's will be different as I hope I've managed not to give anyone their own seeds back again! But I'm sure you'll agree that it's a brilliant collection. It includes huge numbers of French beans and tomatoes with perhaps not as many peas as one might expect. There are also more ornamentals than we've had in the past, a growing field for us, and, as well as good numbers of lettuce and peppers, there are some interesting one-offs such as okra, scorzonera, amaranth grain, beetroot, mangle and water melon. So much to look forward to!

Still well before the major Christmas rush Jan.  Let's hope both packages turn up promptly.  Thank you for keeping us informed. 

I'm sorry about the delay in despatching seed circle seeds to everyone. The last package was due to arrive today but Royal Mail say they were 'unable to attempt delivery' which is disappointing. Fingers crossed for Monday.

In addition Ruud's older seeds have been in the care of Royal Mail since Monday which is a bit worrying. At least his main package is safely here and has been shared out.

All being well, I hope to send off the impressive selection of seed circle seeds early next week with or without the seeds requested by some of you from the older selection.

👍 Email sent.