Allotments 4 All
Allotment Stuff => Allotment Movement => Topic started by: miniroots on November 30, 2006, 07:56:36
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I had my first experience of collected leaf mould in bin liners last night...
I felt a bit furtive, and picked a nice quiet street with not too much vehicle or pedestrian traffic.
I got some funny looks from a man returning home, before he went in the house - like he'd like to phone the police, but as far as he knew taking leaves wasn't against the law...
It occurred to me that there are going to be a number of allotment-related activities I will have to hide from my friends, if I don't want them to phone an ambulance...
Are there any more I should prepare for?
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see to wee or not to wee, get a bucket and some curtains if doing on the plot !! ;D ;D
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Taking rubbish out of skips is one to watch out for! Best done under cover of darkness ;D
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Rummaging in general and clutching bits of "stuff that may come in handy in a recycling sort of way". You've passed stage 2 when you start doing it in your work clothes ( in my case suit & heels) because the allotmentitis has spilled over into your 'other' life.
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ray has this habit of seeing wood, saying it would come in handy !!, then wondering if he can fit it in our car, a micra!!
we've got loads of wood at the plot but he can't bear it going to waste, just like me and leaves etc. :-\
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obsessing about wooden pallets and how to get them! I've been walking past a skip with 2 on the top for ages, plucking up the courage to knock on the door and ask if I can have them, but the skip disappeared over the weekend and I missed my opportunity. however, all is not lost as my boss cycles past a printers every day and they had a big pile of them in their yard, with a "free to a good home" sign on them...
and now they're mine, all mine!!!!!!!
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while we're on the subject...
this 'upturned plastic bottles on bamboo canes' thing - I'm presuming helps to keep birds away?
my site looked like something out of lord of the flies when I first got my plot.
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its also a good way to stop you poking your eye out on the cane. a very real danger.
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its also a good way to stop you poking your eye out on the cane. a very real danger.
Those little Actimel bottles are perfect :).
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Upturned plastic bottles on canes do help to keep birds away - AND protect your eyes (but obviously not the ones on top of runner bean canes unless you're 7ft tall ;D )
I'm a 'tinfoil' collector though ... those little tinfoil trays with cat-food in, take-away cartons, bits of shiny stuff from food packaging in general. I string it all up so it rattles together and frightens the birdies off me peas ;D
In spring my allotment looks like Santa's Grotto!
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You know when your bath toys get all icky acky inside? Well a family of frogs have now left the bathroom and are at the lotty waiting to have canes shoved up their holes. :o They are soon to be joined by a plastic helicopter named Harold and a pink rubber ducky. 8)
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And these are YOUR bath toys Heldi ??!!?? ;D
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trixibelle, you sound like a magpie, heldi, that sounds like toy abuse to me, very colourful way to stop poking your eyes out, you sound like the naughty boy next door to woody !! :)
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;D I'm with Ray with the wood, that will come in handy I say, OH just shaking her head asking what do you need that for, I reply I'll think of something. Done the leaves got the looks and that was in the park, haven't done the skips yet but won't be long ,taking on board the tinfoil idea Trixie, now the council dont want them in the recycle bins I will have to do my bit to keep them out of landfills. :) ;) :D ;D :-*
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Those little Actimel bottles are perfect :).
I thought that too, it was Yakult bottles I used but they just about lasted a couple of months and then the plastic started to break up very suddenly, and bits flew about all over the allotment, I'm still finding them!
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I usually use 2 ltr pop bottles, cut the top 6" off, upside down next to plants to water, without the lids, on top of canes to stop nasty accidents, with the lids, use the bottom pieces for slug traps or plant saucers, also use them as mini cloches over early lettuce, seems to keep the slugs off those precious early lettuce crops :D
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It occurred to me that there are going to be a number of allotment-related activities I will have to hide from my friends
How about your first crop of jerusalem artichokes, You won't be able to hide that from your friends, unless you take up playing the trombone ;D
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The plastic bottles and artichokes are a must! What wouldn't I give for a sign like that about pallets!
;D
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You know when your bath toys get all icky acky inside? Well a family of frogs have now left the bathroom and are at the lotty waiting to have canes shoved up their holes. :o They are soon to be joined by a plastic helicopter named Harold and a pink rubber ducky.
Heidi, what you're doing is wrong.
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Yes it is you wicked girl. I bet the submarine stays ;)
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Love that picture of all of Heldis bath toys now at the allotment, but how scarey for the birds and the resident frogs! ;D Great idea though! One of our lottie neighbours used coloured balls this year on top of his canes, and it just looked like a Diurmud Gavin installation. When we first got an allotment it was indeed pallets that we were obsessed with. It was a major red letter day whenever we got one from a skip. We once had 17 pallets on our drive which really confused the neighbours. :D busy_lizzie
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It's canes of any kind here. Never seem to have enough.Old raspberry canes, willow withies (get them when a very kind person from the local Nat. Hist. Soc. cuts them down on the common and leaves them for folk to help themselves), or any other that I can find. I found some little 'windmill' thingies from alice bands (remember the things on springs that bobbed about when you moved your head?) Had a boxfull in the attic and put them on cane ends. Very colourful and seemed to scare the birdies with their whirring. ;D
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I know it's wrong...but it feels sooo good :o ;D
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you'll go blind you know. 8).
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I found a stash of old tennis balls that had lost their bounce. So our lottie was covered in fluorescent balls...
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;D ;D Seen that tennis ball idea on lottie programme (can't remember what its called) they are put on canes then net on top balls stop net ripping is that right Barnowl ( must get some balls ). :-X :-*
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Yes - I did it both to hold netting up and to stop us poking our eyes out on the canes. It amused the neighbours.
I also hoped the colour, a particularly unpleasant fluorescent green, would be a deterrent. They lost their glow after a few months - probably all sorts of noxious dye has trickled into my beds and I've lost my organic status :-\
But I have found some jumbo metal free clothes pegs which are also fluorescent (pinks yellow and greens) to hold netting on to canes, so all is not lost. :)
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Oh it's so nice to know I'm not alone...
My secrets are safe with yous all, aren't they? It's so therapeutic to confess...
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I have raided skips and anything in the house to be thrown I check to see if I can use down lottie.
But OH worries when we go visiting and they say they are throwing something out my eyes light up yep I see it down lottie and get it.
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the other thing is going for a meal atsomeone you don't know very well, they're THROWING veg peelings in the bin, I want to shout at them :-X
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I have a few of those........have to admit to raiding a skip in broad daylight in my work clothes. but it was blue pipe, metres and metres of it, but the workman had been very thoughtless and it had been mangled up with all sorts of other building rubbish. In the course of my struggles, I managed to get grey undercoat over my trousers (did have another meeting to go to ((perhaps someone should call the ambulance?)) so there I was sloshing bottled water all over my legs in a layby.........
Saw some lovely piles of leaves coming back from the dry cleaners, but sadly didn't have any bags in the car - note to self, must keep a stock of black sacks in the car
Also got the pallet thingy sussed. Walked into the local car parts place - in my lottie clothes - and asked if I could take some of their pallets. Now have an open invitation to help myself, but no-one has ever asked why I want them, so perhaps it is normal after all????
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Yep, whenever I've been on pallet scrounge,no-one has queried what I want them for, but been glad for me to take them.
Found a skip with some industrial strength black bags in whilst on a dog walk recently.and sent BW back with the car to get them. Sliced them open and used them for cover today. I just love skips....... ;D
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Our recycling / skip centre does not allow you to take anything out...... hypocrits really as when you go late - you see them taknig stuff out >:(
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Upturned plastic bottles on canes do help to keep birds away
If you cut three 1" slits down the length of empty bottles (leaving the flap hinged on the same edge for each slit) then the wind gets in them and turns them around. The birds don't seem to stick around with the noise.
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Our crazy habit is cd discs they are all over the place suposed to be to frighten the pigeons but it dosent seem to work they are that many of them i think they treat it as there disco.
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my work colleagues get a strange look on their faces when I start to make paper pots in the office ... OH has caught onto the 'it'll be useful at the lottie' bug and brought me home a huge tin bath last week :o
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I've read this thread thinking how much I identify with all the stories here. Is it because we all have allotments that we think like this, or do we have allotments because we are like this?
One of my most satisfying feelings is when you've stored some apparently useless odd thing for ages thinking "that will come in useful one day", and then that day does come and you dive into wherever you stored it and emerge yelling triumphantly.
Then you feel totally justified in having had it fall out of the shed every time you reached into the back, or tripping over it somewhere, or having had it fall out of cupboards onto your head, probably with some long suffering OH moaning about it.
It's this attitude of making full use of things which will save the world, and I think its fundamental to what allotments are all about. I hope my kids grow up appreciating that and don't think saving the planet is all about driving electric cars and building wind farms.
Waste not, want not......
Matt
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Second that mate. :D :D :D
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My garden shed, lottie and attic are all full of stuff like that...... for that just in case factor ::)
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Our recycling / skip centre does not allow you to take anything out...... hypocrits really as when you go late - you see them taknig stuff out >:(
Neither does ours but I have learned to go up to a workman and ask how much they want for whatever. I am always on the lookout for water storage.
I've gained a waterbutt for a quid and an old 25 gall water tank for 80p (cos it was all I had on me!). OK the tank took a further fiver for waterproof and UVproof glue to patch up the pipe hole, and the butt cost me a tenner for a lid, but still way less than buying them new.
moonbells
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I went to a friend's for dinner the other night - she sent me home with a carrier bag of kitchen waste...
Interesting variation on the "piece of cake wrapped up in a napkin"?
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Mini I hope you haven't been rooting around in her dustbins. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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A fetish for yoghurt pots!! I can´t see one layin around, they have to be cleaned and filled with compo and a seed!!!!
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it's dark now, so I'm off next door to nick... er... "give a new lease of life" to some pallets and other bits of wood I spy....
Don't tell OH... ::) ;D
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You know when your bath toys get all icky acky inside? Well a family of frogs have now left the bathroom and are at the lotty waiting to have canes shoved up their holes. :o
All the full cans of Stella in a hole under the shed soon become empty cans on canes.
Like you say its a shame to throw anything away that may be shiny and possibly useful. I'm the only one on our lotty with Stella Artois bird scarer's/ eye pokey-out preventors. I'll let you know if it catches on.
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Give us a shout when you get some more stella in Dave and I'll come round and help you empty them ;) , you can never have too many anti-eye pocky out thingies, we're so helpful on this forum and before anyone else volunteers their services threes a crowd. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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The old can a beer trick on canes...earwigs love to move into them..... done that got the teeshirt :-[
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but if the earwigs "bug" you you do know where they are!
;D
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All those large mineral water-bubbles that we have at work made very cosy homes for my squash and courgette plants. ;) ;)
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All those large mineral water-bubbles that we have at work made very cosy homes for my squash and courgette plants. ;) ;)
Ooh ooh ooh - I passed one yesterday at the side of the road - I may just have to recycle it today!
Louise
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My best thing is my 10 inch suspended disco glitterball which throws hundreds of tiny lights over the plot on sunny days, scaring pigeons away. Sometimes when I'm listening to the radio and a funky track comes on its hard not to break into a John Travolta dance while wearing my manky boiler suit and wellies.
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Just collected 32 sacks of woodchip from a pile at the side of the road. Will be great for the paths between my raised beds. Just couldnt leave it there ;D ;D ;D
cj :)
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You were only doing your duty Caroline. ;D ;D ;D
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I have permission (at last...I used to do it secretly at night) to help myself from a mountain of woodchips and short planks of waste wood from a nearby factory. I stagger in and out of their gate with sacks and trolleyloads of the stuff, and no-one ever asks what I am doing and why. Another large local company lets me take cardboard from their giant cardboard skip, and again, either no-one comments, or one particular man actually helps by jumping into the skip and hurling it out. And I help myself to newspaper from recycling bins.
The cardboard and paper make paths across the rough grass of my new allotment (gradually digging it out of a field), and are spread over future beds to discourage the weeds while I dig, the woodchips cover the paths, and the planks hold the woodchips in, and are laid out as further discouragement of weeds.
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I have permission (at last...I used to do it secretly at night
I bet it was much more fun when it was 'illegal' ;D ;D ;D
cj :)
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I have permission (at last...I used to do it secretly at night
I bet it was much more fun when it was 'illegal' ;D ;D ;D
cj :)
Did you wear a black balaclava and boot polish your face!!?? ;D ;D
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I used to wheel my bicycle through a gap in their fence, trying to look casual, and wheel it out again loaded with planks and sacks of woodchips feeling very guilty and awkward, especially when I met people I knew. I am rather happier with the new arrangement! I park my car outside their gate and wheel wood and chips out to it on a sack trolley until it is full, so it's more practical, too.
I too am tempted to take friends' vegetable peelings home; I help my London daughter with her garden, and bring home sacks of vegetation, and I think I am planning to ask her to save her peelings for me now that I visit her once a week (new baby). I've just bought a Green Cone, and am keen to feed it (£10, subsidised by local council).
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Definitely more fun the SAS way, dodging search lights, hiding in the shadows from security guards, throwing drugged meat to the guard dogs, you must miss it.
;D ;D ;D
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What a brilliant image, I wish I matched it.
More bag lady than SAS, sadly. Though I did work in Middle East with SAS guides. Happy days. Hideous stories they told about their training.
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This is without a doubt the best posting I have read yet on this site,and I thought I was the only Womble out there, I am trying to picture us all creeping around in the night, Wouldnt this make areally super sitcom show. Well done to all you posters I have had a really sad day and I am laughing now On a more serious not why do folks think we are nuts, I think they are for thinking it is junk in the first place, this is treasure. Anyone remember when your Mum or Dad sent you out with a spade and a bucket to follow the coal mans horse around, I do !! XX Jeannine
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you all make me feel lazy i get my woodchips, manure and compost delivered free and share with 60 other people ;D
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I go for walks up on my local common land mountain. The fly tipping there is terrible. Everything you can imagine is tipped there. I got loads of planks of wood from there a few weeks ago. I am going back for more this week,and hoping to get a window or 2 to make some cold frames. If it is still there, I am going to get a roll of garden hose too (couldnt carry it all back to the car last time).
Even though it is great for scavenging, it really annoys me. There is broken glass amongst the grass where the sheep graze, often there are lame sheep around. Asbestos sheets are everywhere too. A beautiful area is being ruined.
Anyway, enough ranting!
cj :)
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hello all, collect all the free CD's you get from the newspapers, tie onto canes with long string so they can twist and turn. Looks wonderful in the sunlight and pidgeons, seagulls hate them! :o
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I work in a school on a large housing estate, in my job I do a lot of home visits and all the houses are currently having kitchen and bathroom refurbishing along with double glazing.
I am very close to stopping the car in my business suit and asking the workmen if I can have some old baths and windows.
XX Jeannine
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Go for it Jeannine! You know you want to ;)
cj :)
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How many baths do you think I can get in a Rover, sun roof open of course. 1 in and 1 on top. XX Jeannine
PS Reminder to get more bungy cords
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Try and beat the world record for baths in a rover Jeannine. ;D ;D ;D
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I don't think I dare, I really want to but I might lose some street cred in the neighbourhood, I think they think I am nuts already but driving all day with bath on the top of the car...............
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In business suit of course. The imagination is working overtime here Jeannine. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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Turn it upside down paint it black and tell them it one of them luggage/suitcase carrying thingys. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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Put it the right way up, put the plug in, fill with water. Hey presto, a car jaccuzzi ;D
Just drive very slowly around corners if there is someone using it :o
cj :)
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Oooh, just thought, you could tape the end of a garden hose to the bottom inside, put the other end of the hose in through the car window. You could blow into it as you drive along, and it would be as good as any you'd buy from the shops ;D ;D ;D
cj :)
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(http://www.websmileys.com/sm/happy/516.gif)
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You are too much, all this laughing, it can't be good ,
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Seriously now, if I made a set of wheels I could fasten one on and they would think it is a trailer,if I drove around with it every day for a week they would get used to it, then I could pick up all sorts of stuff. If I painted it red to match my car, no probs.
I think I need to buy a pick up
XX Jeannine
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I would love a pick-up, J. I am forever being moaned at about the state of my car. If I had a pick-up I could be as messy as I liked. Hmmmm, maybe I'll go looking for a bath on wheels and a soldering iron......it can't be that difficult to incorporate the two. ;D
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Hmmmm, maybe I'll go looking for a bath on wheels and a soldering iron..
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Best to make sure it isnt a plastic bath then ;D
cj
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OMG you are all as mad as me............... didn't think anyone could be that
mad!!!!!!!!!
To me, everything has other possibilities. My best mate always brings a carrier bag full of 'treasure' for me when she calls in. What more can you want from a friend???? ;D
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I waded into the sea about three years ago in almost waist high water to get one of those very bright blue strong oblong plastic boxes that they pack fish in.It had fallen off a boat. Well I wasn't going to lost it was I. It is great for growing salad green in. I have three now. XX Jeannine
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Did you go swimming for all three? :o
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And another thought, if youv'e found a suitable bath, you could go sailing on the high seas looking for fish crates...........therefore staying relatively dry. ;D
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No Maggie, I actually got the other two at an auction full of interesting gardening junk...treasure, and they all say Property of Hull Fish Traders Association or something similar on them, so I am not sure if they are legally mine !! XX Jeannine
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A gardening auction....that sounds great fun and a really good idea.Off to think about who I can suggest it to......... ;)
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I GOT A BATH, I GOT A BATH..............I got one, and I din't have to ask anyone, we found it.
Driving along today with John on a very busy dual carriageway that runs alongside a very posh neighbourhood on the ring road we passed a bath, honest, I am not kidding. A fly tipped bath on the neat grass verge.
Despite many protests,and in broad daylight, and at peak time, I managed to persuade John to turn around at the next roundabout and go back, again to a roundabout, and back to the bath.
Lorries flying past, back seats down, bungy cords missing, but he got it in and we moved to a safer bit to tie it down with the covers of the school booster seats.
My darling quiet man, very embarrassed and wishing a hole would appear to save him, got it in the car, with much cheering from me I might add, and we got it to the lottie. He promptly hid it, saying after all the trouble he didn't want it nicked.
So, a fibre glass job, complete with a framework of legs will be boxed in for my precious Mokem carrotts. It even has the waste pipe from the plug hole, drainage for the crop of course and I could plug it at the end of the pipe in dry weather.
It has been a glorious day.
2 new books from Amazon, 2 new push hoes and two tomato plants all came in the mail today
We got rhubarb for crumble, plus asparagus, radishes, lettuce, the first real cucumber and new poatoes from the lottie today , and on the way home I got me a bath.
Oh life is good today .
XXX Jeannine...... singing as she signs off
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;D ;D ;D
I wish I could've seen john's face, it's normally ray who does all the 'daft' things, we took 4 trips to get tyres to the plot that had been dumped at the side of the road, 6 at a time, in a micra..mind you, that was a few yeas ago, can't see him doing it now, his back'd go ;D
made up for you :)
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I promised I wouldn't tell, but it wasn't a real promise, I had my fingers crossed behind my back!! Tomorrow I will get a picture of me in my bath at the lottie, weather allowing of course XX Jeannine
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in your sou' wester and wellies, if the weather forecast is to be believed ;D
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That is a very funny story Jeannine, and I cannot wait for the photo. ;D ;D
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I get strange looks and remarks from people I know when I ask them to save me all their cardboard toilet rolls tubes (Minus the toilet paper) they are great for starting plants off in. just crumple one end over to form a cup type thing.
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A picture of John in the bath scrubbing his back would be a classic. :o :-[ :P ::) ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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John said no....reason....he doesn't want to be responsible for women going crazy at the sight of his bod.
I have no illusions so I will try to remember the camera tomorrow. XX Jeannine
PS, My John is staring to get very intersted in A4A, he keeps reading the posts!!
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hiya, john :)
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Well if you can't beat them join them as the saying goes
John
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Hello John. welcome on board!
cj :)
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Oooooh we know stuff about you Johno ;D (only nice stuff of course ;D)
Nice to meet if only in cyberspace.
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Now you behave yourself and if not I can be bribed XX Jeannine
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Well the long awaited me in the bath picture....NOT XX Jeannine
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ray wants one to fill with water, I think it'll make an excellent carrot bed :)
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So many pics from you tonight Jeannine. You are a regular david Bailey!! ;)
cj :)
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Ha, Jeannine I had thought you'd be in the bath complete with plastic duck, loofa, bubbles and bath hat at least, (and a cozzie to uphold your modesty).
It looks a splendid bath just the same. ;D
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A cozzie!! If I had the courage to sit in a bath in the middle of a lottie I wouldn't wear a cossie...just a lot of bubbles.
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Just be pretty quick, before all the bubbles pop ;D
cj :)
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I know I am going to regret asking this but what can I use an old toilet bowl for,there is one in the garden of an abandoned house I pass by each day.
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There is a very smart one on a plot near me. When I am a bit more organised I will try to post you a pic. ( Might take a week or two)
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Peas of course.
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What about the biggest aspidestra in the world ;)
cj :)
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A woman has two on our site at the moment theres only WEEEEds in it. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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Or you could grow SHITake mushrooms. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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Someone stole the toilet pan from our local police station. The police spokesman says they are pessimistic about finding the thief. At the moment they have nothing to go on.
Boom, boom!
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
cj :)
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A big hole has been left by the theft of the local police station toilet. The police are looking into it.
;D ;D ;D
cj :)
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Oh why did I even ask ...I think I will stick to what I know and grow LOOfahs,then I can use them in the bath
XX Jeannine
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And will that be the bath on the lottie? ;D
cj :)
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Of course. Actually we have decided to pretty up the front bit.
The shed stands about 6 feet from the road.
The bath is going to placed to the right of the door, with a shower fitting installed on the wall of the shed.We will grow in the bath and at one end we will plant something that will climb up onto the shower.
At the other side we will put the toilet on the ground, with the attached cistern,we will plant in the bowl and in the cistern(with no lid) and to the left John said he is going to attach a small wallhanging sink for growing something tailing in.
I just have to pluck up the courage to nick the toilet
XX
PS Did anyone else notice the large leather boots at Barnsdale that had flowers in them. I once did this with John's boots when he was in the RAF.
I have an old pair somewhere so am going to have another go
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get another one and put a table in the middle and have your lunch on the lottie
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Bringing this one to the top as I don't know how to put it in a post XX Jeannine
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What, Lavvies or are we moving on?