contributing to a book about allotments

I?m part of a team working on a book called ?101 Problems Managing and Growing On Your Allotment And How To Solve Them? and I was wondering whether anyone on this forum would like to contribute.

Ideally, I?m looking for practical advice on how to overcome problems associated with looking after, managing and growing on an allotment. Topics can include what to plant, how to plant, when to plant, understanding the legal side of owning an allotment, getting on with other allotment owners, local authority red tape etc. The list goes on and I hope someone on this forum can add to it. If anyone can add to this list and is prepared to write a single (1,000 word or more) article, I?d love to hear from you. Your contribution can be used without revealing names and places etc as long as the problem and its solution are clear. The book is supported by advertising so, as well as being credited as a contributor, we will be able to offer you a half page ad as a way of saying thanks. The book will be sold worldwide through Amazon, iTunes and the book publishers website and it will be promoted by a PR agency. If you would like to contribute to the book please message me. My email is: snipped-for-privacy@thesussexnewspaper.com

The usenet newsgroup to which you are posting via the website gardenbanter.co.uk, is actually a worldwide discussion group. I don't have poster statistics, but it's a pretty safe bet to say a fair proportion of the participants here are from the US.

Thus, it's worth noting that the US doesn't really have "allotments" on any recognizeable scale, though some communities may have small plots (those I've seen have been VERY small - 10x10 foot or so) which can be rented, and these have really only been cropping up (er, no pun intended) in the past 10 years or so. The community I live just outside of has, to my knowledge, just one community garden space, carved out of the corner of a public park, and there's at best a score of plots in it. Town population is circa 60K.

Thankfully, I garden on my own property, and don't need to rely on some space being available elsewhere.

In Germany, there are "beir gartens" - allotments and some sort of communal space in the middle (I've been to one in Munich which had a small restaurant in the middle). It is neat seeing the many

Here. one doesn't "own" the garden space - you essentially rent it. Community gardens are a bit different - someone else owns/operates the parcel, and volunteers come in to work it, but don't necessarily take any of the food.

Some topics I might suggest (though I don't know how they'd weave into an 'n-items' type of text):

Thoughts on encouraging a community or organization to offer garden space, and a bullet list of points which should be considered.

Composting - do's and don'ts, and how best to manage a multi-contributor compost operation

Maximizing yeild from a small space: plants that need more space, plants that are tall and should (in the Northern hemisphere at least) be planted on the North side of a plot so they don't cast the rest of your plot into shade (unless you need shade for another crop).

FTR, perhaps you should compose a list of the common problems and issues, organize them into related collections, then seek to get answers.

If it's supported by advertising, why would you be SELLING the book? It's usually one or the other (with books at least - periodicals are a whole different story - there, people seem to be paying for advertisements with a few articles scattered in between).

at 101 problems... that's potentially 50 pages of adverts. I expect only commercial folk would really have an interest in an advert, and if it's worldwide distribution, many small contributors would gain nothing from a half-page advert, because they're probably only dealing with local clients (Joe's Landscaping, or a local compost operation, or whatever isn't going to benefit from advertising to people in Europe, and even in Italy, what do they care about an advert for a nursery or whatever in the UK?

Not trying to be abusively critical here, but if this is to be a serious endeavour, a bit more thought might be due to how you put the book together, and how it is to be published and distributed.