Should I Lock My Shed

[Bill]

Thanks once again Charlie for the site and the Lessig quote.

Bill out feeding hummers now

[shazzbat]

>>> BTW I don't lock my shed, I just leave sharp and dangerous hazards and

Allotment sizes vary enormously, as do charges and almost every other facet of allotments. At our site, there is a system I haven't heard of anywhere else, in that the price applying when you get your plot is set for as long as you have it. People who have had theirs longer than us are paying £12 or £15 per year. We pay £20. People who took theirs on after us are paying various amounts up to £50. Many sites are council property, but ours is property of a local landowner and has been allotments since 1917. The site is administered (very loosely) by a local estate agent (realtor) who also handle the other business of the landowner.

The rules about what you can and cannot do or grow vary from site to site. We for instance are not allowed to keep any livestock on the plots, but some places do allow chickens etc. Our site has no water provided, so we catch what we can from the roofs of the shed and greenhouse. As to value, I believe it is enormously worthwhile. We buy nothing but seeds, seed potatoes etc for ours, various plants have come from friends etc. when a small punnet of soft fruit can cost £3.99 at the supermarket, and we can pick a washing up bowl full of blackberries, you bet your life it's worth it. We also grow rhubarb, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, tomatoes,golden raspberries, gooseberries, and we have an apple tree, a plum tree, and a cherry tree. And that's before any veg.

But for many people the true value of an allotment is in the side benefits, ie fresh air, exercise, free or at least cheap food, improved diet, new friends, the knowledge that what you're eating has been grown by yourselves, and grown organically/ethically etc according to ones own convictions. And for many of us, the chance to make things out of junk and scrounge things out of skips etc.

Steve

[Dave Liquorice]

10 rods is a standard plot but 5 rod plots can be available.

A rod (or pole or perch) is 5.5 yards. Square it for area so a Rod (area= ) is 30.25 sq yards. 10 rods (area) is 300 sq yards, 250 sq metres. You ge= t

16 plots to the acre.

Varies. A few tens of pounds per year is normal.

You can probably grow more than enough to cover the rent and costs. But =

highly unlikely to cover your time even at minimum wage rates of =A35.73= /hr.

Normally cost is included in the rent.

Not central government. The local district council is usually the landlord.

The Landlord has some costs, water supply for instance and upkeep of communal features such as boundary fencing etc. The income from the rent= is not a great deal of money.

[brooklyn1]

>>>>> BTW I don't lock my shed, I just leave sharp and dangerous hazards and

I find this facinating, an entirely different system from what I've previously known for community gardening. And each reply generates more questions. Approximately how large are these plots, I realize they're all differeent but like in what range; 2,500 sq ft, 10,000 sq ft, 20,000 sq ft... what area is yours? I'm thinking that if you can grow so much variety, even have fruit trees, then you must have at least an 1/8 - 1/4 acre. For the few dollars a year it seems like a steal, doesn't pay to own your own piece of farm land, I guess. What do you do if it doesn't rain for a while, can you haul water by wagon? How far away do you live from your plot?

[brooklyn1]

10 rods is a standard plot but 5 rod plots can be available.

A rod (or pole or perch) is 5.5 yards. Square it for area so a Rod (area) is 30.25 sq yards. 10 rods (area) is 300 sq yards, 250 sq metres. You get

16 plots to the acre.

Varies. A few tens of pounds per year is normal.

You can probably grow more than enough to cover the rent and costs. But highly unlikely to cover your time even at minimum wage rates of £5.73/hr.

Normally cost is included in the rent.

Not central government. The local district council is usually the landlord.

The Landlord has some costs, water supply for instance and upkeep of communal features such as boundary fencing etc. The income from the rent is not a great deal of money.

All very interesting. So a 10 rod plot is about the same as my 2,500 sq ft vegetable garden, that's more than enough to supply a typical family. And a nice feature is that you have lots of folks to swap crops with so you can all increase your variety. Thank you for the info.

[shazzbat]

SNIP

The plots on our site vary in size as the site is irregularly shaped. Mine is quoted as 0.11 acre, or roughly 4800 sq ft. Or even 445 sq metres if you like. If you put your google earth pointer at 50.47.09.37"N, 01.54.20.23"W, that is smack in the middle of my plot. Above and right are my potato rows, and you could be forgiven for thinking I was drunk when I marked out the path. I wasn't, I don't know what happened there, it has been rectified since that pic was taken, which was 2007.

Rain hasn't been a problem for the past couple of years, we have had very wet summers. In dry summers we do take water to the allotment, also we use various means to save water. We now have 7 tanks of water fed from various guttering. In UK there is currently a lot of work going on to convert houses from old-fashioned boilers to the new condensing type. This, depending on the exact system being used, liberates the big water tank from the loft, which I then scrounge from the plumbers, or out of the skip.

Here -

can see some of the stuff we've done. The black snaky thing is a perforated pipe which I bury with the seed potatoes so I can pour water in the end of it to water straight to the roots. And to answer your last question, we live 2.2 miles from the plot, although I know many people travel much further. I have heard tell of 30 miles, but that would be extreme, IMHO.

Steve

[brooklyn1]

Thank you for the info, and especially the pictures. Nearly 5,000 sq ft of garden is enough to feed a family and to keep a small roadside farm stand stocked. I appreciate all your ingenuity and efforts for accumlating rain water, however it's unfortunate that there's not tap water available.