Anyone with an allotment?

Cheers all. Offer accepted, council will be in touch about picking up keys. Yay!

@rhb - Yes, couch grass was mentioned along with good old bindweed.

@Jingle_Jangle - I'm wondering if we're allotment neighbours? This is Eltham Palace Road, not too far from us in Blackheath and could be even closer if/when we move since Lee/Hither Green is on the radar.

The best decision I ever made in relation to my allotment was buying a rotovator

good old bindweed

Pull pull pull on sight. Fucker grows insanely quickly.

Or stick bamboo canes in the ground, let the bindweed scramble up them then spray it with weedkiller.

Thanks, nothing wrong with a good potato taste. It seems to be a fairly important vegetable in parts of the Andes.

Close, I'm at Coldhabour.

Made two gates from free wood, not too bad, fixed them up and need some latches.

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Finally got round to making a start on Olot 3a today.

Baby steps.

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Strong start, good work.

That looks like a big plot, just out of curiosity do allotments come in different sizes?

I believe you can get half-sized plots.

We’ve three ‘halves’ which are about 10x10 metres each, plus the paths, etc. Think the actual sizes depend on locality. Half plots are a great way to start, get that under control and you’re laughing.

It doesn't make much difference to me but our allotment fees seem to go up every year by quite a bit. I appreciate it's still pretty cheap but I think I'm paying 40 quid for a half plot now as an in borough resident. If you are an out of borough resident with a full plot I think it's 150 quid for the year or something.

Bloody hell. Ours is £12 p/a per half. Mind you, am out of town...

We also have to pay 15 quid a year to a garden society -i have absolutely no idea what that money is for or where it goes. I suspect the treasurer and the other senior members have a jolly good Christmas dinner on it though.

£15 per plot holder buys a lot of sherry

We're on £93 pa for a full plot in Birmingham!

Neglected for 5-6 weeks while moving house. Went up expecting mayhem but everything was in one piece and garlics are looking great. Warm weather has done well for them. Do I need to protect the shoots from any inevitable cold snap or will they be okay?

I went to do a couple of small jobs at plot as way of getting out the house as have had lurgy. The free woodchip pile was full (ex Leylandi by looks of it) so ended up re-covering my most used paths, should keep the weeds down a bit.

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Did a bit more on 3a today.

Slowly, slowly.

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I've got a rat (well at least one) living in my compost heap.
Any idea what I should do? Turn the heap more to scare it away? Can I still use that compost?
I guess there must be a lot of rats on a city allotment site, I don't want to have to put poison down (although we have seen obviously poisoned dead rats on our plot previously). Why can't we all just get along?!

As I understand it, if a heap is attracting rats then the mix of green to brown stuff in there is wrong, so the best thing you can do it correct the ingredient proportions. In my experience this generally means finding some bits of cardboard packaging to shred and stick in there

thanks!
When I took the tarp off I noticed that some other stuff had been added which i wouldn't normally in there e.g a large quantity of dog hair (the people we share our allotment with had told loads of people that we'd take all their compost). I'm sure it doesn't help that we can't be sure exactly whats in there!
We have a bunch of cardboard we were going to use to line some new raised beds so we can re-purpose that instead i guess.

Mum had a rat in her plastic compost bin and the mix was just normal stuff, grass clippings and old compost. When I took the lid off the rat leapt out and used my chest as a launching pad to bounce under the hedge. I had to sit down for a bit to gather my thoughts. Shit me right up.

Rats are gonna be. Just carry on with what you’re doing. Getting a good mix of green and brown in a heap is good regardless, but I don’t think affects if rodents like to hang out there one bit. On the plus side, they will dig up your heap nicely for you from the inside. Yes you can use the compost.