If you’ve just got a garden because you’ve moved house, or maybe you’ve just got to the top of the allotment waiting list … and you need some garden tools, where can you get some for free?

You should ask neighbours and friends if they have any old tools they don’t need any more. Check your local freecycle – there are some amazing people out there who’ll have a rummage in their shed and see what they have spare. Be prepared to travel though – check your own nearest group first. For me this is Oldham Freecycle, but I also subscribe to Manchester Freecycle too as it’s very close by and sometimes things listed there are closer. Keep an eye out for tools – but a polite request is always worth a try!

Find your nearest Freecycle group in the UK here (It’s also international)
We’ve used it to get rid of plants, an old lawnmower, and even rocks!
Polite reasonable requests always go down better with people. Ask for something too extravagant and people will think you’re being cheeky.

Caliente Mustard – Bred specifically for green manure and biofumigation, Caliente Mustard is ideal for improving soil structure and suppressing soil disease and weeds. For overwintering sow no later than mid-October 200g covers approx 120m2 1kg covers approx 600m2

Too late for overwintering this year

MORE families will have the chance to join the ‘grow your own’ revolution after an allotments’ society received a cash boost.


Heage Road Allotments in Ripley has been granted £3,500 to redevelop a patch of ‘unmanageable’ and ‘overgrown’ land on the site thanks to the Big Lottery Fund.

The 900-sq yard patch is currently being covered in tonnes of topsoil, which will open up the popular allotment site to six more local families by March 1

Cambridge is to get 67 new allotment plots after the city council allocated £15000 in funding from its arts, sport and public places budget

This site belongs to a friend of mine. She’s just started it and only has a few articles on at the moment but it’s a really great site and I’ve enjoyed reading every post so far! Frugal Soul is well worth a read if you’d like to save money and enjoy the idea of being more self-sufficient.

Her and her family have an allotment so will be posting plenty of useful and interesting articles about that!
Enjoy!

Sadly not of mine, but what a great idea – regular photos of this allotment put together in a timelapse.

Community Allotment, at Meersbrook Road, Friday mornings, to enjoy working together, learning about organic growing, and taking home produce (to arrange to come along, call Alison 2580599, Heather 2217284).

Listed here in the Sheffield Telegraph

This sounds like a nice way of encouraging people to come along!

Do you have a community plot on your allotment site? How is it run?

More sheds on allotments broken into in the Newmarket area
Sheds on allotments are often targeted. What can you do?

First mark all your tools. Get a metal stamp and get your postcode stamped into them – put your house number on too so if items are found then you’ll be able to identify them. The beauty of them being garden tools is that you can cover up the mark with mud and no one stealing them would know it was on which means they are unlikely to notice it. Even if they do it’d have to be ground off which will make it’s own mark!

You can chain things up with bike locks or chains and a padlock too. By fixing tools together you’ll make them really hard to carry and whilst this might not put off someone it’ll make it so difficult to do that it’ll take longer and they might give up.

A steel shed might be more secure than a wooden one. You can concrete something to the floor and chain your tools to this. This would make it even harder to steal things.

New items added today at Tooled Up

Sealey Galvanized Steel Shed 1500mm x 800mm x 1900mm £220.95
Galvanized steel panels easily bolt and rivet together to form a rigid and secure shed. Single door fitted with cross bolt and eyelet that accepts padlock (not included) for additional security. Features a Skillion style roof. Supplied with bolt down…

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Fantastic article on the Telegraph – How gardening helps Alzheimer’s sufferers – By Bunny Guinness

As well as being good for the body, gardening is also good for the mind.

When Boris Johnson launched Capital Growth in 2008 to create plots of land across the city where food could be grown, each borough was expected to establish 60 growing spaces by 2012.

Bexley currently has nine, eight of which are in school grounds.