50 chickens on one plot.

But York council has said their rules on keeping chickens on allotments have not changed recently and 50 is too many. Mr Rice said the problems arose after an issue with the welfare of chickens on another allotment at Green Lane two months ago sparked a letter to all plot holders from the council limiting the number of sheds to one and the number of chickens to 12.

If they are producing eggs then how on earth is he using that many up? 50 sounds more like a chicken farm than an allotment.

Article here about how someone thinks a fence is going to stop badgers.
Don’t badgers dig and dig?

“The allotment association is moving a fence which the university will subsequently make proof against badgers.

“This is being done with permission of Natural England, who have inspected the site with the university and the allotment association.”

Mr Hamblett said: “A steel fence is being built which will trap the badgers in a tiny space unviable for their survival. A long steel corridor is proposed to lead the animals out on to Port Meadow.

Great way of burning a small amount of fuel to get a lot of heat! good for boiling a kettle on an allotment!
Make your own rocket stove shows you how

Yes really! Protests against the use of green fields as allotments!

A LAST-ditch protest has been made by residents in a Sheffield suburb opposed to dozens of new allotments on a green field site.

Sheffield Council has started work to create around 50 allotments on land off Mickley Lane, Totley, in response to a shortage of plots and a growing number of people who want to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

But people living nearby and disabled residents at the Mickley Hall home, run by the Leonard Cheshire Foundation, argue the development will bring extra traffic and spoil the view.

Cheltenham allotments have been vandalised.
The comments are quite horrid – people bemoaning the cost of an allotment officer (who in reality probably does many other things other than deal with allotments)

A friend suggested covering clay areas with as many leaves as you can get and covering them up and letting the worms do the work! Great idea! Some councils even sweep the leaves up into piles at the roadside before collecting them.

This plot in the corner of the allotment site is getting it’s own sprinkling of leaves from the trees along by the canal side.

Allotments planned in Linton would cost too much and should be abandoned, resident tells council

The cost of buying 7 acres of land to use as allotments has been critised as too expensive,
Dr Cox is right if other landowners see what the council will pay there may be more suitable land available.

7 acres of allotments is a lot! I reckon we could have about 16 plots on our 1 acre site so that’d be 16×7, or 112 allotments!
That’s great news potentially for people on the waiting lists!

Allotment to get people into work


A KIMBERLEY resident has come up with a modern-day eco-friendly idea for a community allotment to get the unemployed back into work.

Susan McEntee believes the community garden would provide the unemployed a useful job, the local supermarkets with locally-grown produce, and said the venture could be ‘the future’ for the working world.

It is a great idea – but one that would require lots of volunteers to get it going. It’s hard work creating new allotments and if you’re growing on a big scale you have lots of other things to think about. Water costs could end up being very high!
I do like the idea of people being encouraged to get active and for people to eat locally grown produce though!

A Farm for the Future was on the BBC a few years ago. I don’t remember having watched it though.

BBC info about it here

But you can watch it online here

Growers dig in for fight to keep allotment sheds

A row has erupted in a Staffordshire village where allotment holders have been told they may have to take down their sheds because they do not have planning permission.

Growers on the Plum Pudding allotment site in Armitage, near Rugeley, are up in arms.

Lichfield District Council says the traditional wooden huts are banned because the privately owned site is on green belt land and next to the Trent & Mersey Canal conservation area.

But the site’s 105 plot-holders disagree. Builder Robin Cunningham said: “Talk about jobsworths – the council is just being stupid. There are allotment sheds all over the country – why should it be any different in our village?”

We have strict rules about shed size in Oldham. I think it’s to stop people keeping huge sheds on their plots for pigeons. Our rules include colour and size!