Good use of the 'quiet' time

The primary use of the membership of the allotment association is of course to grow your own veg and fruit while getting healthy exercise but a 'spin off' of that is to encourage the friendships made on site through the common
interest of gardening, we have a really good community spirit here.

A way of doing that is to have a good programme of social events outside the boundaries of our field and with that in mind, Ruth and I have arranged for there to be something on every month this year that those interested can take advantage of. It's noticed that around 50% of our group enjoy these events, the other half prefer just to stick to their gardening, which is fine as if all took part, the numbers would be difficult to manage, coach hire, venues to book, etc.

We use this quiet time to arrange with organisations for our visits but the response to emails and phone calls is hit and miss, some very good but others you need a lot of patience to wait for replies, hence the final date cannot always be given as early as we'd like. We'll get there soon because if too long is taken, a visit is made to speak to staff face to face, they can't get out of that!

Our problem is that the venue want numbers and we can't give that until we know a date so we book a provisional number, then nag folk nearer the time to make that figure a reality.

The events on the allotment diary will happen and would ask our members to look at the diary page and decide what interests them so that when dates are finalised a commitment can be given to come along and also suggest what else they'd like to see and do. The response to the Rosemoor garden trip last year was surprisingly poor which is unusual, normally we are oversubscribed. We had to cancel the coach booking and specially discounted admission price negotiated.  Perhaps the wet, cold season dampened enthusiasm.

Added a couple of pictures of events last year, a coach trip to Suttons seed trial grounds and our first seed swop day both of which were well attended.


Some work on our plot being done when weather permits, the manure pile, a delicious mix of horse and calf which promises to reward us with extra large crops from it's nutricious, delightfully well rotted structure is benefitting from being turned to allow frost to break down even further. Beautiful.