Grow Your Own Magazine

I've just put my name down for one - 3 people waiting in front of me.. not in any rush, but as it's so close to the house I thought it'd be a good "investment".

Have mentioned I'd be happy to share one if there's such facilities to do so..

Probably a long way off, as how long is a piece of string, but looking forward to it.

...piece of string , piece of string mate!

Interestingly we're giving up our plot in Cheshire at the end of June. All the beds are cleared and covered in membrane and next time we're in the UK we'll take out some of the more precious plants/ paving slabs/clear the shed.
BUT - the next tenant is raring to start- so we've OK'd that they can use the cleared beds and greenhouse from now so they can complete a full growing season.
Nothing like keeping the bed warm eh ...and dead men's shoes etc!

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"Nicos, Queen of Gooooogle" and... GYO's own Miss Marple

We have an allotment that is 5 mins drive from our house so very useful,you could even walk it but we dont have a shed at the moment to store tools etc so we always have to take the car.In summer we shall be walking there tho

We were on the waiting list 13 months which is not long really,the site its on must have well over 150 plots aswell

You can hide them on the plot though: wrapped in a binliner, or netting, secreted amongst your crops ...
You don't need to carry them all back and forth every trip

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~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkt82aeOCFo~

~ my allotment photos ~

All gardeners know better than other gardeners." -- Chinese Proverb.

There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments." -- Janet Kilburn Phillips

Or dig a mini grave and pop your bag of tools in it. A door over the top will just be a door lying on an allotment to any prospective thief!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Not perfect, but perfectly acceptable(Snadge)

By the time you've got the hoe from the shed at the end of the garden, you could have hand weeded the area! (Geoff Hamiltom-ish)

You do make me laugh!!
I would be over the moon if there were only 3 people ahead of me!
Been on waiting list for 3 years - now (or last time i checked) I am 126th in line....average wait down here is 6-8 years!!

It will be suprising how fast you can move up the list, we had empty plots on our site it took 13 offer letters before the first plot was taken, the excuses went from O we dont want one for a couple of years he hasn't retired yet to people that had put their names down with other sites got a plot and never told anyone.

Been on the list for 18mths, I'm now 49th (was 129) so progress, however, being ever the optimist I'd bought a lot of seeds for this year that I have no chance of growing due to lack of space...still always next season...

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A friend is someone who overlooks your broken fence and admires the flowers in your garden.

There are allotments 5 mins from me but the waiting list is so long it has been closed ever since I first looked several years ago.

Our site has a waiting list of 75 and this year only 3 changed hands - this would mean a waiting time of 25 years unless the council found us some land!

Can you do anything to go up the list any further. When I was on the Lacock list I joined the allotment and garden association they had and jumped 6 places for the sake of £3.
The list in Melksham is two years+. I am about 35 on that list
Mick

On our site the waiting list is just 7 people, however for all the sites the total is about 67, I waited about 18 months.

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Gardening ..... begins with daybreak
and ends with backache

No the local allotment and garden assoc dont have any control over the list which is run by the council...and the council have shut some areas to "redevelop"... so there are less plots on the bigger sites.
We live in an area of mass housing builds classified by govt.

Here it's about 10 ***** years

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Cheers

Danny

http://sigdtr.blog.co.uk/

I was on the list for three years,one person who was given a new plot at same time as me has been kicked off already for not doing any work on it

I am 7th on the list for my second plot, I put my name down a few weeks ago.

Some of the vacant plots have still not been touched so I am going to the council office today to find out how far I am on the list and why the plots aren't being worked if they are not vacant.

You do find a lot of people putting there name down and not wanting a plot when offered. My council charges £15 to be put on the list and if you take one, It comes off your rent, if you don't you loose your money.

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You have to loose sight of the shore sometimes to cross new oceans

I would be a perfectionist, but I dont have the time

There is currently 450 people on the list for warrington its taken 4 years for me to be offered one, but I don't know how long the list was four years ago can't imagine it was longer than that as back then they told me it would be a couple of years.

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Half an acre, and I've still got too many seeds.

Well, when I checked my position I was magically 19th. Thanks? "Sorry there must have been an error". hmph. I'm down for 5 allotment sites now, but thinking of speading a bit further, just a bit "hmph" as it'll mean driving where before I could have walked down to them. Still, less food miles, etc!

450

It took me about 18 months to be offered two plots in Warrington, the one I now have which is a Parish Council run one and then a few weeks later one on the Kingsway site. Turned the Kingsway one down but hadn't thought to take myself off their waiting list. Was also on the list for Victoria Park so e-mailed the council about that at the same time. Have now had my plot about 18 months and it's going great but in that time one of the plots on my site (only 10 plots in total) hasn't even been visited apart from to dump an old sofa and it's getting on everybody's nerves.

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Some of us live in the past, always talking about back then. Some of us live in the future, always planning what we are going to do. And, then there are those, who neither look behind or ahead, but just enjoy the moment of right now.

Which one are you and is it how you want to be?

Thats a really good idea, atleast it would weed out the serious from the not so serious.

Well I am now 3rd after a few weeks, not bad !

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You have to loose sight of the shore sometimes to cross new oceans

I would be a perfectionist, but I dont have the time

I put my name down at my local allotment and was told I was 14th on a list, a a couple of years later when I phoned I was told I was 18th on the same list! wasn't happy! so I went and put my name down on every allotment in our borough....

2 month later I was offered my plot

*grumble*

*sends off another email asking for an update*

When we lived at our old house in barnsley i rang asking about a plot near my house and a man from the town council came to my house a hour later and offered me one ! but every area is different, what annoys me is that you pass areas of waste land that are doing nothing other than look a mess because of the fly tippers, but there is to much red tape and jobsworths in the councils for anyone to make a decision and turn them into allotment plots ! there is a huge demand for plots and i think they are good for communities

We waited 2 years for our new allotment, and was 42 on the "list".

We already had an allotment, which we were very grateful for, but it was a 22 mile round trip!, The cost of diesel alone was crippling. Very glad to be in walking/riding distance of the new plot.

I'm down on every allotment in my area now.

Just got wind from a few of the associations that my council are opening up to large sites due to the demand. I've emailed them asking for more info, and to be put down on their list.. so we'll see!

One of them that I'm 4th on is right next to the MIL's currently - hoping they'll hurry up and move so I don't get collared into doing something

Good luck Chris, fingers crossed for you.

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You have to loose sight of the shore sometimes to cross new oceans

I would be a perfectionist, but I dont have the time

we were 100+ when we registered last year. And now about 70ish.

woman at council said "oh, you've only been on there a year". :rotfl: Average waiting time for an allotment in our area is 4 years

But the council is opening a new site so hopefully we'll move up. We would have got one earlier but the one we're waiting for is behind our back gate so it will be easier to be committed (esp when working full time).

I was quite lucky in that a large site near me had an almost zero waiting time if you are prepared to clear the overgrown plots yourself. I did have to keep chasing down the allocations officer to get a viewing set up but from first contact to taking over the plot was about 6 weeks.

Other council sites near me have waiting times if around 3/4 years.

As Secretary of our allotment site I notice that the average waiting time is 3.5 years.

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My videos http://www.youtube.com/user/meandmyallotment2010

My facebook group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=101604915286

Depends on the turnover where you are, but only 3 ahead of you sounds good. I applied to go on the waiting lists of three sites locally about a year ago, and was told then that I'd probably have to wait two to three years. A few weeks ago, I wrote to the council to enquire how my applications were getting on, and was told that I had 7 ahead of me on one site, 13 on another, and 45(!) on the third.

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Please sponsor Allyson's skydive to raise money for spinal cord injury research:
http://www.justgiving.com/ParaPrincess

Our site was running at 14 year wait with almost 100 0n the list but we had 12 plots to re let this year and after the normal call round by the membership sec and finding 12 to take the plots we are now down to 50 ish but going by normal years thats looking like 10 year wait all the other sites have pretty heavy waiting lists to but fingers crossed there will be a new site soon.

10-year waiting list?! Blimy - Hemel Hempstead may be a crap town, but at least our allotment waiting lists are not too bad!

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Please sponsor Allyson's skydive to raise money for spinal cord injury research:
http://www.justgiving.com/ParaPrincess

I saw an article in our local news letter about allotments just around the corner from me which I didn't even know existed. I thought it was just waste land at the back of some garages. It is all walled in so you cant see unless your house overlooks the site, which mine doesn't. I was incredibly lucky to be offered a half plot straight away, the drawback being that it was previously waste land that I have spent the last year trying to clear bit by bit. Apparently there are about 10 on the waiting list now. The last new people I spoke to had been on the waiting list for a year. Whenever I get fed up of clearing soft-rushes and horsetail, I remind myself how fortunate I am to have an allotment at all.

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“If your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.”

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Charles Churchill : A dog will look up on you; a cat will look down on you; however, a pig will see you eye to eye and know it has found an equal.

http://weekendwellies.wordpress.com/?p=7&preview=true

I put my name down for an allotment in September or October, the woman said it could take just over a year I don't think there are many people waiting I hope not anyway lol. I may give her a ring sometime next week, so fingers cross

Daniel