Allotments and childminding.

[Amandak28]

Hi, I've been accepted to have a plot at my local site, very happy and cant wait to get stuck in :-)

My question is can i take my mindees to it??
It would be such a great learning recourse, bugs, plants, wildlife. Not to mention the physical development.

As I'm not qualified I'm unsure about it.

TIA xx

[freckleonear]

Yes, I take my mindees to my allotment. There have been a few people who have had problems with their local council, but usually it's fine.

[VeggieSausage]

I take mine, they love it.....

[Mouse]

It's a wonderful experience for them. Just make sure you fully risk assess how you will keep them safe.

[Amandak28]

Thanks feeling positive about it :-)

Ill make sure i do a risk assessment for sure. Id be silly not to lol.

Ill have to fully research what plants, fruits and vegetables i can grow.

Where would i find a good detailed list please?

Very excited may pop up today if i cant wait till tomorrow. ;-) hehe xx

[kimnolan87]

That's brill!!!

I'd love to be able to have somewhere to grow our own vegetables! I don't think our garden is big enough at the moment!

I think I might take inspiration from you and enquire about our local allotments!

And I agree, your mindees will love it and learn so much!!!!! Xxx

[Kiddleywinks]

I put my name down before I started minding, got the keys earlier this year, but did speak to the council about my change of circumstances now a plot had come up.
The guy was fab, so long as the children stick to my plot, aren't unruly, or noisy enough to disturb other plot holders enjoyment, he had no problems with me taking the children down there and thought it was a wonderful opportunity for them to experience

[Kiddleywinks]

I think I might take inspiration from you and enquire about our local allotments!

Be prepared for a long wait in some instances - I waited 3 years for mine

Try the local council, and also parish councils sometimes have them too

[Kiddleywinks]

Thanks feeling positive about it :-)

Ill make sure i do a risk assessment for sure. Id be silly not to lol.

Ill have to fully research what plants, fruits and vegetables i can grow.

Where would i find a good detailed list please?

Very excited may pop up today if i cant wait till tomorrow. ;-) hehe xx

I use a fab site: allotment dot org and have bought a couple of the books from the site owner that have become my bibles
There's a grow your own forum that is full of advice from other allotmenteers

Enjoy the peace and serenity, but be prepared for some hard graft too

[Amandak28]

I use a fab site: allotment dot org and have bought a couple of the books from the site owner that have become my bibles
There's a grow your own forum that is full of advice from other allotmenteers

Enjoy the peace and serenity, but be prepared for some hard graft too

Ahh thanks hun!

Its that forum on here?

Well i only have a balcony with a few plants in pots. So I'm going to take it in my stride I'm buying a fork from Argos today so i can turn the soil over and get rid of the grass and weeds tomorrow. :-) xx

[bunyip]

Hi, I've been accepted to have a plot at my local site, very happy and cant wait to get stuck in :-)

My question is can i take my mindees to it??
It would be such a great learning recourse, bugs, plants, wildlife. Not to mention the physical development.

As I'm not qualified I'm unsure about it.

TIA xx

Hi Amanda

As previous members have said, the main thing is to risk assess how you will keep children safe.

You also need to ensure that, essentially, the children's presence is not perceived as an unwanted nuisance to other tenants. Remember, no matter how we feel about the lo's, some allotment users go there to get away from family, not to have other people's children thrust upon them. AFAIK you can't actually be prevented from taking lo's onto an allotment, not if it's a statutory site. But, if someone complains, you could be found to be technically in breach of your tenancy agreement on the grounds of using it for business purposes. It should only become a problem if someone gets upset.

[bunyip]

[This is a copy/paste of an old post, so apologies to members who've seen it before.]

1. Survey your realm. Go take a look at what's there. What needs doing? what needs changing? (like that big patch of rampant brambles) what do you want to keep? (maybe the last tenant left you some nice currant bushes.) This helps when you get to point 2.....

2. Perfect planning prevents p155-poor performance - have an idea of what you want to do and what resources you have, especially time, labour and skills. You are not going to manage a full-sized statutory plot with 50 different types of plant on one Sunday afternoon a week. Be realistic, plan, but be prepared to be flexible. Get hold of a good general book. Plan to use a 'rotation' system of the different plant types - this is good for the soil and good for the crops. If possible, aim to grow crops that will allow you to spread the work over time. You don't want to have to plant/sow everything in the same 2 weeks of spring and harvest everything in the same 2 weeks in August. Seriously, think about what you want the land to be doing in 5 years' time. One of the nicest, most productive things to grow is fruit, especially cane fruit (raspberries, etc.), strawberries, currants, etc. They help spread the work over the year, produce huge crops over many weeks, are easier than veg to preserve a glut (freeze/jam) and give you some pruning and tinkering to do when little else is going on. But they do need a lot of soil preparation, so aim to precede fruit by a few years of veg planting: this allows you to be weeding and feeding the soil in readiness for the fruit whilst still making it productive as you go along.

3. The most important things are: you, the soil, your tools and the climate/weather. You can look after the first three and keep them in good condition; the last one will look after itself.

4. Do not bite off more than you can chew, especially in year one. This will depend a lot on the state of your plot. It is far more important to get the groundwork right that to have an amazing tomato glut. Think ground clearance, weed control and soil condition. e.g. Far better to get a strawberry bed well-prepared, cleared of weed and the soil in good heart before you put in the plants, than to whack them in immediately then find you have to dig them all up next year to clear perennial weed from underneath.

5. Make sure you control the plot, and it doesn't control you. The land is very demanding (just go away for a week in the summer and you'll see) but your job is to make the land work to your benefit, and there's a lot you can do to take control. Often, the first step is to cover the whole lot with plastic sheet, carpet, etc. to slow down weed growth. Then, as time allows, remove some of the covers, spray the remaining weed off with glyphosate (Roundup), then dig and plant when the weed killer has done its work. If you let it get out of control you'll have a weed problem - and that's everybody's problem. If your plot is a haven for weeds and pests, then expect to have a mob of justifiably angry plot-holders and the site managers on your back. So don't let it happen.

6. At the early stages, big, easy, undemanding crops are your friends. Potatoes are great for 'clearing' the soil. At a push they can be popped into a hole and pretty much left to their own devices, even in an area of light weed/grass. They can be planted through holes in plastic cover, which is doing 2 jobs at the same time. It also allows you to put off digging that bit until you dig up the tubers. You'll not get the best harvest ever this way, but you'll get something, and you'll buy time while you work on another bit of ground (and convince the site committee that you're steadily putting it under controlled cultivation.) Pumpkins/marrow/courgette/squash are excellent too. They can also be planted through plastic, they cover lots of ground (so more of your plot looks 'busy') and can give such bumper crops that you'll almost get sick of them.

7. Don't get carried away looking at seed catalogues. Limit what you grow to things you'll eat. Choose easy stuff like the potatoes and squash mentioned above, lettuce/salad leaves, radishes (the quickest to grow, so you get fast results and begin to feel you're getting somewhere). I would not try to grow more than 6-12 different things in year one. You can do a few things well, or do a whole lot of things badly. Your choice.

8. I hate Carol Klein. It's not personal, I just despise the whole Gardener's World thing, where they make everything look easy and every little job is ever so nice, takes 2 minutes, produces fantastic results and no one ever gets dirt under their nails. What they don't show you is that it's probably taken 5 underpaid chaps a lot of hours to prepare that perfect bit of soil for KC to put in one lettuce without ever leaving the beautifully-paved garden path, or that the same lads will spend the next few weeks chasing off every little critter from a slug to a rabbit that wants to eat said salading before she rocks up with her brand new girly-pink garden snips to harvest her lunch. Bourgeois TV gardening may well be responsible for the massive demand and huge waiting lists for allotments. What they don't tell you is that it's also responsible for the fastest ever turnover of plots. More than ever before, people are coming into growing with false expectations and not the first idea, so they quickly get overwhelmed, disillusioned and fed up with the whole thing. Thanks Carol.

9. Garden centres want your money - end of. By my estimate, 90% of what garden centres sell is useless, gimmicky tat, and 99.9% is over-priced, even where it might be of some use. Buy the best simple tools you can afford or (if like me, you store them on-site) the best ones you don't mind being stolen. Ideally, find a local family-run seed merchant who has generations of experience of what will actually grow in your local soil and climate. If you can't then buy from someone like Alan Romans (he has a website) who has an amazing choice of potato and also sells veg seed at a fraction of the cost you'd pay in a garden centre or major seed company. How? Because he sells seed with minimal packaging. Why? Because seed packets and promotion cost more than the seed itself. How come? Because a lot of people are stupid enough to buy visually. Nobody gets the Bunyip's spendy-buttons just cos they can print a nice picture of a beetroot and display it at eye-level.

10. Don't use the "O-word"*. Only bad t'ings will happen.

[Amandak28]

[This is a copy/paste of an old post, so apologies to members who've seen it before.]

1. Survey your realm. Go take a look at what's there. What needs doing? what needs changing? (like that big patch of rampant brambles) what do you want to keep? (maybe the last tenant left you some nice currant bushes.) This helps when you get to point 2.....

2. Perfect planning prevents p155-poor performance - have an idea of what you want to do and what resources you have, especially time, labour and skills. You are not going to manage a full-sized statutory plot with 50 different types of plant on one Sunday afternoon a week. Be realistic, plan, but be prepared to be flexible. Get hold of a good general book. Plan to use a 'rotation' system of the different plant types - this is good for the soil and good for the crops. If possible, aim to grow crops that will allow you to spread the work over time. You don't want to have to plant/sow everything in the same 2 weeks of spring and harvest everything in the same 2 weeks in August. Seriously, think about what you want the land to be doing in 5 years' time. One of the nicest, most productive things to grow is fruit, especially cane fruit (raspberries, etc.), strawberries, currants, etc. They help spread the work over the year, produce huge crops over many weeks, are easier than veg to preserve a glut (freeze/jam) and give you some pruning and tinkering to do when little else is going on. But they do need a lot of soil preparation, so aim to precede fruit by a few years of veg planting: this allows you to be weeding and feeding the soil in readiness for the fruit whilst still making it productive as you go along.

3. The most important things are: you, the soil, your tools and the climate/weather. You can look after the first three and keep them in good condition; the last one will look after itself.

4. Do not bite off more than you can chew, especially in year one. This will depend a lot on the state of your plot. It is far more important to get the groundwork right that to have an amazing tomato glut. Think ground clearance, weed control and soil condition. e.g. Far better to get a strawberry bed well-prepared, cleared of weed and the soil in good heart before you put in the plants, than to whack them in immediately then find you have to dig them all up next year to clear perennial weed from underneath.

5. Make sure you control the plot, and it doesn't control you. The land is very demanding (just go away for a week in the summer and you'll see) but your job is to make the land work to your benefit, and there's a lot you can do to take control. Often, the first step is to cover the whole lot with plastic sheet, carpet, etc. to slow down weed growth. Then, as time allows, remove some of the covers, spray the remaining weed off with glyphosate (Roundup), then dig and plant when the weed killer has done its work. If you let it get out of control you'll have a weed problem - and that's everybody's problem. If your plot is a haven for weeds and pests, then expect to have a mob of justifiably angry plot-holders and the site managers on your back. So don't let it happen.

6. At the early stages, big, easy, undemanding crops are your friends. Potatoes are great for 'clearing' the soil. At a push they can be popped into a hole and pretty much left to their own devices, even in an area of light weed/grass. They can be planted through holes in plastic cover, which is doing 2 jobs at the same time. It also allows you to put off digging that bit until you dig up the tubers. You'll not get the best harvest ever this way, but you'll get something, and you'll buy time while you work on another bit of ground (and convince the site committee that you're steadily putting it under controlled cultivation.) Pumpkins/marrow/courgette/squash are excellent too. They can also be planted through plastic, they cover lots of ground (so more of your plot looks 'busy') and can give such bumper crops that you'll almost get sick of them.

7. Don't get carried away looking at seed catalogues. Limit what you grow to things you'll eat. Choose easy stuff like the potatoes and squash mentioned above, lettuce/salad leaves, radishes (the quickest to grow, so you get fast results and begin to feel you're getting somewhere). I would not try to grow more than 6-12 different things in year one. You can do a few things well, or do a whole lot of things badly. Your choice.

8. I hate Carol Klein. It's not personal, I just despise the whole Gardener's World thing, where they make everything look easy and every little job is ever so nice, takes 2 minutes, produces fantastic results and no one ever gets dirt under their nails. What they don't show you is that it's probably taken 5 underpaid chaps a lot of hours to prepare that perfect bit of soil for KC to put in one lettuce without ever leaving the beautifully-paved garden path, or that the same lads will spend the next few weeks chasing off every little critter from a slug to a rabbit that wants to eat said salading before she rocks up with her brand new girly-pink garden snips to harvest her lunch. Bourgeois TV gardening may well be responsible for the massive demand and huge waiting lists for allotments. What they don't tell you is that it's also responsible for the fastest ever turnover of plots. More than ever before, people are coming into growing with false expectations and not the first idea, so they quickly get overwhelmed, disillusioned and fed up with the whole thing. Thanks Carol.

9. Garden centres want your money - end of. By my estimate, 90% of what garden centres sell is useless, gimmicky tat, and 99.9% is over-priced, even where it might be of some use. Buy the best simple tools you can afford or (if like me, you store them on-site) the best ones you don't mind being stolen. Ideally, find a local family-run seed merchant who has generations of experience of what will actually grow in your local soil and climate. If you can't then buy from someone like Alan Romans (he has a website) who has an amazing choice of potato and also sells veg seed at a fraction of the cost you'd pay in a garden centre or major seed company. How? Because he sells seed with minimal packaging. Why? Because seed packets and promotion cost more than the seed itself. How come? Because a lot of people are stupid enough to buy visually. Nobody gets the Bunyip's spendy-buttons just cos they can print a nice picture of a beetroot and display it at eye-level.

10. Don't use the "O-word"*. Only bad t'ings will happen.

Thanks for the info!
Today was hard work! Spent 4 hours there today. We planted a redcurrant plant and a blackberry plant. The soil under the grass seems in good nick altho quite a lot of stones :-/ so will need a few pots to put them in as i carry on clearing the rest. :-)

Xx

[Rubybubbles]

[This is a copy/paste of an old post, so apologies to members who've seen it before.]

1. Survey your realm. Go take a look at what's there. What needs doing? what needs changing? (like that big patch of rampant brambles) what do you want to keep? (maybe the last tenant left you some nice currant bushes.) This helps when you get to point 2.....

2. Perfect planning prevents p155-poor performance - have an idea of what you want to do and what resources you have, especially time, labour and skills. You are not going to manage a full-sized statutory plot with 50 different types of plant on one Sunday afternoon a week. Be realistic, plan, but be prepared to be flexible. Get hold of a good general book. Plan to use a 'rotation' system of the different plant types - this is good for the soil and good for the crops. If possible, aim to grow crops that will allow you to spread the work over time. You don't want to have to plant/sow everything in the same 2 weeks of spring and harvest everything in the same 2 weeks in August. Seriously, think about what you want the land to be doing in 5 years' time. One of the nicest, most productive things to grow is fruit, especially cane fruit (raspberries, etc.), strawberries, currants, etc. They help spread the work over the year, produce huge crops over many weeks, are easier than veg to preserve a glut (freeze/jam) and give you some pruning and tinkering to do when little else is going on. But they do need a lot of soil preparation, so aim to precede fruit by a few years of veg planting: this allows you to be weeding and feeding the soil in readiness for the fruit whilst still making it productive as you go along.

3. The most important things are: you, the soil, your tools and the climate/weather. You can look after the first three and keep them in good condition; the last one will look after itself.

4. Do not bite off more than you can chew, especially in year one. This will depend a lot on the state of your plot. It is far more important to get the groundwork right that to have an amazing tomato glut. Think ground clearance, weed control and soil condition. e.g. Far better to get a strawberry bed well-prepared, cleared of weed and the soil in good heart before you put in the plants, than to whack them in immediately then find you have to dig them all up next year to clear perennial weed from underneath.

5. Make sure you control the plot, and it doesn't control you. The land is very demanding (just go away for a week in the summer and you'll see) but your job is to make the land work to your benefit, and there's a lot you can do to take control. Often, the first step is to cover the whole lot with plastic sheet, carpet, etc. to slow down weed growth. Then, as time allows, remove some of the covers, spray the remaining weed off with glyphosate (Roundup), then dig and plant when the weed killer has done its work. If you let it get out of control you'll have a weed problem - and that's everybody's problem. If your plot is a haven for weeds and pests, then expect to have a mob of justifiably angry plot-holders and the site managers on your back. So don't let it happen.

6. At the early stages, big, easy, undemanding crops are your friends. Potatoes are great for 'clearing' the soil. At a push they can be popped into a hole and pretty much left to their own devices, even in an area of light weed/grass. They can be planted through holes in plastic cover, which is doing 2 jobs at the same time. It also allows you to put off digging that bit until you dig up the tubers. You'll not get the best harvest ever this way, but you'll get something, and you'll buy time while you work on another bit of ground (and convince the site committee that you're steadily putting it under controlled cultivation.) Pumpkins/marrow/courgette/squash are excellent too. They can also be planted through plastic, they cover lots of ground (so more of your plot looks 'busy') and can give such bumper crops that you'll almost get sick of them.

7. Don't get carried away looking at seed catalogues. Limit what you grow to things you'll eat. Choose easy stuff like the potatoes and squash mentioned above, lettuce/salad leaves, radishes (the quickest to grow, so you get fast results and begin to feel you're getting somewhere). I would not try to grow more than 6-12 different things in year one. You can do a few things well, or do a whole lot of things badly. Your choice.

8. I hate Carol Klein. It's not personal, I just despise the whole Gardener's World thing, where they make everything look easy and every little job is ever so nice, takes 2 minutes, produces fantastic results and no one ever gets dirt under their nails. What they don't show you is that it's probably taken 5 underpaid chaps a lot of hours to prepare that perfect bit of soil for KC to put in one lettuce without ever leaving the beautifully-paved garden path, or that the same lads will spend the next few weeks chasing off every little critter from a slug to a rabbit that wants to eat said salading before she rocks up with her brand new girly-pink garden snips to harvest her lunch. Bourgeois TV gardening may well be responsible for the massive demand and huge waiting lists for allotments. What they don't tell you is that it's also responsible for the fastest ever turnover of plots. More than ever before, people are coming into growing with false expectations and not the first idea, so they quickly get overwhelmed, disillusioned and fed up with the whole thing. Thanks Carol.

9. Garden centres want your money - end of. By my estimate, 90% of what garden centres sell is useless, gimmicky tat, and 99.9% is over-priced, even where it might be of some use. Buy the best simple tools you can afford or (if like me, you store them on-site) the best ones you don't mind being stolen. Ideally, find a local family-run seed merchant who has generations of experience of what will actually grow in your local soil and climate. If you can't then buy from someone like Alan Romans (he has a website) who has an amazing choice of potato and also sells veg seed at a fraction of the cost you'd pay in a garden centre or major seed company. How? Because he sells seed with minimal packaging. Why? Because seed packets and promotion cost more than the seed itself. How come? Because a lot of people are stupid enough to buy visually. Nobody gets the Bunyip's spendy-buttons just cos they can print a nice picture of a beetroot and display it at eye-level.

10. Don't use the "O-word"*. Only bad t'ings will happen.

Brilliant thanks for this bunyip :-)

I don't have an allotment but do have a large garden and greenhouse, the reward of watching everything growing from seed is amazing to me (although we spent a small fortune on soil)

We have been living of our home grown lettuce for weeks now! We also have
Potato
Sweetcorn
Broccoli
Toms , lots of different types
Cumber
Runner beans
Dwarf peas
Strawberries
Spring onions
Peppers
Chilli
Beet root
And constantly doing lettuce! Having just done the final planting out today, it's tough work!

I have done small bits with the mindies and they have their own baby greenhouse with a mix of veg from above in along with sunflowers and easy growing flowers, poppies, Mexican hats ect


Have fun!!

[jackie 7]

I have a balcony. Got courgettes in pots tomatoes should have been put into bags to hang upside down. Must do this week. Got loads of herbs. And strawberries for the first time. Will se how they do.