Allotments - UK

Having just spent a week around my old stamping ground in UK, and despite mid July weather ie wet and cold, I made a visit with my friends to a city allotment area in Southampton which I had previously only vaguely been aware of. They now have a good little vegetable patch which has been a pretty steep learning curve for them over the last year. However there is apparently a lovely communality among the allotment holders and generally someone has put them right.

I got to eat kale and sprouting broccoli and raspberries with red currants for supper that night and jolly nice it was too.Tucked away with a substantial wooded area there are deer hiding close by ready to eat anything the holders leave unprotected for their delectation. There are some things which they just don't seem to like which must be one up for the allotment holders:

French marigolds with everything....

There was a substantial variation in the layout and general upkeep of what must be around a hundred lots. Some were gems of gardens with seats in secluded areas, mown lawns, neat raised beds, companion plantings, composting of course and vast piles of manure. I found myself absorbing small ideas from each area to possibly apply back in my spanish vegetable plot. Some of the gardens had a few chickens in what must be good pickings for city foxes if anyone fails to estimate how good they are at getting in or over fences and other devices..

Useful sites

www.allotment.org.uk - load of information and pictures and a source of answers to your problems

www.irishallotments.net -for Ireland

www.allotments.net - Cambridge allotments site -

thinking laterally this is of course an area associated with the fertile rump of Britain where they have been foremost in producing food in bulk. Lincoln. Norfolk and so on....