A local farmer is thinking of turning one of his fields over to allotments, his wife is assessing interest at the moment, and we have put our hands up. The flyer said "the plots have high quality soil, riverside views, easy access, water on site, non flooding. They will make perfect allotments for growing vegetables, fruit, flowers and even keeping your own chickens, bees etc." (The non flooding comment is because the plots are close to the river's flood plain). The farmer's wife sounds like they want to make a good job of it, but what sort of questions should we be asking? What should we expect them to provide?

The plots are presently used for pasture - cows and sheep. How do we go about building the allotment? The farmer will provide a rotavator, but then what? If you were building an allotment from scratch, what would you do?

Neither of us have had much experience of allotment gardening, but we do see it as a long term commitment, and don't want to make mistakes that we will regret for a long time.

We are planning on growing vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers.

All advice will be greatly appreciated.

Tad C

Had a allotment many many years ago. The plot was down to you to keep clear. Water was provided for watering and we made our own compost heaps and tool shed. There was a committee which kept a check that plots were not abandoned and they had a shop on site selling all manner of gardening bits, seeds,bulbs,tools etc.
Great community spirit, helped one another, and got plenty of tips from more experienced gardeners.
Don't worry about mistakes thats how we learn. Jump in and enjoy it. Hope all goes well.

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Your problem is now our problem

Thanks, we are really looking forward to it!

I have done a bit of work on this recently in my Parish Council role. There was an allotment site owned by a local charity and we decided it would be best run by the PC acting as land agents. This gave a better control on structures and tenants not toeing the line. You need to have a 'manager' who can head off issues but the PC will step in and sort out problems as needed. We encouraged the tenants to form an association to help with developing the site and also social support for each other.

The other thing is to look to apply for grants to help develop the site. There are plenty of places to apply for support for community projects like this and although it is a grind filling in applications and the like you can easily get a grand with not too much effort.

One issue you need to sort out is water as this is the most expensive item. Some idiots would leave sprinklers on 24/7 given the chance so make sure you clarify how water is to be charged back. As with all these sort of things someone has to grab it by the balls and take a lead so if this is you then take it on.

Loads of rules and regs you can lift from the Internet to get a basic set going for your own plots and these will give you a heads up on most issues likely to arise. We encouraged beekeeping which needs careful thought.

Good luck with it all.

DWD

Get organised. Get other people actively involved. Depending on the 'community spirit' you could have a central tool store (for the less commonly used but 'essential' things), better security - always an issue for allotments these days - for but two simple examples.

If you manage to get the startup right you may even consider yoursleves a 'co-operative' such that crops are spread out between plot owners and annual sales/swaps mean a better selection of produce.

Are there any other allotments locally? No harm in asking other groups how they do it - you could learn from others mistakes too.....

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This post may contain nuts

I would do a lot of research on the internet. The disadvantage might be that the information is not always correct. The advantage is you have a lot of information to choose from. Also...there are a lot of tutorials on youtube about starting an allotment. It's worth a try. Good luck and let us know how that worked out for you.