Tabard Gardens Community Allotments

wednesday 21st september – bustling bankside, 1pm meet at betterbankside
residents should bring along some vegetables to share at the end of this walk

http://www.betterbankside.co.uk/events/2404-21-september-bustling-bankside-edible-bankside

friday 23rd september – ‘from garden city to green city’ exhibition
garden museum, kennington, featuring two photos of brookwood triangle
http://www.gardenmuseum.org.uk/page/gallery-exhibition

saturday 24th september, 11am-5pm
harvest festival – mint adventure

saturday 15th october 6-8pm, serpentine gallery talk
featuring brookwood triangle resident and bost employee, denise withers being interviewed about her experience in the garden and now working for bost because of it!

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2011/08/garden_marathon.html

Allotment Meeting 5th September 2011

Present – Anita, Ben, Carole, Katie, Martin, Sal

Apologies – Jenny, Genevieve, Rebecca, Shulamit, Sarah, Stacie

1.Feedback from TRA South meeting

Although Sarah was not present the group was able to discuss Sarah’s report on the previous allotment subcommittee meeting that was given to the last TRA South meeting.
In response to the TRA Committee’s request for clarification on the allotment subcommittee’s financial procedures the group discussed and unanimously agreed the following:
Details of monies raised from subs and key deposits will be accounted by the allotment administrator with details made available at each quarterly allotment meeting.
We reiterated how the last allotment meeting agreed unanimously for a group (Ben, Jo, Martin, Sarah) to be responsible for managing the remaining Cleaner Greener allocation, spending and accounting of the £1.5k

2. Non-payment of subs
Some allotment members have still not paid their subs for this year.
We discussed and unanimously agreed that:
All allotment members need to pay their subs for the coming year by 1st March 2012 and if subs are not paid then beds / bags will be re allocated.

3. Funding
Capital Growth
We applied for £500 from Capital Growth for running training workshops next year but we were unsuccessful. However the link with CG is very positive and we are registered as a growing space and will receive their newsletter. They are keen to visit us.
Cleaner Greener
The remaining £1500 allocated for the allotment from the CG grant
has been paid in to TRA South account and we can now draw on this as required. We are putting together a list to include children’s toys, gardening tools etc. for the open days and children’s gardening sessions, which we ran successfully this year with BOST. Last year we received £200 from TRA South for petty cash for running events and the day to day running of the allotment.
We would like to apply for this again from TRA South and we will also approach TRA Central to see if they can contribute too.

4. Allotment Procedures

We discussed and unanimously agreed that:

Waiting List
A waiting list will be drawn up for the raised beds from the 1st March 2012. Members without a raised bed from the last draw will be prioritized.
New members will have names drawn randomly to allocate their place.

Key deposit
From 1st March new members will be asked for a refundable deposit of £5 to cover the cost of the allotment key.

Raised bed allocation
There are 3 grow bags currently available.
From 1st March 2012 raised beds will be allocated only to people who are resident on the estate and who have had a grow bag for a year. This will not affect existing raised bed owners.

5. Harvest festival
BOST are organizing a day of events at Mint Street on 24th Sept. Details of this and other events will be circulated.

6. Appointment of a TRA south liaison officer
Martin has been performing this role since the allotment began and is keen to pass this role on. Nobody at the meeting wished to take it over.
Carole from BOST said how much she appreciated Martin’s work for the benefit of the local community. Martin will give TRA South details of the petty cash spent last year.

7. AOB
Greenhouse
Douglas, Thomas, Martin and Paul spent a day working on building and glazing the door and the roof vents. We will try and organize another weekend workday soon.

Red Tiles
The Red Tiles around the allotment were bought for the flooring and edging of the greenhouse, so we will be collecting these up.

Emails
Ben would like to remind you to please check your emails for updates and information about the allotments. It will also be put up on the allotment blog and on the allotment noticeboard.

–
Tabard Gardens Community Allotments
Manciple Street
London SE1

www.tabardgardens.org/allotment/

Ben – Allotment Administrator – 07745 477 230

Martin – General info – 0787 293 8215

Some ideas for winter crops from the BBC – what are you planning to grow this winter?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A848595

Autumn planting of vegetables and salads is practicable in areas that don’t get very hard winters. While some of your plot is storing veg and another part is resting, put aside a patch of ground for winter and early spring produce.

Brussels Sprouts
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Christmas dinner wouldn’t be complete without a handful of those little green balls of trouser-trumpers rattling around the plate between the parsnips and the chipolata sausages.
Brussel sprouts or Brassica oleracea var. gemmifera, take up to 100 days from seeding to harvesting, so to get your sprouts on Christmas Day you should be sowing seeds in early/mid-September. Alternatively, in early/mid-October, you should be able to get established seedlings from the local nursery.
Propagate these seedlings in rows a metre apart, with a foot or so between each plant. Water well (if Mother Nature doesn’t do it for you) throughout the growing cycle, easing off a couple of weeks before you need to harvest. Shortly before harvesting, and as the lower leaves show signs of turning yellow, nip out the central stem of the plant. This will curtail vertical growth and will ensure that all the sprouts on the stem ripen at once. Ideally, old Jack Frost will be nipping at your nose during this fortnight, keeping the sprouts firm and tasty. Mild weather will give you mushy, loose, open sprouts.
To harvest, pare the sprouts off with a knife, or break them off by hand.

Garlic
November is a good time to plant garlic, which requires a long growing season. It will take about 6 months before it’s ready.
If the ground is very wet then simply make a ridge, about 8 to 10 cm high and plant into that. Don’t use the stuff you buy in the supermarket, use a seed merchant and get a variety suited for your region. Good UK varieties include the new Early Wight and later maturing Solent Wight. The variety Elephant has a huge bulb with mild flavour. Separate each head into cloves and put them in, point up, about 10 cm apart and 5 cm deep. For every clove you plant you’ll get a head of garlic. It is ready when the foliage goes yellow and starts to fall over.

A Few Other Reliables
Broad beans are a favourite for autumn planting, but not before November in southern England or they get too soft and lush making them liable to be killed by frosts and susceptible to botrytis and other fungal diseases. Good varieties include Super Aquadulce for autumn sowing moving on to Witkeim Manita early spring and Bunyards Exhibition for spring sowing.

Hardy lettuces Valdor and Arctic King can be sown outside on light soils in August and September for harvesting in early spring.

Purple sprouting broccoli is hardy and should provide a crop for early spring.

Thanks to everyone who turned up to help work on the greenhouse this weekend. We managed to build and glaze the 2 sliding doors and the 2 roof vents.
We will be carrying on on Sunday 4th September – hope to see you there!

While I have your attention, I would like to take this opportunity to give advance notice of the September meeting which is to be held on MONDAY 5th SEPTEMBER 2011 at 1830, venue TBC. Agenda to include: the updating of the allotment rules, feedback from July TRA meeting from whoever went, where we are with money matters, a proposal that a one off ‘deposit’ be added to the yearly rents for keys – refundable when one leaves the allotment and their key is returned, protocol for non-payment of subs and harvest festival celebrations. Sooner than that, we have made plans to finally complete works on our ailing greenhouse. This will take place on SATURDAY 20th & SUNDAY 21st AUGUST 2011. Many hands make light work so please do come down, even if you can spare just an hour. Bring your strong arms, snacks and smiling faces.

Get these dates in your diary, and I’ll see you there!

Ben.

Date – July 21st 18.30

1/ Apologies
Jenny, Louisa, Naomi, Rebekka,

2/ Present
Ben, Carole (BOST), Emelda, Genevieve, Jo, Orita, Martin, Paul, Poddy, Rose, Sal, Sarah, Stacey,

3/ Budgets

Cleaner Greener Safer (£1500)
We still have £1.5k of our Cleaner Greener funding remaining to be allocated.
This needs to be sorted ASAP. An email was sent asking for proposals but no responses so we discussed our only proposal (1)
1/ £500 allotment maintenance for the coming year and £1k to BOST for development of afterschool gardening club and open day activities.

We discussed this but Carole (BOST) then informed us that support in the form of open days and afterschool gardening clubs for Tabard Allotments would continue until 2014 without the need for our financial contribution.

So we then discussed and agreed unanimously for the total remaining (£1.5k) to be allocated to the continuing maintenance and development of the allotment. This can include items such as an improved shed for onsite shelter, repairs and events. We will propose it at Tuesday’s T&RA meeting after which we will ask Lourdes (T&RA South Treasurer) to raise a pro forma invoice for the money to be transferred to the T&RA bank account.

We then voted and agreed unanimously for a group (Ben, Jo, Martin, Sarah) to be responsible for managing the allocation, spending and accounting of the £1.5k.

An initial idea is to organise a community harvest day (or evenings) activities as a run up to BOSTs larger Harvest Festival at Mint Street Park (24th Sept). The date for our event is tbc.

Orita raised the issue of children interfering with people’s growbags on the allotment on the day of the afterschool gardening club, (and the general issue of tools and safety was raised by Jo and Paul later) It was emphasised that while BOST takes safety and conduct seriously, the responsibility for children lies with the parents / carers who bring them. (see also point 4)

Capital Growth funding up to £500
Martin has registered the initial interest for this funding. The next part of the application needs to be submitted by 1st August. Paul agreed to take the lead on this with a proposal for a series of training days/workshops on the allotment in the spring. The training issues we would like to focus on can be agreed later as a group and will be for getting the best out of your grow bag / composting etc just as the new season starts.

4/ Grow bags / Raised Beds
We now have full occupancy of all the allotment with 40 people now renting a grow bag or a raised bed. (36 Tabard residents / 4 from outside the estate).
We had some discussion on how best to deal with bags that weren’t being used, how best to fairly allocate bags / beds and how to deal with non-payment of rent. We agreed to have this as a main item at our autumn meeting and to draw up a clear and fair list of rules, that also emphasises the safety and supervision of children.

5/ Grow bag / Raised bed Administrator
Genevieve has done a fantastic job dealing with the allocations of the grow bags / beds and she is now ready to pass it on.
Ben has volunteered to take this job on with help from Paul and Rose.

6/ AOB

- we discussed the importance of maintaining our links with T&RA South committee and will discuss our proposals at Tuesday’s T&RA South meeting.

- Greenhouse weekend 20 / 21st August – come and help us finish the greenhouse, making it a working party with barbeques and drinks (details nearer the time)

- People have had problems locking the allotment gate (Martin to oil / check at weekend)
- Jo claimed £3.50 for children’s watering cans and netting

As agreed at the Feb Allotment meeting 3 of the large beds to each be split in half, along with the 3 smaller beds to create a total of 9 larger plots for individuals.

Names of people interested in a larger plot were drawn at random.

We held a successful Spring Open day where new plots and grow bags were allocated. Photos here: http://www.tabardgardens.org/allotment/

We are still without water on the site despite the best efforts of Paul McDonald to get the tap reconnected. Hopefully with support from Cllr Poddy Clark this will get sorted soon.

We still need to allocate time to get the greenhouse glazed – hopefully near the end of May.

Money – there is still money available from the CG fund for the allotment project from last year’s funding. The agreed allotment spend of £500 for the year is detailed below.

List of Allotment jobs

There are plenty of things that need volunteers to keep things running smoothly:

Herb bed

Soft fruit cages

Rhubarb bed

Greenhouse

Compost and leaf mulch

Wormery

Hose and tools maintenance

Preparing and running Open Days

Organising waiting lists, meetings and publicising available plots

Finding funding for any group projects

Responding to offers of freebies

Hopefully, if people have a larger personal stake in the allotment and there are fewer areas where it’s not clear who’s doing what, there will be a greater ownership and interest in the organising and maintenance tasks.

I also propose that we change this year from monthly Open Days to fewer, larger seasonal celebrations where more volunteers are willing to make food, bring music, bring drinks etc in collaboration with BOST.

Here’s a list of essential things to use the remaining money for, mixed with a list of jobs that need doing:

• Get the tap turned on again – probably a council job
• Repair or buy new nets for the fruit cages – totally ripped in places
• Weed and clear up the fruit cages
• Buy or make permanent strawberry beds above ground level and buy netting and hoops to protect from birds
• Finish glazing and flooring the greenhouse
• Weed and hoe the herb bed and buy a new set of annuals and perennials for the spring
• Move Jay’s stuff out of the plastic greenhouse
• Bring down the plastic greenhouse (now totally weather permeable) and replace with raised beds
• Tidy up the Tabard House shed and buy or beg for shelving
• Turn over each compost bin (who keeps putting plastic bags in there???)
• Bring out the mature compost for adding to all plots as needed
• Buy a grill for the water butt so we can collect rainwater this spring but stop leaves and animals from getting in
• Finish the rhubarb bed
• Buy more hand trowels, hand forks, rakes, hoes, secateurs, replacement hose parts etc and other things suggested at November meeting
• Move the last bag of soil left in front of the old nursery
• Move the terracotta bricks
• Get the wormery going again
• Collect ‘worm juice’ offered by local firm for fertiliser