2026 Allotmenteers - have we lost the plot?!

[Seaitoverthere]

A thread for those of us with new allotments to discuss progress and swap ideas. All welcome , established plot holders and wannabe plot holders too!

@blackheartsgirl
@hockityponktas

My windows are full of tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes, sunflowers. Planted out lettuce, onions and garlic already in the ground. Saw 1st potato leaves yesterday ❤️

How many tomatoes and aubergines have you all done? Have 30+ tomato seedlings, 15 ish aubergines. So many germinated. Is it crazy to try to grow them all?

Keep them going, you may lose some along the way!
once you know how many are going to survive you could always offer the plants to other allotmenteers, or local care home/schools/nurseries.
But honestly, if you have the room just grow them! Look into ways to freeze/store produce. I’m thinking of trying sun-dried (oven?!) tomatoes to freeze this year as we have about 16 plants at the moment.

@hockityponktasthat sounds lovely! I think for us passata, the kids eat it on their pasta a lot. Ha I don’t exactly have the room, but could squeeze some into the garden also I reckon. My issue now is they’re 6-10 inches already, and without a polytunnel, they’ll be huge before I can plant out in a months time

Last year I made little individual cloches for some of my seedlings as I had to plant them out when I ran out of room on the windowsill. I cut the bottom off a 2L bottle and poked some holes in the top. Doesn’t look great but did the job.

I didn’t get round to strimming yesterday due to poorly youngest child but hopefully will today. I did see another baby sloworm and what was presumably the mother sunning herself. That makes at least 4 (I saw three babies together a few weeks ago).

@tealandteal oh wow was that for tomato and aubergine, and they survived okay? I do have a cheap zipped half height tunnel I’m currently growing salads in, I could put them there I guess in a couple weeks!

Shot down to the garden quickly when I woke up this morning as realised I had left the greenhouse window propped open overnight. The latch is broken and the auto vent I had bought to hopefully fix it is still in the box. Everything looks fine.

I’ve only seen one baby slow worm this year. Was pleased to see a pond skater on pond.

The bindweed on allotment is going nuts. It was under weed membrane before I got the plot and had developed a huge root system which I did try to get out but you never can get all of it and it seems to be on steroids now.

I have been away this weekend so not had chance to go to the allotment. I have ordered a garden arch and spikes for my blackberry and have some small herb plants ready to put in. I need to pot my tomatoes on this week. I have a large conservatory which they will be in for a while yet

It really depends on your space ( and how many mouths you have to feed). Tomatoes can be turned into sauce and preserved by heat or frozen. Can’t think of a way of preserving aubergines . Or you could gift some? I have 125m2 plot and I’m doing 8 aubergines and 8 tomato plants. No greenhouse.

@TheGanderokay thank you, so mine is less than half the size of yours. Think I’ll have some in my garden then 🙈 We eat a lot of aubergine to be fair

I just got my allotment at the end of last year. It’s just a micro one so no shed or anything on it although there’s a small shed with tools that anyone can use there. The idea is, that when a bigger one becomes available, I should be offered it.
I have put in potatoes, 4 raised beds which I had onions, shallots and garlic over 2 of them, I’ve put carrot seeds in one and the 4th will be for salads. I’m waiting for an arch to come which I will grow a pumpkin up. I’m going to plant leeks along the edge of the raised beds and the edge of the allotment.
I have space for brassicas and sweetcorn at the other side.

I had one in a pot last year in my backyard and it gave a decent crop. Might depend a bit on the variety- if you have smaller/ elongated south Asian varieties they should do ok in pots.

Very exciting @Herestoanewallotment . Sounds like you have some good plans there.

@january1244 it was for pumpkins and courgettes but yes it worked very well. The courgettes did all get eaten by rabbits once they graduated out of their cloches but I have since put up a new fence so hope that won’t happen this year.

I still haven’t strimmed but am pleased with the beds that are looking nice and ready. I went down this morning for an hour or so with the children and dogs so just did a bit of weeding around the raspberries and strawberries. I also saw an adult slow worm and a baby sloworm. I cut some flowers from the ranunculus so it’s nice to have them in a little glass on the table.

Woke up early and got down just gone 6.30am to attack weeds for a couple of ours. My plum tree planted in December is still only showing signs of life with a couple of shoots at the base so emailed Chris Bowers. They came back very quickly and said look for signs of life mid May as newly planted trees slower.

I’m going to try really hard to go regularly and keep on top of bindweed and horse tail and try not to get too over run by it. Spent some time digging out dandelions from grass section as best I could and it does look tidier despite not cutting the grass. Loads of dandelions left for bees on the paths which I am ignoring for a bit as have cut them 3 times so far and feel I may be creating a rod for my own back and am going to let neighbours have a turn.

Happy to see blueberries flowering, broad beans, chard and peas coming along.

Your chard looks amazing! Mine is so small still.

What do you think of the Chris Bower stuff? I ordered a load for my garden a year ago. Those fruit trees are the weakest I have. The blueberries were awful, compared to ones I got from other places. And the ‘fig tree’ was a 5 inch stick that never took.

My gardening express trees conversely I ordered later, and they are huge, plums have flowered and have plumlets already, the stems are sturdy and thick. The Chris Bower ones are so spindly I’ll be anazed if they can hold a fruit even

It’s over wintered chard which is why it is a good size.

This is my first Chris Bowers order. It is a decent size tree and customer services was quick to respond today but I think the graft has most likely failed. Would love to be wrong about this and it bursts into life mid May as they suggest it will. It does say they have a guarantee for the first year so I guess it will get sorted but I will be disappointed. Having read your experience @january1244 I’ll skip in future.

I got 5 bare root orchard pack a few years ago in July for a tenner from Gardening Express and all 5 came to life. I managed to kill 2. The remaining 3 were in pots for a couple of years and I put them in allotment beginning of this year, one of the apples has blossom on so pleased about that.

Super happy with how our plots coming along this year!

Just looking at a shed because that will make a big difference having somewhere to store stuff. And sit when it pours down.

I have to admit though my neighbours super ugly plot is really getting me down. I desperately want to have it to add it to ours and am considering how much I need to bribe them with 😂

Five trees for £10 is an absolutely steal! Fab the chard overwintered okay, such a good idea.

@Plotment not nice the neighbours plot is so bad. Is it really weedy or just a massive eyesore?

I have potato plants growing a few inches now, peas and mangetout just over a foot high, pak chois will be ready to harvest in a couple of weeks, kale and spinach and mizuna is shooting up and I’m getting little harvests every couple days. Have so much rhubarb I barely know what to do with it. Trying to fight the battle against the weeds, have laid down more card and cut down the long grass and nettles

I find it so interesting to read about other allotments, do your plots join directly on to other plots? Ours is a very small set of allotments, 14 in total and each one has a fence and a grass path separating it from the next. The contract states no one can have more than one plot.

We spent a good couple of hours there today tidying, strimmed all of the allotment and all round the edges/paths. We harvested some cavolo Nero as well.

May I join? I don't have an allotment (I have my name down for one, but by the sounds of it, you have to wait for one of the current holders to die before you get one, which seems a bit extreme!), but I do my best to grow things in my garden. Sometimes my efforts get demolished by the local wild rabbit population, but they're not fans of beetroot or garlic, so I do well with those!

I have a couple of dwarf fruit trees in (a plum and a greengage), but hope to add more as I go along. I always have a physalis growing, usually tomatoes and strawberries, and I'm trying chillies for the first time this year. Eventually, I intend to add protected raised beds (due to rabbits and mice; I've not had to face rats so far) outside and in my greenhouse. I'm lucky to live very rurally, where people put signs up offering free manure from their livestock and horses, so I make the most of that!

Oh, and I've already started adding to my collection of plants to attract the bees and butterflies. I admit that I choose the plants that are most popular with them at the garden centre.

I also aspire to owning a chest freezer for excess produce one day, and I'm a novice beekeeper, in the hopes of having my own hive eventually!

It’s not awfully out of control like a jungle. They do grow things and work it. But it’s just covered in random bits of carpet. Massively uneven. Weeds interspersing crops. It’s just ugly and offends my sensibilities for a beautifully manicured plot. And our plots are long and thin. So I see there’s more than I can see my own most of the time. If that makes sense?

Eugh. May the allotment gods work in my favour.

Ours are long and thin. All back directly onto the next. So you share boundaries and half plots or quarter plots share paths.

Ours is currently shared with ugly neighbour and an uneven collection of carpet squares with a bind weed party underneath and it’s doing my head in.

Plots merge, takeover and are split regularly. So to takeover the neighbours would not be unheard of but they have to be willing to give it up or move.

@TheeNotoriousPIG you are very welcome . A friend of mine had hives in her back garden. She has moved somewhere rural but when she was about to put her house on the market she said she was going to leave the hives for the next person. I gently suggested that lovely though bees are not everyone wants them in their back garden so she did move them !

My plot has several neighbours. Over 100 plots, none of them the traditional allotment size from what I can see. Arranged in rows but there are 2 or 3 plots in a row . On one side I border one plot, there is a one at the back and the other side there are 2 plots. End of it is on the stream banks so no one there. On the side with 2 plots one isn’t worked and getting worse and worse with a knackered shed of plastic and wood I did try to patch when bits were nearly taking off in the wind. I think the previous person has given up. There’s a lovely borage flowering I would love to rescue from the long grass but obviously won’t.

The crazy thing is, there are some allotments on my site where they’re not in a good state and people also don’t come and harvest the fruit etc even. Some people apparently took some last year, and got sent emails saying this is absolutely prohibited. Such a shame to watch a load of apples just rot on the ground etc though.

Our allotment has divided all of the plots into quarter size (about 60m2) every time they are handed back to cut the waitlist. As a result there is a small waitlist. It’s a great idea, as everyone gets a bit of something. But obviously there’s no free space for flowers and pretty things etc, as every inch counts