Marking Out Plots

Someone dumped their Christmas Tree at the entrance to the allotment.

I rescued the dumped Christmas Tree and will be chopping it up to fill the bottom of the next raised bed to be constructed.

I met up with Jane from idverde at 10am to mark out plots 11 & 11A and mark out paths between other vacant plots. We discussed at length the councils failure to complete the clearance of the "haven for wildlife plots 3A, 11& 11A" and the fact that I will not be letting the council get away with their further mismanagement, and intend to exert extra pressure via complaints to the council, councillors and the local press, if they don't extract their thumbs from their bum holes and get the work completed.

The council asked idverde to do what they could when the subcontractor contracted to undertake the works clearance work and stump grinding walked off the scheme twice and effectively fly tipped in our pick and and drop off area. 

Idverde can't keep bailing the council officers out of the shit, they need to be paid for the work they are undertaking that is beyond the remit of their contact for allotment management.

Good News in the afternoon that Jane had spoken with the Head Of Parks Mark Dazell who has finally asked for a formal quote from idverde and has thus acknowledged, that he was pushing his luck asking for costly extras out side the contracted works for nothing.

Phil the contracts manager from idverde will be doing the quote tomorrow and getting over to Mark Dazell and hopefully idverde can then complete the clearance of the car parks and the remaining dross on plots 3A, 11 & 11A. I will continue to push for the trunks and roots to four trees on plot 3A be dealt with as promised. 

Invites to view plots 7, 3A, 11 & 11A are to be sent out tomorrow and all remaining people on the list will be informed how far down the waiting list they are. 

In future any full plots given up will be divided, and Jane will be contacting Adi & Paddy re making the paths between plots 2 & 3 & 4 straight and will be requesting that Paddy remove the fencing along the path. 

Greater interest will be taken of the conditions of the paths during site inspections this year and site inspection will be to a higher standard now that 3A, 11 & 11A don't define what was acceptable to the council. 

Idverde will be cracking down on standards on all allotment sites in the borough, with high waiting lists, they can afford to raise the expected standards.

Once Jane and I had completed putting in posts defining the plots and paths, I turned my attention to getting the New Compost bins bedded in their new locations  and excavating the nice humas material to add to the new raised beds. I need the Dalek in place so that I can move the five sacks of shredded paper out of the potting shed to free up space. I have a lot of paper to shred as I empty out my home office now I have retired.   

Dalek moved out of the way and ground weeded and excavated into buckets to be used when filling the next new raised bed.

Lots of bindweed and couch grass roots pulled from what was previously a very good 1.2m x 1.2m growing bed

Excavation obtained at the end of my allotted time the plot for today.

View from the path of todays weeding and digging.

Dalek placed back in location for visual check on level and size to see what more can be excavated next visit. I will fill the excavated hole with woodchip on magic cardboard and bury the bottom of the Dalek in woodchip at the moment we only have mulch worthy woodchips not path worthy material.

The ground under the next two Daleks can also be reduced and removed for filling raised beds, and that tree stump needs removing, and it too will go in the bottom of a raised bed.

The leaf's in the overflow leaf bin can be added to the main leaf bin as that has already dropped in level

These are the timbers that formed the removed 1.2m x 1.2m small bed where the new Daleks are now going, the rotted sections have been in the ground some 10 years. These timbers will go in the bottom of the next raised bed to be constructed.