Allotment News

Summer Swap Shop

When: Sunday mornings 10:00 to 12:00 starting this Sunday 31st July - ending sometime in September

Where: Outside the Trading Hut, W Byfleet allotments

What: A opportunity to bring and take - excess plants, crops etc.

How Does it Work

There will be a table set up outside the trading hut for you to leave excess plants and produce you can find no other home for. If there's something there you are short of and will make good use of, then feel free to take away.

As a trial, there are no rules other than common sense.

The process works on swings and roundabouts - if you don't have anything to swap on the day, but can use what's there, then take your share - another day when you have something to swap you can leave it on the table.

It's all about not wasting and being reasonable.

A member of the committee will be available or nearby to help.

Leftover items at the end of each Sunday will be donated to a local charity/home etc.

Summer Sale

To clear stock we are selling off growbags and compost - it all bought fresh this year.

Compost: 2 for £10

Growbags: 3 for £5 While stock lasts.

An increasing number of plot holders are getting blight on their potato and tomato plants.

This blight is an airbourne fungus that gets a grip in warm damp conditions. You may be able to keep it at bay by spraying with Bordeaux mixture every couple of weeeks from June onwards, but it's no gurantee.

Unfortunately, once it's got a hold there's no stopping it. Advice from experts is to destroy affected plants by burning them. Or taking them to Martyr's Lane tip, as their composting system will almost certainly generate sufficient heat to destroy the spores.

Do not put affected plants in your compost - the spores can live at least three years, and so the compost will infect future plantings.

Here's what the RHS say about it

The results of the Tunis Cup have been published early this year.

Overall Best Kept Allotment Site

(Points are out of 60)

1. Derry's Field 50
2. Knaphill 48
3. Winern Glebe 46
4= West Byfleet 44
4= Goldsworth Park 44
5. Sheerwater 43
6. Eden Grove Road 33
7. Maybury 26

Last year West byfleet came 4th. 

Each year Woking Borough Council run an allotments competition, the Tunis Cup.

Categories are:

• Overall Best Kept Allotment Site
• Ted Smith Shield (best plot in the borough)
• Leam Challenge Shield (Best 1st year plot holder)
• Benstead Scroll (Best cultivated plot for an over70 year old)
• Ashley Slococock Prize (Best ladies plot)

This year judging will be done on the 29th June.  The results will be announced in the autumn.

As part of their community badge, Sheerwater Scouts turned up with forks spades, trowels and (of course) shears for an allotment evening.

Twenty one scouts with energy and enthusiasm to spare helped clear a weed ridden plot for a grateful plot-holder.

The photo show them at the end of the hours dig having cleared away weeds that were over a metre high.  See the photo gallery for scouts in action.

Well done and thanks everyone!