Groby Allotments

What Weather!

I’ve been picking my spinach ready-frozen this month – straight from the plot! It was impossible to dig any remaining carrots out of the ground and the kale was a bit worse for wear too, although sheltered by the enviromesh to protect it from the whitefly. The enviromesh singularly failed to keep the whitefly out, as usual (how do they get in I keep asking myself?) but it did protect from the frost, so at least the kale wasn’t ready frozen!

The New Year begins

I always love to see signs of Spring just around the corner. I even heard a woodpecker drumming noisily on an old tree recently. I love being able to start the produce year again by planting seeds. I’ve got my chilli and sweet pepper seeds ready to pop in the propagator and I’ve been busy buying my seed potatoes to sit up in the cold but sunny spare room and ‘chit’ in old egg boxes on the window sill. Chitting just means that you leave the potato tubers out in the light so that the ‘eyes’ start to grow into the new stems. Sitting the potatoes in old egg boxes to get them growing before you put them in the ground just gives them a good start but having a nice patch of warm ground to put them in will also help. Laying something on top of the ground beforehand will help such as weed membrane which acts like a duvet, keeping the soil a good bit warmer.

Annual General Meeting

This time of year also is the time to hold our AGM and we also collect all the plot rents for the coming year. This always means there is a bit of a change-round of plots, with some members deciding to downsize or give up and new people come and join us to become allotmenteers and start growing their own food. I imagine that this will be a popular prospect this year, having seen the food prices lately! We have a very short waiting list, so if you are interested, do come and see us and pop your name down for a plot.

Defibrillator

The allotments defibrillator is installed at last and will now add to the number we have around our village just in case that they are needed. In case you hadn’t noticed, it is on the side wall of the URC, besides the Chapel Hill allotment entrance. We have some CPR training lined up for a group of allotment and church volunteers which will also go through how the defibrillator works, but that is really just a case of familiarisation because the machine tells you exactly what to do and so no training on the actual defibrillator itself is needed. It is the CPR which requires training or updates, where you practice performing chest compressions on a dummy. I went to some CPR training recently and was amazed by the amount of effort required to do the chest compressions. I have had CPR training before when I was working, but perhaps I hadn’t remembered quite how much effort I used then (it was a while ago!) or I’m getting old and weak these days. I think I prefer to think that my memory failed me, or do I?

Carol Lincoln

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