Page 48 - ALG Issue 4 2022

North West
Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire
REPRESENTATIVE
Mr John Irwin
16 Parkdale Ave, Audenshaw, Manchester M34 5LW
0161 3207779 jirwin.nas@gmail.com
MENTOR
Vacant
Contact natsoc@nsalg.org.uk if interested in volunteering with the Region
Our rainwater collection project:
Brighton Grove
Brighton Grove is a self-administered allotment of 47 plots, situated in the centre of Manchester. We are wildly oversubscribed, so we now offer half and quarter plots so as to include as many enthusiasts as possible, and have well over 100 tenants,
It is a little paradise. ‘Somewhere you can think’ is a lovely comment from one plotholder. It acts as a green corridor between two large parks. We try to be environmentally friendly with wildflower verges, communal compost bins, and individual water butts on many plots, a composting loo and peat-free compost for sale in the shop. For some years, Manchester City Council has banned the use of allotment hoses. Despite this, we were aware we were still using a lot of mains water.
At 2021 RHS Tatton Park Flower Show, United Utilities had a stand offering some fabulous little reusable water bottles. Having got my bottle, I asked whether United Utilities provided additional water collection containers for allotments. “We will find out,” they said. A couple of days later I had a phone call offering some water butts. “Nothing bigger?” I asked. This led to a further conversation, where we agreed
that our lovely allotment could be part of a rainwater harvesting pilot project, where we worked with United Utilities to develop a solution to reduce mains water use for gardening and growing.
We soon had one of their teams on
the allotments mapping our rainwater collection facilities, plotting our
water butt positions, checking the greenhouses and sheds for suitable down pipes and guttering, and working out space for the planned IBCs (individual bulk containers). The result is magnificent. Our allotments now have 22 1000L IBCs across the whole site. Half of these are filled from rain off roofs via guttering, and half have free-standing bright yellow funnels to catch the rain.
Despite the lack of the usual North West rain since their installation this spring, they have still been invaluable, providing us with that extra bit of water during a very hot summer. To complete the project, we are altering all our standpipe taps to only flow when hand pressed, so there will still be mains water on the site but we hope with a considerable saving.
Susi Madron, BGAA Secretary
From fork to plate
Grosvenor Museum Sustainability Event began as one in a series of talks to be given to the public as part of Chester Museum’s summer schedule. I thought it would be a good dress rehearsal for the talks we were to give at the Tatton Show, although it never turned out exactly as I imagined.
The first part of the talk was based around the recipe books in the Cheshire Archive, and this was fascinating. They have some really old recipe books, some handwritten, some printed and some ‘forgeries’ printed for profit, but without the author and publisher’s permission.
The recipe that was used as an illustration was for a vegetable pie using beet leaves, spinach, onions etc.
Then they handed over to me and we talked about the benefits of allotment gardening, and the best ways to grow the crops used in the recipe.
There were a good smattering of attendees, and as it was given in a banked lecture theatre, it was just like being back at college. All attendees went away with either a perpetual spinach plant, or a coloured chard red or green, or one of each. The questions
were probing, but the main ones centred on: “How do you get an allotment?” A question we were to hear repeated frequently at Tatton during the following fortnight.
They must have liked the talk as they want another on the History of Allotments with a “Chester Focus” but that one has yet to be researched and written.
John Irwin
48 Allotment and Leisure Gardener
Welcome to our new members...
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