Water,chickens,fences

Visited the site this afternoon after being away for a week and could see that my fellow allotmenteers have been very busy on their plots and with the site in general .

We've now got a rain water supply via the neighbouring garage roofs.

2 x 1000 litre IBC tanks in their locally sourced frame

Temporary lash up

Smaller blue barrels fed from Mick's garage roof

According to Martin, the two concrete council garage roofs at the near end of the site have a combined roof area of 18.4 square metres and with average monthly rainfall of 70mm to 85mm in the spring, a pair of tanks will fill in about six weeks. In the winter they'll fill in less than a month.

Helen managed to get the unframed IBC tanks for free.Martin and his friend Stuart set them up this weekend, which involved quite a lot of work unblocking drains,clearing the rubbish and brambles,creating a flat base for the tanks and making a strong wooden frame for them to sit in.According to Martin it's a work in progress with further adaptions to come.

We are also grateful to our site neighbour Mick for reattaching the guttering to the back of his garage and providing blue barrels for extra water collection! These are nearly full.

The individual plots are beginning to develop their own character with paths and beds taking shape and rabbit proof fences starting to spring up.

  Iv'e now got feathered neighbours.Apparently the chicken sexer still needs to determine which ones are females.

I formed the fourth heaped wide row in the top section this evening ,ready for planting up with the others in the next couple of days.
As a contrast I'm trying out planting on the flat in the next quarter section down and have started off with a double row of potatoes here.

 I'm doing a deal on the spare chicken wire to start rabbit proofing my plot.Initially the fixings might be temporary as in the longer term I want to board the long boundary to form a weed barrier.