East Ward Allotment Association

Don’t forget the swap this Sunday, 11 -12. Please bring seeds, seedlings and plants to swap and share, and meet your fellow plotholders.

The shop will also be open and will have tomato, pepper and cucumber seedlings from Cutteslowe Community Plant Nursery for sale.

The following seedlings from Cutteslowe Nursery will be for sale at the allotment shop this Sunday 12th May at £1.50 each:

Cucumber – Passandra

Tomatoes – Ailsa Craig, Gigantomo, Moneymaker, Shirley, Sweet Million

Peppers: Bomba, Sweet Banana, Delirio, Cajun belle, Bendigo

Aubergine: Moneymaker, Black Beauty

It’s that time again – you somehow have 8 courgette seedlings but none of your leeks came up! Rest assured, someone else has too many leeks, and their friend is in dire need of courgettes – bring what you have over to our annual plant swap, 11-12 at the shop on 19th May, and take what you need. If you have nothing to swap we will be taking donations for charity instead, but do bring what you can!

Have you seen anything weird growing on your plot lately? A plotholder on the top road (Howard St side) has recently discovered morels on her allotment and we are wondering if anyone else has them. They may have come in with the woodchip and shouldn’t do any harm to your plot. True morels are edible, but do check with someone well-informed before eating any!

At long last we have our new taps, many thanks to all those involved in organising this and to the council for getting the work done. The tanks are not all in place yet, please don’t flood the sites before we get that done (or afterwards either…). We are reliably informed that there are a lot of small stones left in the path which may interfere with the mowing – if your plot is next to one of those areas and you can see your way to raking it free of stones we would be very grateful.

Dear all

Thank you very much those who have offered to help with the event on 8th June. I would like to hold a planning meeting on the evening of 1st May at 7.30 at my house, 120 Reliance Way OX4 2FQ. Anyone who would like to help in any way is very welcome so please ask any allotment holders you know to come. If you have already offered help but are unable to attend please let me know

Best wishes

Mike

As it warms up we can expect the slow worms to start emerging from the nature reserve. You may find them in your compost heap, under any black plastic mulch, or basking anywhere warm. Remember, they are NOT snakes, nor dangerous. They are completely harmless to us, but do eat slugs.

They are beautiful and unusual, and also protected by law – please treasure them and encourage your allotment neighbours to do the same.

Hi all,

Some extra info re last weeks post on Lyme disease:

1. The plotholder concerned is up and about and doing ok with the help of antibiotics – our best wishes to her.
2. To transmit Lyme disease, ticks have to be on you for several hours. So a quick check on returning home and removal of any found is a good preventative. A newly attached tick looks like a little black pinhead – if they’ve been they for a while, more like a grey blister.
3. Ticks hang out in long grass – if you keep yours short and avoid walking through any on the way in, your risk is reduced.
4. We have been asked whether we can just get rid of the deer to remove the problem. Unfortunately there is no “just” about it and we don’t anticipate being able to do this. We have consulted with the City Council and been advised that permission for shooting would, not surprisingly, not be granted in a built up area, and that surrounding the entire site with deer proof fencing would be both extremely expensive and not necessarily successful. Members at one other city site did say that they had previously had a deer problem but none had been seen for a couple of years, so there is hope.

So, we hope for a full and fast recovery for the current victim, and advise everyone else to take care and keep an eye out for the little blighters (ticks, not deer).

A plotholder has recently been diagnosed with Lyme disease, a potentially serious illness, which they are believed to have picked up from a tick bite, on the allotment site. Lyme is transmitted by ticks, small blood-sucking creatures which also feed on deer, which as you probably know are present on our site.

If you notice a bite developing a bullseye colouration as shown, please consult your doctor straight away and ask about Lyme disease. With prompt antibiotic treatment, the more serious symptoms of the disease can be avoided. This colouration does not always occur, if you develop unexplained flu-like symptoms please also consult your doctor and again, do mention the possibility of Lyme disease

More information can be found on the government website here or the NHS site here.

Many thanks to Andy Howard for a highly informative and practical talk on summer pruning on Saturday. If you are winter pruning for growth, you should be summer pruning to manage it for fruiting!

If you missed the event but would still like to buy from Andy, his website is here .