With the cold weather upon us, our allotment has been put to bed for the winter. We have completed our last minute weeding which will make our lives easier in the spring. The fallen leaves have been collected from around our site, and they will be left to rot down as leaf mould to be used in the 2017 season.

‘Halstead In Bloom’ has given us dozens of geraniums and begonias from the town displays. We have chopped them back to the roots and re-potted them to over-winter in our greenhouse. They are already forming leaves and showing healthy growth.

The damaged polytunnel cover will be replaced in the spring when the days warm up and get longer. Again, thank you to the Halstead WI for the £200 to make this possible.

Our pallet skull fundraising project has netted £90 for us. This will go towards compost and soil improver at the beginning of the year. I was delighted to show a representative of the Jack Petchey organisation around our site. They were pleased with the tools purchased with Noah Parkinson’s award and the electronic irrigation system on our polytunnel supplied by James Donald’s award.

We are preparing ourselves for the RHS Rocket Project next Easter and will report on our experiments soon after. New members are always welcome. Come along and see what we do!

Mr S Pittuck