Gardening Mentors

Has anyone ever experienced gardening mentors? Many new plot holders may or may not be beginners and would it not be a good idea if there were volunteers on sites who could take them under their wing and assist them for a year?

I am also writing a beginners guide to gardening and allotment gardening for new plot holders that will be given out with their rules.

anyone experienced that too?

 

Lol yes there are some miserable old do da's on allotments

 

Totally agree - that would be an excellent idea!

As a new plot holder, I am struggling so something like this would really help novices like me

 

Direct any new plot holders to Gardeners Corner, there is a whole heap of mentors here...just waiting for questions to be asked.

Steve...

 

lad the ari do good starter sheets for new plot holders

google the allotment regeneration initiative and look in their info area give them that and this site and they will have a good focus on what to do

Loopy

 

Ask me another!

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Some years ago when Gardeners World was in full flow about the only way is organic and it's a hanging offence to use nasty chemicals etc, every year we had a massive turnover in new allotment holders, all pre programmed saying " I'm organic and i'm not going to feed my family chemicals".

They knew absolutely nothing about gardening arriving in a plot waist high in weeds, with the usual pallets, bit of wood to make raised beds, poked around for a few days or weeks then dissappeared never to be seen again!

When some of us tried to give advice to make their lives easier, about using weedkiller, burning the weeds etc before they started making raised beds, we were told they knew what they were doing!

Funilly enough, now that GW is not so "facist" we no longer get their type, and over the last few years the new commers have got their plots in good nick (well almost all) and actually take produce from the plot, which was the idea in the first place!

We have an old bloke there now for just over three years, who works part time in a plant nursery and if I ask him about anything he usually give a reasonable answer.

His only problem is that he want's me to buy Moles seeds, that is commercial packs,10,000 hipsi cabbage seeds in a pack when I only need about fifty in a season!

Cheers