Cheltenham & District Allotment Holders Association
Good gracious me, it’s suddenly got dark. Well perhaps not suddenly the night seemed to be closing in from the 1st of October and the close of day cloud encouraged it and now the clocks have changed. October was a funny month with some pleasant days and some fairly cold nights, with the frost neverRead More
What a muddle of a month we’ve had, a few bright moments, but my goodness when it has rained, we’ve known all about it. There has been a sense of autumn for weeks and trees laden with berries from quite early. It is almost as though the seasons have slipped forward a month. Certainly thereRead More
Well, August was a funny old month wasn’t it? The heatwave seemed long lost by the second week and it rained. The nights began to close in too and there has been a real feeling of autumn some days, with the temperature dropping close to single figures. There were berries everywhere you looked, with hedgerowsRead More
Wow, that was a hot one! The dry spell was punishing, indeed quite debilitating for a day or so and just for a moment gardeners stopped. We sold a lot of ice cream. Every splash of rain raised the humidity too, which has been great for the pests and diseases. Crops have continued to grow,Read More
How mad this shrinking calendar! I remember clearly the conversation that I had with my Dad, the one when he told me that ‘the years would fly by’. He wasn’t wrong, this year the nursery is 70 and I have worked the site for almost 44 years. Is it really July already? Of course itRead More
This year the meeting was held in Bath and I was asked to represent C&DAHA. There were representatives from societies and associations across the country. There were the usual formal reports from officers including the Treasurer who reported an £80,000 surplus for the year following a £29,000 deficit in 2016. The President for the nextRead More
The days roll by and May, the busiest of months for gardeners (both amateur and professional) slips behind us. The month was fair, with one or two teasing frosty punctuations that bashed early beans and crumpled the tops of emerging spuds, but they are coming back. The ground still awaits news of good rain andRead More
April bounced along, in fact it flew once Easter had arrived. The late Easter was the starting pistol and we had the benefit of a few weeks of light evenings ahead of it to prepare. So many people use it as the start time for gardening, so there were many lined up for the chargeRead More
Hooray, the clocks have changed and April is upon us. The last month seems to have flown and a few balmy days really brought life swiftly to the hedgerows. Catkins came from nowhere and the land was suddenly alive. The trees were full of bantering birds, of males showing off and jostling for attention andRead More
So February carried on where March left off and the teeth were bared to remind us of the treacherous unpredictability of our winters. Snow flurries punctuated the month of February and night temperatures teased around freezing. Life is returning though and a couple of warm afternoons brought midges out across the pond and one orRead More