TATA ran a stall at the Twyford Donkey Derby which was held on 16^th June. The whole event was well attended and the weather was kind as you can see in the photo. As the event was principally intended for children, TATA planned to use the event to engage with them and raise their interest in the pleasure of growing plants. Roger Lewis did a commendable job of developing kits for children to grow plants from seed. The kits (seeds, compost, growing containers and instructions) were given free to any child. Many thanks to Roger for interesting so many children in the kits and the joy of growing plants.

Also, many thanks to all who volunteered to man the stall and a particular thank you to Steve Loyd for pushing the TATA barrow all the way from his home to the King George V playing fields. The barrow caused a lot of interest and drew visitors to our stall.

In parallel to interesting children in growing plants, we used the event to raise some funds for TATA. We’re very grateful to all members who provided items for sale – vegetable plants, lavenders and hazel stakes all sold well. We made a profit of £93.50 on the day.

Annual General Meeting

We'll be holding our AGM on the 22nd October at Loddon Hall. The agenda will be emailed to members in advance. Hope to see you there!

Talk on "Seeds and Germination"

2024 Pumpkin Sale!

We will be holding our 2024 Pumpkin Sale on Saturday 26th October from 10am to 4pm. Like last year it will be held at Jubilee Corner in Twyford which is next to the Bulldog car dealership.

All pumpkins will have been lovingly grown by allotment holders in Twyford. Not only will there be carving type pumpkins ready in time for Halloween but there will be edible varieties great for stews and soups!

TATA Barbecue on Saturday 10th August

Twyford Village Fete

Come and meet TATA on Saturday 17th August 2024 at the Twyford Village Fete at Stanlake Meadow. The fete brings together the Twyford community, allowing residents to interact with local businesses and charities and in previous years, has helped to raise over £2,000 for local charities.

Thanks to our generous members we will be selling a great choice of fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers lovingly grown on Twyford allotments. 

2023 Pumpkin Sale

Cunningly timed for Halloween, we are holding our annual "Pumpkin Day" on Saturday October 21st.

Ie: we'll be selling pumpkins (and squashes) at Jubilee Corner, opposite Twyford Waitrose, from 10-4, Sat 21st - to raise funds for TATA, and spread pumpkin joy.

We always have a wide range of far more interesting varieties than in the shops - tastier too:

If members have any pumpkins or squashes they'd like to donate to this good cause, please leave them by the polytunnel door (up near the car park), any time in the week before - many TIA.

And do come see the stall and chat!

>>>> Ongoing things:

Polytunnel / Plot 4 at Hurst Road Allotments

The Polytunnel on Plot 4 (two plots down from the car park) is for TATA members' communal use. It's for seedlings in Spring, then over Summer for hothouse plants like tomatoes chiilies aubergines etc. By all means put some things in there if you want to -

- the front door isn't perfectly hung and opens/closes by friction at the moment, not by the wooden bar. When you open the door, connect the bungee (on the stake) to the inner handle, to stop the door blowing around in the wind
- you'll see that people tend to use trays, eg growbag-width, to keep plants/earth off the flooring (and sometimes to keep water round the plants) - if you wouldn't mind keeping to a couple of these tray-widths each please, in Spring, till each May anyway (say) while others get started too, that'd be much appreciated
- on hot days, leave the door open; but if a cool or cold night is coming, do close the door again when you leave. When it gets hot in summer we tend to leave the door open (bungeed) all day day; we're especially sure to always close it in spring/autumn if there are really cold nights due (a hint of frost would be a disaster of course)
- there's a water-butt in there (and two more outside on Plot 4) that you can use
- in winter it may be a bit boggy, or even flooded(!) due to the unfortunate "car park river" mentioned elsewhere.

But please do come and use a tray or two to help you get seeds/seedlings going, or give you hotter, blight-protected tomatoes (etc) in summer. [Or I'll happily show it to you, if you like - let me know - Nick Healey, 07775 762998]

New communal area @Plot 9A - and toilet at Hurst Road Allotments!

Wokingham Council and Twyford Parish Council have got together to help improve the Hurst Road site, partly in the shape of a new Communal area on plot 9A.

It has a composting toilet, fully working! (If they're new to you, look them up, as there's no plumbing/flushing - they're just - "different" :)

Skip, Skip, Hooray

The second and final skip hire of the year was very popular and went smoothly. Thankyou to the Parish Council for arranging and paying for it, to the TATA members who "policed" it, and the lovely allotmenters who kindly "obeyed" the list of banned items.

Back next Spring, all being well!

The "Car Park River": we have to find a solution ourselves

You may sometimes notice water in various unexpected places, flowing across the car park and in a line all the way down the railway-side plots. It can strip topsoil, and leave plots (and the polytunnel) under standing water.

The water appears under the hedge near the main road after heavy rain.

There's always been an underground watercourse down the railway edge of the allotments; plotholders often encounter it, a spade-deep or so. It seems likely the water has found a new escape course. This may be because of changes made to the banks, over time, after the car park was built.

(Water sometimes surfaces in the garden of the house across the road, too. And this corner of the road is a little hollow, as you may have noticed when heavy rain also causes a huge puddle across half the road.)

We've tried a little drainpipe in place to move the flow of water more towards the edge of the plot, to be the far side of a faint "rise" in the carpark. Our next step will have to be a few of us with spades, though, to engineer a longer draipipe-enabled gully to take the water to the edge of the plot - which might or might not "work".

PS just above where the leak happens there's a drain, always with audible rushing water, which we long suspected - but it's unlikely to be the cause as (a) it's a Foul drain, and (b) Wokingham Council and Thames Water confirmed to the Parish Council (2022 I think) that all their "stuff" in the area is intact and unblocked. (And (c), the underground stream is right there too.)

And even if it *were* possibly a problem with the drain: if you've noticed Thames Water in the news recently - no intention of fixing leaks, and £50billion in the red - you'll know we couldn't rely on them to fix things for us anyway. ~

>>>> FYI:

Insurance

Every TATA member is insured for accidental damage/cost they may cause to others while allotmenting, via the National Allotment Society (NSALG) Scheme (TATA is a member of NSALG, and £3 of your membership goes to them). We're just now aligning our TATA membership renewal date with theirs (ie October) to ensure that everyone is insured for the whole year.
The insurance covers applicable cases whether they're friendly/accepted incidents, or whether (heaven forbid) things involved the courts.
The insurance applies only for the named TATA person, alas, so if you're a couple (say) who'd both like to be insured, we can arrange that for a further £3.
TATA is separately insured (eg for events it holds) with an insurance policy at Chris Knott.

The "starter plots" on the Community Plot

There are a few very small "starter plots" on Plot #4, the Community Plot (where the polytunnel is). These tiny plots are run by the Parish Council. If you know someone who's thinking about the idea of allotmenting, these are the perfect way to try it out - ask the Parish Council, if you/they are interested.

>>>> General  TATA info:

Reminder - who does what, at the allotments
- The Parish Council own and manage the sites, and manage the tenancies
- TATA try to coordinate feedback, improvements, fixes, extra fundraising, fighting off the threat of Train Station car parks, etc, for the benefit of our members, and for the allotments in general. (Plus sociable stuff.) So we're very friendly with the Parish Council (and one or two people are members of both).

Other Twyford organisations (allotmenting-related)

- Twyford & Ruscombe Horticultural Association (TRHA) is for all gardeners, and has several hundred members. They operate a great-value supplies shed, by the Surgery, on a Sunday morning in season; it's well worth being a member even just for this. Visit www.trha.org.uk 
- Twyford Growers are a group encouraging wellbeing, and reducing stress and anxiety, by growing together at a Hurst Road allotment plot. Visit www.twyfordparishcouncil.gov.uk/twyford-growers-2/ 

Electronic records / GDPR Statement

All our record-keeping is now on computer, and our data is stored in a GDPR-compliant way: all data is password-protected, the password shared between Chair Treasurer and Secretary, and with off-site backups kept; you can ask any of us to see the data we keep (it's just contact details) at any time, and/or to delete any/all of it. (In addition, we only keep any previous years' records for two years.)

Plot 20A on the Hurst Road site hosted this years’ TATA BBQ and Pizza Get Together. For a whole week beforehand a bonfire smouldered continuously getting rid of overgrown vegetation, couch grass and the most unwelcome bindweed.

What a terrific turnout at the village fete yesterday! The TATA stall boasted a wide variety of allotment produce, flowers, plants, jams and chutneys and homemade cakes. In addition to the edibles, we ran a ‘guess the weight of the marrow’ competition and a raffle with prizes including a box of fruit and vegetables, a sultana cake, free-range eggs and jams/chutneys and a bottle of wine.

TRHA put on a spectacular Autumn Show this year. Well done to all TATA members who entered!

There were some fantastic award winning entries in a number of categories including heaviest pumpkin (affectionately known as ‘Big Bertha’ – Malcolm – hope your back recovers …), first in class parsnips (a lot of patience required to dig these up!), melt in the mouth boiled fruit cake, scrumptious chutney and divine plum jam. A TATA family member even won 1st prize for ‘arrangement of weeds in a jam jar’.

Summary In April 2016 an allotment plot was planted with osiers (willow) to recreate a bed to allow first-hand experience to be gained of a once thriving village industry. The three species triandra, viminalis and hybrid red will provide willow suitable for such applications as basketwork and willow sculptures.

Membership of TATA is open to anyone that wants to support the association, regardless of whether you have an allotment. Find out more here

There can’t be many Twyfordians practising the same skills that their great-grandparents used, but you’ll find dozens of them down at the Hurst Road Allotments. Tucked in a corner between the train station and the Twyford Brook, church records show that the land was first rented for allotment use in 1887. The landowners were from the Palmers of Sonning, and in 1913, after one particular Wade-Palmer escalated the rents, Twyford Parish Council stepped in to purchase the land and keep it as allotments for the good of the community.