The Isle of Wight Council has issued guidance to allotment holders to reassure them that they can continue to use their allotments during the coronavirus crisis, but with some significant restrictions.
The most important thing everybody can do in the fight against coronavirus is to stay at home. Staying at home helps protect the NHS and saves lives.
So plot holders can undertake their daily exercise, they will still be allowed to visit their allotment.
Requirements to keep plots cultivated will be relaxed until further notice. So people who cannot visit their plot to cultivate it will have no action taken against them.
New instructions for plot holders include the following:
- Spend a short time on your plot, not all day
- If you are self-isolating you must not visit the allotments at all
- Work alone. No groups are allowed on site and only family members that live with the tenant can enter the site if the tenant is also present.
- Stay two metres (six feet) away from everybody else
- Do not share tools or enter anyone else’s plot even if you have had prior permission
- Visit the allotments to work on your plot, but not to socialise. Sheds and greenhouses must not be used for social gatherings but only for storage.
- Keep hand sanitiser with you and wash your hands regularly
- Use hand sanitiser or gloves before opening and closing any gates and handling padlocks
- Wipe your own tools after use
- Minimise the contact with other people, for example no handshakes
- Do not wash your hands in water troughs
More encouragement for people to be out and about tut tut essential surely not .
Can some one tell me why the range is open encouraging non essential shoppers to gather
Growing food to support your family is not essential.what a muppet, stupid comment, not everyone has been and hoarded a years worth of food, some of our allotments could feed multiple people
Not to mention the mental wellbeing of more cultured individuals. Something as simple as a trip to the plot can lift the spirits, and gives an awesome sense of accomplishment.
If you had an allotment you may appreciate that at this time of the year the plot is unlikely to have any crops.Sowing of seeds at home for planting out in April / May is usually taking place about now.By planning what you need to grow and how much elimates any excess, but if you end up with too much of say, potatoes or onoins they are shared with family / neighbors.
I’ve got a allotment. I work full time in a factory and this keeps me healthy mentally we never gather together especially in these conditions a lot of work has went into growing plants the last few months and would only take two days for everything to die give us a break we’re doing no harm
Lets hope people don’t start stealing food that others have toiled so hard to grow as supplies become ever limited. Many people get as much pleasure from growing as they do consuming, I hope people respect one another in these desperate days to come.
Does this mean the council will be reducing the frequency that they cut the grass at millers lane to once a year and not twice { if your lucky }.if so do we get a reduction in rent.
So you can drive to your allotment and mix with ten other people but you can’t drive to an isolated place (possibly closer to home than your allotment) and take a walk for exercise seeing nobody?
No but you an always drive to the range for a chat
you would be struggling to see ten people in any allotment at any one time you rarley see other plot holders even under normal circumstances.
My allotment is 5 minutes walk away its good for my depression and also good for my husbands deppression since he found out a year a ago hes got cancer advanced at that so the future is very uncertain.so it’s very good for the both of us it’s been a gods send so glad we.got it.
Nothing about traveling to the allotment in the car