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More successful dung-running.

If you already spend any time on your allotment then you'll know how handy a site loo would be. If you've your own shed then you'll be used to weeing in a bucket (and don't waste it, wee is an excellent compost activator) but the shedless either have to pack up and go home or expose themselves to the neighbours. For some of us it's really no great problem but it's not terribly satisfactory, but a lack of a site loo will actually make an allotment an impossibility for quite some number of folk.

The traditional flush-toilet is the familiar answer, but a flush loo needs sewerage. It's not such a difficult job to lay sewer pipe but it doesn't come cheap - I wouldn't expect any change from £10k for all the groundworks for a traditional loo if the sewer could be picked up in Glendale Avenue.

However, an increasingly popular installation on allotments is the composting toilet. NatSol have been installing quite a number of their toilets in allotments and the picture is one of theirs. A composting toilet doesn't need a sewer because - well, because it composts all of the tenant contributions which, after a year, is safe to spread on your roses. They sell a complete installation for £several thousand, but they'll also supply the essential components for a do-it-yourself installation and that can cost not much more than £1k which is way cheaper than a conventional affair.

Composting toilets are also more environmentally friendly than flush loos because they don't use water - a very big proportion of domestic water is used for flushing loos - and they don't produce effluent that needs large infrastructure, investment and energy to process. Composting loos are clean - and no, they don't smell if they're looked after - and the humanure they produce is actually useful as a soil conditioner.

The April edition of the Hungerford Environmental Action Team Food Group newsletter is available here.

Only it won't be in our street, it'll be on the allotment. It's not just a big self-catered lunch either, but you'll get a better idea from the official web site.

It's all part of the We Will If You Will campaign, a response from business and civil society to the challenge from Gordon Brown for us all to live more sustainably.



The Royal Horticultural Society are a big sponsor of the initiative and there's a new grow your own campaign to go with it called Eat Seasonably which is tied in with the Landshare campaign to get people access to land so that they can get growing.

If you have an allotment already then you know all about the benefits of growing your own and rubbing along with your plot buddies, but allotment waiting lists are already long and The Big Lunch is all set to drive demand ever higher. Landshare is the part of the campaign that creates the growing space, but it's not directly tied in with the allotment movement and that would seem to be a big opportunity missed because it's only the allotment movement that has the capacity and tradition to sustain the initiative.

Planning for The Big Lunch start now so please get in touch if you want to get involved.

The Landshare web site goes live after Easter so get in touch too if you're interested in creating a new allotment.

After some considerable negotiation I believe that we've now made progress on a framework for cooperation between the Council and Wash Common allotmenteers.  We'll begin discussions after Easter, so more news then, but for now I've taken down the posts on Rules and Rent because in time there will be a more appropriate forum to air those and other issues.  I'm grateful to the Chief Executive for his dogged determination to find an agreement which I'm confident will be a foundation we can build on.

The Falkland Shed Collective Ale Voice Choir are recruiting for members for a performance at the July 19 Big Allotment Lunch.  See Simon, plot 24A.

You have just over a week to enter your shed in this year's National Shed of the Year competition.  The Schedules is this:  Closing date for entries is midnight Sunday 3rd May.  Public voting for the catagory winners to go forward to the final judging begins 4 May and closes Sunday 21st June.  National Shed Week starts on 6 July with a week of shed-themed events and finishes with the announcement of the winner of National Shed of the Year.  Judging the event this year are eco architect Lloyd Alter from treehugger, Chris Evans from Radio2, Sarah Beeny from Chanel4's Property Ladder, Alex from Shed Working, Inventor of the wind-up radio Trevor Bayliss, Discovery Real Time's Salvager presenter Rico Daniels, Past winners Tim and Tony, and of course Uncle Wilco himslef, organiser of the event.

This year National Shed of the Year is supporting the National Dogs Trust which sprout is particularly pleased about.

Just under three months to go before The Big Allotment Lunch. Here's a page of resources from the national organisers with growing advice - remember it's a celebration of grow your own so the idea is to bring along stuff we've grown ourselves on site.

It's also a let-your-hair-down time with friends and plot buddies (if you have hair , that is) so it's also time to brush up on those juggling, singing, dancing, story-telling, poetry-reciting, unicycle-riding skills - because we're going to entertain ourselves too.

10 am Saturday 25th April.  If you have a trailer or 4x4 you'd be a real help, but come as you are.  If you can't even shovel then bring some flasks of tea and cake to refresh the workers and you'll get a divi just the same.

Thanks to Tony for organising our first Dung Day.  We had a variety of trucks and trailers, Bob with a capacious flat-bed, Julian with his unstoppable VW Syncro, and a convoy of estate cars filled with bags of dung.  And very good dung it was too.

If you still need some dung then we're thinking of doing some more dung running in April - watch the notice board.  If you've got a 4x4 and a trailer that would really help, but don't let that stop you getting involved if you haven't - just pitch in and you'll get a share.  And if you don't feel up to the effort that's not a worry either - bring a cake over and some flasks of tea and we'll cart some dung for you.

Landshare is getting close to launching its website.  There are several thousand plots of land registered nationally and soon they'll become available for gardening groups to begin cultivation.  This is how the picture looks nationally

That's staggering support.  In the mean time you can keep in touch with Landshare on their Facebook page and catch up with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall at River Cottage.