The Scottish Allotment Diary

Dick Youngson of the Nairn Allotments Society tells us that Highland Council have agreed to lease another 0.9 hectares of agricultural Common Good Land adjacent to the Society’s original allotment site.  This will give them an additional 37 plots (200 m2 and 100 m2), and, if you add last year’s Mill Road Site (30 plots) there will be a total of 100 plots in Nairn.
The Scottish Garden Scheme (SGS) have invited the Society to open Mill Road to the public – it is a very attactive site – it will be open Sunday 22 July 2013 at 1200 – 1600 hours, with teas and cakes + stalls.  Watch out for advertisements nearer the time.

Are you looking for an excuse to get out into the allotment, even though the ground is frozen solid and no crops are harvestable?  At least two wildlife organisations are looking for people willing to monitor wildlife through the winter.

The winter recording period has started for the Garden Moth Scheme.  You can buy, beg or borrow a moth trap and start to take part as soon as you want to.  There are a growing number of recorders helping to monitor changes in moth abundance and distribution across Scotland. Find out more at
http://gms.staffs-ecology.org.uk.

Winter is also a great time to look out for empty snail shells and discover which of Scotland’s 147 species of nonmarine molluscs have been ‘racing’ round your allotment! The Conchological Society website has lots of useful information on finding and recording slugs and snails. http://www.conchsoc.org/node/3