Steve’s Handy Hints Page
October 2007

Most plants cease to grow when the mean daytime temperature falls below 6 degrees Centigrade (43 deg F). This occurs usually during the latter half of the month, also November can be very wet with cold nightly winds giving us few good gardening days. Use any good spells to prepare for the winter, keep digging over any vacant ground, prepare an onion bed for next year they do like firm ground so let it settle over the winter. Plant an Aquadulce type broad bean for an early crop.

Start winter pruning of apple and pear trees, gooseberries and currants when the leaves have died off. Rhubarb can be propagated now by digging up and splitting into smaller pieces. Plant new fruit trees now while there is still some warmth in the soil

History of Allotments Part II

From 1750 to 1850 the population rose by over 70% reasons for this included the introduction of the smallpox inoculation, earlier marriage, child labour which gave more money to the family, and changes to poor relief using the price of bread and the number of dependants as a basis for payment. The increased population and the enclosure of common land led to a rise in poverty levels.

The Speenhamland system, named after a meeting held in Speenhamland in 1795, was intended to help the rural poor. Local magistrates devised a system to help the poor when grain prices rose steeply, grain prices could rise because of a bad harvest but merchants and hoarders were also blamed for the shortages.

Families were paid extra top up wages according to a table, this level was based on the number of children and the price of bread. The payment of this poor rate fell on the landowners of the parish concerned. They then found other ways of helping the poor like the workhouse funded through parish unions. The system was popular in the south of England and William Pitt tried to get the idea into legislation but failed.

A report of 1834 called the system a “universal system of pauperism”, because the system allowed employers to pay very low wages and the Parish would make up the difference and keep their workers alive. The workers low incomes were unchanged and poor rate contributors subsidised the farmers A series of poor laws were passed that eventually led to parish ratepayers paying £8m by 1850.

To be continued

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