[The Golden Heap]

Do any council run or privately owned sites have any ruling about blight, for example asking growers to cut them down once blight has commenced? This could reduce it spreading, last year it was a plague and about a quarter of all plots just left all their rows standing!  Is it a reasonable request to ensure people respond to blight.

[surbie100]

Not on ours - voluntary managed. leased from council.

[m1ckz]

yes   ours have a rule,if there not seen to in a few daye the council get to do it themselves and charge for this

[mumofstig]

Council owned here, and there's no rule.

[Eblana]

First year that our site was opened the owner sprayed for Blight as soon as got a blight warning from a local farmer - there was blue murder from some plot holders.  Next year he left it and there was blue murder from the same people from the previous year because their potatos fell foul of blight - can't really win!!  Last year it was my turn to have blue murder!!!  He introduced a rule that you have to remove at first sign of blight but one of my neighbours very kindly removed all the hulms and stacked them in the compost heap beside my plot and they were there for a few days before anyone noticed (luckly I had sprayed and managed to stay blight free until August when they were a decent size).  This years rule is remove and destroy off site but most of us are starting on the blight resistant varieties in prep for the outlawing of blight spray.

[richy]

We are council owned and there are no rules, bit of a * really, i chopped mine down to help reduce the spread where as others just left theirs.

[aelf]

No rules on our site either. I lost about a third of my crop to blight last year and most others on our site were the same. Some removed deseased haulms and some didn't but I'm not sure it would have made much difference either way last year as things were so bad. We have a lot of farmland within a couple of miles of our site and whole acres of potatoes were blighted and left to rot in the fields 

[The Golden Heap]

Should I recommend to the council that's runs and owns my allotment that action should be taken or am I wasting my time ?

[Yorkie]

You could try but I wouldn't get your hopes up.

We don't have any such rule, and to amend the contracts takes over a year to do so (sufficient notice has to be given) at minimum.  Then there's the question of ensuring everyone knows what blight looks like, making sure everyone knows that blight is around at any one particular time, and then enforcement.

[Stewpot]

If you spray against blight you may be ok, but 2012 was as bad as it gets. You can not lay the law down about cutting the haulms back. Allotmenteering is as good a hobby as it gets, we do not want to get into to many rules and regulations. But gardeners must use their common sence.

[plot53b]

Our site doesn't have a rule, but when I took on the plot, the secretary told me that if I got blight, I should remove the infected tops, bag them up and take them home and put them in the council compost bin. She made it clear that leaving the blighted plants would just help spread to my neighbours.

I think it could be confusing for some if they are not 100% sure if they have blight, but I don't think allotments are usually the place where people are shy about giving some advice 

[sunshineband]

No rule here on our council owned site... wish there was though