[Christine]

I don't think that it's just Growmore that is rising in price as mentioned elsewhere. Over the last season it's been noticeable that a lot of the non organic chemicals have risen in price across the board. It's been blamed on the high price of oil affecting the manufacturing costs as so many things that are sold by garden centres and such are by products of the petro-chemical industry.

This is going to put pressure on all those sources of free items that we gain from many sources - manure from the local stables, chicken and pigeon poo, leaves to sweep up for composting, friends who want to start their own compost heap rather than give us items for our one down the allotment .....

I wonder if people will suddenly realise that they can sell those plant pots at car boot sales rather than give them away on freecycle along with all those oddments that we now scrounge free.

I'd not be surprised to see an all round rise in the price of seeds as well.

It could suddenly make allotment holding somewhat more expensive by a considerable degree no matter how little we seek to use chemicals.

[madcat]

But then - veggies are going up in price too.  It is just life that is getting more expensive ..    oil, banks, labour costs, taxes ....  all rising and the end consumer picks up the tab.   I will now stop, before this has a chance to get political.  For those of us in the UK, we are going to get politics up to our eyeballs in the next few months!!   

[Aidy]

I don't think manure from stables will be a problem to be honest, one of my patients has to pay £15 a ton to have it removed, he glady gives it away, if he charged for it then demand would drop to a point where he is again having to pay for it to be taken away so really its not in his interest.

[little sweetpeas]

I don't think manure from stables will be a problem to be honest, one of my patients has to pay £15 a ton to have it removed, he glady gives it away, if he charged for it then demand would drop to a point where he is again having to pay for it to be taken away so really its not in his interest.

A farmer friend has an organic beef farm and charge all the allotments in the area £20 for a trailer load or £30 for 3.5 tonnes.

Even making deliveries everyweek all year round he's still always got three huge piles on the go. HE's kept it these prices for at least 4 years

We're happy with the price and he's happy he gets about £3500 a year from the manure and told me that he could do with a few more orders to rid of the stuff.

[cob nut]

At our alloment site we get regular deliveries of horse manure free of charge, huge trailer loads of it 

[NigelB]

 Hi Christine.
Interesting questions..
The part that caught my eye though, was the following:.....

I wonder if people will suddenly realise that they can sell those plant pots at car boot sales rather than give them away on freecycle along with all those oddments that we now scrounge free.

I suspect freecycle has a 'hard'-core of followers that are into the freecycle lifestyle, and almost any amount of rises in fuel prices won't stop them giving stuff to each other.
Much in the same vein as car-booters.,. You see them out in all weather, neck-deep in mud, with horizontal rain bouncing off their frozen faces, saying 'I'll give you 50p for it, if you'll carry it to the car'.
Freecyclers swap-stuff-and-meet-people. It's part of the package. It's what they do.

[Elaine G]

There is a notice appeared at our site offering manure delivered for £60 for a trailer!
Way out of my league.

Elaine