Make money from your allotment?

[alldigging]

Making money from your vegetable patch | Money | The Guardian

Schemes to help gardeners and growers sell their produce are growing in popularity

[Alison]

I found the article a bit sad, I don't grow as a hobby (admittedly a rather all encompassing one) and don't want to do it as a business. I know some people do and that's fine but not everything has to be about money and anyway, most lottie's don't allow you selling on your produce.

[veggiechicken]

The risk with ideas like this is that it will drive allotment rents up even higher. It will only need a few people to be seen to be using their plot as a business to ruin it for the majority. When I had an allotment, a man took on a plot just to grow coriander for the local Indian restaurants. He wasn't interested in anything else, or in anything to do with the allotments - just focused on coriander.

[Jamesy_uk]

Our allotment has rules against selling produce grown on the lotty to discourage commercial use and I for one agree fully. Allotment waiting times are stretched out long enough without wannabe Del boys running amok turning the place into a business.

[SarzWix]

I'm pretty sure that there's something in the 1950 Allotment Act which prohibits using an allotment 'by way of trade or business'? It is allowed to sell your 'surplus', but I think if that amounted to a regular income, then committees/councils would be within their rights to assume that you had more space than you needed to feed your family.

[vikkib]

Our allotments certainly have rules stating that you can't sell your produce.

I dread to think how high our plot rent would be if people thought they could try and make money out of them!

[Two_Sheds]

If people are growing to sell, then that's a business, and they must be registered as a business, and pay the appropriate tax too.


You always get one or two chaps who grow monocultures: ask yourself (or him) whether he really is going to eat 200 cabbages. Kick them off: allotments are for households to grow their own food, not for commercial purposes.

[Olorin2001]

The various acts of parliment prohibit the selling of allotment produce.
Most sites have such clauses in the rental agreement.
It goes against the whole concept of allotments.
But you can swap stuff, either with other allotment holders or the world at large.

[Gina's plot]

We can't at our allotment and I think it's a good thing that we cant

[Vince G]

As most people say, you're usually not permitted to sell your surplus from the allotment. We freeze our surplus or, in the case of non-freezable stuff, we give it away to friends and family. I will admit to striking a "veg for beer" deal with my regular pub, but only for surplus veg, and I don't get a great deal, I'd just rather it wasn't wasted. For instance I got 2 pints for a large tray of frizzy salad leaves a couple of weeks ago - would have cost them a tenner in a sealed bag from Bookers, so surely small scale bartering like this means everyone is a winner.

[pagangill]

I know my allotment site doesn't allow you to grow to sell like a business and like others on here I totally agree with that. I'd hate to see the rents go up due to that sort of thing and they should only be for you to feed your family.

[Soylent Green]

I don't own an allotment, I grow in my garden and I'm looking to buy a plot of land to extend my range and quantity of produce. Now I do sell/barter/swop my fruit and veg and this is all perfectly acceptable within the Permaculture community. When I sell fruit and veg it is to fund more gardening projects. Do I pay tax on my deals? No because it is pennies not thousands of pounds, I have never been unemployed or had any Government benefits so I feel that they get enough out of me. We live in a society that is draining the working class of this country dry, yet big business is free to make money in the most corrupt ways possible. If we returned to selling/bartering our surplus goods it would benefit our whole community. We could even help low income families to learn how to grow and cook rather than buying cheap junk food. Maybe the councils need to look at changing the rules on allotments. I'm not saying let people grow mono cultures and make massive profits, but rather helping growers to supply local business as part of a growers guild. Less air miles, less haulage costs? If we followed the example of Russia and Cuba most of our food would be grown locally reducing costs and the need for harmful chemicals and bland supermarket varieties that are always over shadowed by the spectre of GMO's.

[veggiechicken]

One way to sell your allotment produce is by adding value to it. - converting it into something else - jams, pickles tarts etc.
An idea that might appeal to local authorities, is to allow each allotment site to have a shop/stall/table where surplus produce and plants could be sold to the public with a % of sales going into the allotment site kitty and the remainder to the grower. This could subsidise the running costs and, perhaps, keep rents down.
Oh and, please don't tell on me, but when I had surplus veg from my plot I'd bring it home and put it outside the front gate with " Please put money through letter box". Does this make me a criminal?

[SarzWix]

Selling your surplus is already allowed, so there'd be no need to change rules or laws for that. It's down to local discretion as to when that tips over into 'by way of trade or business' I guess.

[Soylent Green]

I won't tell VC

I'm thinking now of all those care homes, hospices and other establishments that buy in 'cook chill' meals for their residents. How much better it would be if they could buy fresh fruit and veg from a local guild of growers. As VC says the money could be used to improve allotments or even buy more land, wouldn't that be a first allotments expanding rather than being closed and the land being redeveloped.