Horticultural

Why all allotmenteers-in-waiting are not "almost-old people"

A Zoe Williams comment piece in Saturday's Guardian seems to have got allotmenteers' backs up - just to give you a taster, Allotmentality calls the piece a "sneering bilgefest". The paragraph that really lit the blue touch paper was this one:

I was amazed to discover that there are 100,000 people on the allotment waiting list. I've ummed and aahed for ages thinking of a way to say this, but there's only one: it must be all almost-old people. Mate, I am as soul sick as you are of people surveying their own generation via dinner parties, but I have canvassed all my friends and all my sister's friends which - I can verify with the aid of Facebook - verify is nearly 300 people (some of whom are the same), and the closest we have to an allotment is the following: one couple has a wormery; one has a field attached to her house in the country, but she is so unusual she has already been in Sainsbury's magazine. "She had her kids at 24," my sister said, as though the interjection of this knowledge said it all.

I've heard this argument before - "well I don't know anyone who grows veg/has an allotment". It usually comes from someone who lives in London and whose circle of friends is in London. Despite working in the capital for nearly 10 years I've never lived there, and among my circle of friends - both offline and online - I know quite a few people my age with allotments, or a veg patch in their garden, or a tomato plant or two on their balcony. So in my experience - which clearly differs from Zoe's - I'd suspect that the people waiting for allotments include a fair number of younger people and families. This was clear during my days on an allotment sit - every newly vacant plot was taken not by a retiree growing the holy trinity of leeks, onions and cabbages but mum, dad and the kids, a twentysomething woman, a father and son team - you get the picture./

A couple of the readers who commented on the piece* pointed out that newbies to allotments can be taken aback by the work involved in bringing an overgrown plot up to scratch - a fair point, and one I made repeatedly in my book. It also contributed to my reasons for giving up my allotment. I do worry that people think they can buy a few seeds and a fork and turn a brambly plot into a productive paradise with a couple of hours' work - anyone who's had an allotment knows that's madness. The answer - and this is particularly relvant if you are one of those 100,000 on the waiting list - is to start small and get growing in small spaces while you wai for an allotment to come up. It could be a few trailing tomatoes in a hanging basket, or a row of radishes in a windowbox, but it'll get you acquainted with the basic growing skills before you're let loose on your five or ten poles.

*Also loo out for commenter englishhermit's hilarious diatribe on slugs

I am now an ex-allotmenteer

My last day on the allotment was yesterday. 

I didn't feel as sad as I expected, partly because during my last visit I spent most of the time being attacked by ants who weren't very happy that I was dismantling their home, the sides of the plastic Link-a-Bord* raised bed system. In the pouring rain. Although I am sure the birds had a field day picking up all the ant eggs once I'd gone. The rain stopped, and I picked a lot of soft fruit and cleared lots of junk out of the storage box.

 

The other reason I had to give up my plot - not revealed before now because I fear jinxing it - is that within weeks I am moving house to a place with a garden (supposedly 70ft although it doesn't look that big to me) that will be more than enough to keep me busy in the next few years. And when I am ready to dive back into plotting, there are some allotments up the road from the new house I can sign up for. So giving up plot 176 feels like moving forward, not back.

So now I am starting to wind down my current garden (no impulse plant buying for me) and figure out how the hell I am going to get all my container plants to the new house. And how the hell do you transport a wormery (Can'O'Worms to be specific) full of worms and gunk? Current plan is to bungee it over an old blanket and possibly take the legs off.

*Link-a-Bord is great if you want a utilitarian raised bed rather than a pretty one, something that takes minutes to set up and doesn't require a hammer, and will never rot or fade. I can't see it working in my garden but it's perfect for an allotment.

Looking forward, not back, and a minor slug rant

i've been touched by the response to my decision to give up my allotment . Some people have tried to talk me out of it, but almost everyone was very understanding and recognised that . Emma Townshend of the Indie's A Nice Green Leaf blog wrote a lovely post bidding farewell to my allotment days and listing my "best bits", which was wonderful (I'd forgotten about that exploding pumpkin!) I will be keeping up this blog, and I am sure I'll still find plenty of horticultural matters to get my teeth into.

I visited the plot tonight for a brief recce of what needs removing before I hand in my notice and saw the Major for the first time in over a year. He looked the same as ever - a little ratty around the hind quarters, but generally sprightly. I'd assumed he was dead, so it was a welcome sight - just wish I'd had some food on hand to give him.

I should be able to harvest a good crop of garlic, strawberries and currants before I leave the plot for good, but seeing it again only confirmed my decision - there's bindweed starting an insidious romp across the chives and waist-high nettles around the compost bins. As I recognise in my book, allotments aren't for everyone - at this time of year it's several hours' work just to keep the weeds down, let alone grow anything - and right now, I have other things to do. I am sure I shall return to allotmenteering, but for now I am focusing on my garden. 

Speaking of which - will you permit me a brief slug rant? I Nemaslugged the whole garden the other week and yet the molluscs - like the zombies in Shaun of the Dead - just keep on coming, laying waste to my oriental saladini and French beans. Someone recommended New Horizon garlic granules the other day, but the downside is your garden stinks of garlic. I must reinstate a formerly semi-successful strategy, which has the other benefit of being free - grapefruit halves (the flesh already eaten) placed on the soil, cut side down. The slugs love them and crawl inside overnight. In the morning you can either chuck the fruit and the slugs away, or squish the slugs and put the fruit back for another crop the next night.

In the meantime, anyone tried the rather amusingly titled Slug Buggers? I can't quite believe there's a gardener out there who doesn't wish death on slugs, but perhaps I am wrong.

I never thought this day would come.

I went down the allotment on Monday - a very wet bank holiday - and by the time I came away I'd made the decision to give up my plot. I only had an hour to spare and as I tugged ineffectually at weeds I realised the enormity of the task. It made me feel depressed, not joyous, as allotment work usually did. It was time to let go.

I've been struggling for a while - I almost gave it up after my daughter was born but decided to keep going. But now, knowing that there's a list of a dozen or more people waiting for a vacant plot on my site, it doesn't seem right to battle on, letting most of the allotment revert to a weedy mess, when there are others desperate to get digging.

I just don't have the time these days - the times of being able to spend whole weekends down the allotment are gone, and I've decided that it's easier to focus on my small garden, which I can tend in the evenings or during the baby's nap time.

The raised bed area is still looking reasonably respectable, as are the blackcurrants which I mulched heavily in the spring, but everything else is becoming scarily jungle-like. So, the plan is this: use the next month or two until the currants and strawberries are ripe (must harvest them for my annual jamfest)  to slowly remove my raised beds (which, being Link-a-Bord, can easily be reassembled again in future elsewhere) and Freecycle the plastic compost bins and a few other bits and pieces. Then I'll give notice and let someone else take it on.

When I wrote my book on allotments, I cautioned against taking on a plot if you don't have the time to dedicate to it: and right now, that's me. I am hoping that I can grow some veg in containers in my small garden to keep the grow -your-own sprit alive, and that some time in the future I'll be able to get back to a plot.

I shall miss it terribly but I am sure I'll get some vicarious pleasure from reading all those other allotment blogs. This blog will keep going, of course - and I hope to bring you some news of what I am up to in my up until now largely neglected garden. Job one is to increase the size of the beds to accommodate more plants as they're very thin and miserly at the moment. I also need to try to find room for a compost bin in addition to my Can-O-Worms, but I think I'll go for a posh beehive-type one this time.

I also need to tell you about my clandestine comfrey-gathering exploits, but I'll save that for another post ...

Famous allotment keepers - name 'em

Actual hands-in-the-dirt gardening has been a bit thin on the ground of late around Horticultural Towers, for various reasons I shan't bore you with. The rabbit issue, not surprisingly, remains extant, although I really liked the idea of rubber snakes as bunny scarers, suggested by the Patient Gardener.

In the meantime, here's a bit of fun for you: I discovered recently via this interesting piece in the Indie (this site is down as I write, though) on allotments around the world that Albert Einstein had an allotment*. He even received an untidy plot letter, apparently. 

So, aside from George Monbiot, can you name some famous allotmenteers? According to Wipkiedia (which is not always reliable), we can count Alan Titchmarsh and Charles Dance (really?) among our ranks. Surely there are more? (Imagine having the Titch as your plot neighbour ... intimidating or what?)

*Thanks to the Garden Monkey for pointing this one out.

UPDATE: I was delighted to hear from Brian King who confirmed that Alan Titchmarsh certainly had an allotment, even if he doesn't now. Over to Brian:

To confirm, Titchmarsh had a plot on our site - Sunningdale Allotments - from 1977-81 when he lived in the area (while he was working at Kew); he was young(er) and not yet famous [...] He subsequently returned several times during the mid to late 80s (when his name was known) to judge and to show solidarity with plot holders when the future of the site was temporarily threatened in the late 80s. There is a picture of a younger and leaner Titchmarsh on one of his visits. I hope that he does not have a plot now, having several acres of his own!

Brian, who maintains the excellent Sunningdale Allotments website, is encouraging people to write a history of their local allotment site. You can read more about his plea in the "wiki" section of the Allotments4All site (look for "history of allotments") so do go and check it out.

Must newbie allotmenteers "do their time" on tricky plots?

I am just back from two weeks in Canada and feeling somewhat jetlagged in addition to a head cold, so forgive me if this post is a little less coherent than usual.

I have lots of posts buzzing around in my head, including my thoughts on my local council's new food waste collection scheme, an update on the wormery (find out how did the worms got on while I was away!) and a couple of book reviews, plus a look at the new Wiggly Wigglers catalogue, to which I am a contributor.

But for the moment what's got my attention is a piece by Garden Organic's Mike Thurlow in the latest edition of its publication The Organic Way.

In "The Slow Allotment" Mike criticises some of the false impressions created by some (unnamed - why?) books on allotments that claim that you can maintain an allotment with just a few minutes' work. I hope Mike wouldn't count my book among those titles - I am in total agreement that allotments "cannot be an extension to the school run and other 'no time, must hurry' lifestyles", and I say as much in The Allotment Keeper's Handbook, warning readers to think carefully about the serious time commitment involved before taking on a plot. Allotmenteering can never be "easy", although there are ways of making it less physically hard and time consuming (see my earlier post entitled The post-baby allotment for details).

One comment did rankle, however.

Mike says:

As for acceptable allotment behaviour, some of the advice given in these books, articles, and broadcasts is optimistic to say the least. To insist on the plot of your choice and not the one that you are first offered is precocious ... I know that all new plot holders have to be initiated into the system. This usually includes being offered one of the least attractive plots first and , then working your way through the pecking order. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

Well sorry, Mike - that may well be true, but it should not be that way. The "doing your time" philosophy is a sure-fire way to discourage beginners and newcomers - exactly the kind of people allotment sites must attract if they are to survive the onslaught of developer land grabs and become places where communities can grow their own food. The best plots should go to the newbies - let the really experienced allotmenteers use the expertise to tame the overgrown sites. Otherwise people are discouraged and never get the chance to develop their abilities and move onto more "difficult" plots. It's also worth pointing out, though, that on a lot of sites the resurgence of interest in allotments means that there will be a long waiting list, so the issue of choosing a plot simply doesn't come up - you get what you're given when you get to the top of the list.

I have been arguing for ages that my allotment site should provide "quarter" plots (of two and a half poles) so that beginners can take on a small patch of land and get that in hand before increasing their commitment - or not, if they don't have time for more land.

While in Canada I visited a family centre in Vancouver bordered by a community garden where the locals could rent a single raised bed of a metre or two square. It wasn't enough to feed a family of course but everyone had a chance to grow something, and most of all it was manageable. The days of 10-pole plots are over, except for those lucky enough to be retired and able to spend all day working on the allotment.

Now it's over to you ... what do you think?

The post-baby allotment: a new set of rules

So I guess I've realised that I need a new game plan for the allotment now I have a tiny person in tow. I came up with this set of commandments while down on the plot on Sunday.

1. Mulch, mulch, and mulch some more

I can't be doing with a lot of weeding this year - too much heavy labour, too time-consuming. So I am going to mulch heavily with cardboard, newspaper, grass cutting and straw - every patch I can, barring the raised beds which are fairly weed free. The accompanying pix are the before and after shots from an initial bout of mulching my blackcurrant bushes - thick layers of newspaper topped with compost from the heap. I am going to try growing potatoes through a mulch for the first time, too.

2. Don't feel guilty about buying young plants

Yes, I will sow from seed when and where I can, but it's better to concentrate on raising a few plants successfully myself than trying to do it all.

3. Do a bit of edging every time I go to the plot

I get really discouraged when things start to look scruffy - if I can keep things in hand little by little, it'll help me stay focused.

4. Turn the compost heap at least once every fortnight

I want to turbocharge my composting this year - not least because I need the compost for mulching etc, plus it's great exercise!

5. Focus, focus, focus

I tend to adopt a bit of a scattergun approach on my plot visits, and am easily distracted by small, unimportant tasks rather than the core things I need to be doing. So I am going to get the key things done first - sowing, harvesting, watering, pest control - and leave the repainting the toolbox etc for another day.

Finding seakale thongs

I've just discovered that Marshalls is now selling seakale thongs. I have been looking for somewhere to buy these for years as I'd love to grow seakale - it's one of those things that you can't find in the supermarket or even farm shops or box schemes, so it really is something to try at home - and reputedly delicious.

Anyone grow seakale and can offer some growing tips?

Why I like Oriental Saladini

Oriental saladini ... I have to admit to buying this particular packet of seeds largely because of the way the words roll pleasingly off the tongue. (Why saladini rather than salad? Answers below please!)

Thankfully, the leaves are a success in a horticultural sense, too. It's a pretty even mix of red mustard (my favourite), mibuna, pak choi, komatsuna and mizuna. I've cut and come again a few times but am expecting to visit the plot after a bit of an absence to find that things have headed up.

Having said that, it's been a bit frosty of late and this crop is unprotected in a raised bed so I am not sure what state it'll be in.

I've still not bought, let alone planted, any autumn garlic yet, and I wonder if I am way too late ... although if I can get my hands on some bulbs I'll probably throw caution to the winds and plant a few.

An allotment renaissance?

I am amazed it hadn't happened before now, really.

We (probably I, to be honest) have lost the tap key, that essential piece of allotment kit that allows us to turn on the tap near our plot when it's watering time. It's a little brass widget that goes on top of the tap, and small enough to be easily lost in long grass.

I wandered up to the town council offices last week with the tiny person in her pushchair to pick up another one for the grand sum of £2.50 and the person who deals with the allotment admin for the council suggested tying a string onto my new one to avoid losing it. I've gone one better - the new tap key is now wrapped in green shiny tape and boasts a gold sparkly ribbon so it'll stand out like a sore thumb. (No doubt I'll find the old one any day now ...)

Anyway, that wasn't really the point of this post. I got into a bit of a chat with the admin woman and asked about waiting lists for my allotment site. Apparently there's a 10-strong waiting list, and five new plots are being carved out on some idle land on the site to find homes for some of the prospective growers. That definitely represents a renaissance in interest in allotments where I live - when I got mine about five or so years ago there were a handful of vacant plots to choose from (and as you'll know if you've read my book, I made a bad choice in the one I picked!)

I know there's very often a big waiting list on London allotments but I wonder if this applies to the majority of sites across the country now?