by Terry Walton
There weren’t that many different varieties available to us and you grew what everyone else grew. I remember ‘Scarlet Emperor’ was the only runner bean, for example, we all grew ‘Ormskirk’ savoys and the spring cabbage was ‘Flower of Spring’, and you had very little option of growing anything else. The onions – ‘Sturon’ sets or seed – and ‘Golden Gourmet’ shallots were the same on every plot.
These days most allotments have a communal shed or shop where you can buy a whole range of seeds and equipment. We had a hut in the fifties, but this only really sold lime. Other things didn’t come in until a decade or so later, when the Glamorgan Association of Allotments was formed, with their main store in Cardiff. All of us bought shares in the venture to help it start up, and they would trade in bulk to the allotments.
That was when bamboo canes and equipment like that began to appear on the scene. But even the association used to send up the seeds not in packets but loose in sacks for us to weigh out. Later they expanded their range of fertilizers to include sulphate of ammonia, bonemeal and Growmore, or National Growmore as it was called then. Like the lime, bonemeal and other fertilizers came in ordinary hessian sacks for weighing out, and this was as dusty as crazy. Nor were the sacks easily manageable because each weighed a full hundred-weight (50 kg).
The hut was there strictly for business. There was no provision whatsoever for brewing coffee and sharing words of wisdom. Members were very kind and willing to pass on their information and experience, and they would always help each other. But they rarely sat down together to discuss the bigger issues of the world, and there was never the strong social element that is a popular part of the allotment scene everywhere today.
Most of the men, like my father, were simply too busy, because they were there for one purpose only, to grow the food they and their families depended on for their daily dinners. But I do believe that anyone who keeps an allotment for any length of time must also have an innate love of growing things. It never ceases to fascinate me that you can take a small amount of dust-like seed, bury it in the soil, see small green shoots appear as a result, and then watch them mature into wholesome vegetables to grace your dinner plate.
It is this bonding with nature and all things natural that makes gardening a lifelong passion, and you either love it or, as some strangely do, loathe it. That’s why people come and go regularly on allotments, but there are always a few who make a lifetime of it.
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Rules of the Partridge Road Allotments Society (c.1920).
1 The Society shall be called: ‘The Partridge Road Allotment Society.’
2 That the Committee has the right to be the ruling body.
3 That each member’s rent of 7/- [35p] per plot, per annum, be paid by the 31st March each year.
4 That all plots shall be fully cultivated except where allocated for keeping of poultry.
5 That each and every plot must have a path 18 inches [45 cm] wide, which must be kept clean, i.e. free from stones and rubbish. The paths to be kept clean are the bottom and left-hand paths looking towards the mountain.
6 That no trees shall overhang the paths.
7 That an allotment holder be allowed a tool shed and/ or a greenhouse, of reasonable size and appearance, but must apply for permission to erect same.
8 That we adhere to the National Allotment Law.
9 That the Annual General Meeting be held in November of each year, when all members are expected to attend.
10 These rules will be strictly enforced and any members failing to comply with same will be dealt with by the Committee, who have the right to give notice to quit.
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Terry’s Tip for February
Waste not, want not
IF YOU ARE LIKE ME, all the old plastic labels you used for marking up the various plants throughout the season end up in a jumble in a tray on the greenhouse shelf or under the staging, covered with the written records of all the different varieties you grew during the year.
Don’t throw them away! Take them indoors one wet day when you can’t get on outside, and beg the use of the kitchen sink for an hour or two. Fill the sink with warm soapy water and let the labels soak while you make and drink a cup of coffee.
Then take a piece of fine wet-and-dry sandpaper and gently erase all the writing. Remember to clean off all the old soil too, because good hygiene is important when sowing seeds. Put the labels on the draining board until you have rubbed them all up like new, and then swill them thoroughly in clean water and allow to dry.
With this annual treatment the same labels can be used over and over again for several years. What a tight lot we gardeners are!
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Anthea’s Recipe for February
Leek, Onion and Potato Soup
THIS IS A GREAT winter warmer, using vegetables that should be available fresh from the ground or out of store.
2 large leeks
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
1 medium onion, diced
1½ pints (900 ml) chicken stock or water
½ pint (300 ml) milk
2 oz (50 g) butter
2 tbsp cream
salt and pepper to taste
Trim the tops and roots of the leeks and wash thoroughly, removing all soil; slice quite finely.
Gently melt the butter in a large saucepan, and add the leeks, potatoes and onion, stirring to mix them all together. Season with salt and pepper, cover and sweat over a low heat for 15 mins.
Add stock and milk, and simmer for 20 mins or until the vegetables are soft.
Pour the mixture into a liquidizer and blend to a purée; pour back into the saucepan and reheat slowly.
Serve with warm crispy bread. For extra colour, snip some chives on to the soup just before serving.
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CHAPTER THREE
My Apprentice Years
FOR MANY PEOPLE in the fifties, growing your own food was one of the essential facts of life, not a hobby or leisure activity, and my father would go up to his plot as part of his responsibility of providing for us.
I already enjoyed gardening in all its aspects, so as often as not I’d be there with him, helping or amusing myself until I was bored. I never went there on my own or spent time unattended on his plot, because the gate was locked and he had the key. Anyway, I don’t think the other members would have wanted to let me roam around too much on my own, at least to start with.
Right from the beginning I had my own little plot, a small piece of ground alongside my father’s shed. About two yards square (3.3 sq m), it was an awkward patch sitting just where the path came round the shed. He never really wanted that bit for anything, so he used to put me on that and give me some tools to potter about with.
Then he would come along with a few odd plants or seeds and say, ‘Here, put a couple of these or a couple of those in.’
They’d be mainly radish or lettuce, something that gives results fairly quickly and would keep my interest. So I’d put them in and keep an eye on them as they grew, and that was my real start in growing for myself. My main task was to help him, though, and he set me to work straight away, usually on a job he knew would instantly appeal to me as a child.
For example, he insisted on growing his Brussels sprouts in rock-hard ground. He reckoned if you could get a sprout plant in without a crowbar the soil wasn’t firm enough, and with the old varieties that meant the sprouts would ‘blow’, turning into leafy rosettes like little loose cabbages instead of the solid balls of tightly packed leaves you expect with a well-formed sprout.
So to make the ground really solid before the plants went in he would get me playing cricket there with an old bit of wood and a tennis ball. Running back and forth on this patch of ground kept me entertained and gradually compacted the soil until it was rock hard. It’s a method I can recommend!
It was the same with cauliflowers. The variety he used was ‘All the Year Round’, an old-fashioned kind now but one that’s still
available and worth growing. But it needs solid ground to make a solid head, otherwise the plants produce loose useless curds. Firm soil was something you had to have for older brassica varieties, whereas some of the modern hybrids have been selected and adjusted, I suspect, to be less fussy and grow in almost anything.
There were no expensive fertilizers available to us in those days. In fact, running an allotment needed very little outlay. The rent was seven shillings (35p) when I took on my first plot in 1957, and remained that way until the early eighties when the council compulsorily purchased the land from the farmer who owned it. (The rent then went up to £1, and increased by small amounts after that until now, in 2006, it is still only £14 for the year.)
We pay no water rates because our supply drains from the mountain and right through the plot. Seeds were relatively cheap when bought loose from the local ironmonger’s. And supplying the fertility for the soil was all down to your own sweat and toil: you collected manure yourself or made your own compost, tasks that fell to me from a very early age.
The allotment outer fence was on the mountainside, and once over that you could go straight up into open country. There were no more fences after that; everyone had what would now be called walking rights up there, and for us kids it was a regular playground. Most of the time all you saw were free-range sheep, and one of my regular jobs was to go round with a bucket to collect all the sheep droppings, which my father would then put in a hessian sack and leave to soak in a barrel of water to make the liquid manure he used for feeding his runner beans.
And there was bracken up there, dense acres of it almost as far as you could see. During the school holidays my father liked to send me up on the mountainside to cut this bracken, which he then made into compost for putting back on the ground the following year. I had a scythe for cutting the bracken, a small half-moon sickle, and I had my own honing stone to keep the edge sharp. I’d bring it down eventually when it became really blunt, and my father would sharpen it properly for me, and then I’d go back up there and be cutting away the whole morning or afternoon on a good sunny day. Just think how many health and safety regulations I’d be breaking today.
My heap of cut stems would grow and grow as time passed, and then I would stick a huge pitchfork in, hoist up this great pile of greenery that almost hid me from sight, and come down the hillside to the allotment fence, where I tossed it over and went back for more. Once I’d brought it all down, I’d carry it along the paths to my father’s plot, and add it to what had been gathered before.
I’d do that for the whole of the summer holidays, and by the end there would be a heap like a farm haystack. It would be huge, but as it decayed it gradually diminished and almost disappeared before your eyes: after only about five months that enormous stack would be reduced to a tiny pile on the ground, because bracken rots down to a very small amount. But it is very good for the soil, full of potash and rich in humus too. And it was there for the taking.
Holidays and spare time were not entirely filled with work, however, although gardening was something I never minded doing. I had a big group of friends. In the evenings I used to play with the kids in the street like everybody else, and during the school holidays I would go up the mountain with my jam sandwiches along with the others. It was a balanced life, and I had my playtime as well as the jobs on my father’s plot. Even as a teenager, when I was building my allotment empire, I made sure there was always time to go out with my friends in the evenings.
All the time I was up there with my father I was learning, and being young I was quick to pick up everything he could teach me. He was one of those people who allow you to make mistakes without intervening. Although strict, he wasn’t critical and never ran you down if you went wrong. The way he saw things, I’d got to learn, and that meant doing it myself, so he would often stand back and let me do something right or wrong, provided of course that nothing of his ever suffered. I can see he was right, because you learn more from your mistakes than from your successes: when things work out well, you just accept it, but when they don’t you’ve got to analyse what went wrong, and you discover far more from working things out for yourself.
Of course, in gardening there may be no logical reason. Sometimes things just fail. You’ve drawn out a drill, chosen a reasonably new packet of seeds and sown them properly. You wait patiently and look week after week, but they never come up. You can’t work out why, but something clearly went wrong although you don’t know what it was. That’s gardening, always a bit of a gamble even when you follow all the rules.
My father never gardened according to instructions on the seed packet, but preferred to watch the weather. Other people might read the packet and it would say to plant in April, perhaps, when the soil could be frozen or you might have a blanket of snow on the ground. He had this instinct – which I hope I’ve inherited – of knowing exactly when the soil conditions were ideal for sowing. He always believed that if you judged the conditions right, the seed would germinate well and grow into healthy specimens.
This was not an exact science. After a shower of rain, for example, when the ground looked nice and raked down to an even crumbly tilth, he’d say it was perfect. He’d sow his seeds then, and of course they would have just the right combination of warmth and moisture, so they would germinate promptly and grow quickly. And that was all he looked for. He never used cloches or anything like that to help things along. As a child I’d watch him and ask what he was actually looking for, and he wouldn’t – or couldn’t – tell me.
But I soon learned that if you could look at the soil and see it was nice, dark and moist, seed was going to grow. I’ve found since that, as well as going by appearance, if you simply rest the palm of your hand flat on the soil and it feels warm to the touch, then it is suitable for sowing; if it still feels cold, leave the seeds in the packet.
One valuable lesson Dad taught me was that gardening is all about patience: you have to wait for things to happen in their own time. Plants germinate, grow, flower and fruit when they are ready, not when you want them to, and you can’t rush things.
As a youngster I found that hard at first. I used to put things in and then go and look at them every day, to see if anything was about to break through the surface. And then I’d start panicking if there was nothing there. But nothing happens until it’s ready: plants have their own rhythms and a cycle from sowing to maturity, which is nature’s domain, not ours.
My father taught me all the basics of gardening. He was a great advocate of winter digging, for example, and always liked to see his soil cleanly tilled during the winter months, except where his winter vegetables were growing or his fruit bushes were. This was part of his philosophy, which he instilled in me, that ‘an hour spent during the winter months is worth five hours in the spring’. And he taught me the value of hoeing weeds on hot sunny afternoons, when they would quickly wither and die; this kept the ground weed-free with little effort.
He had what seemed to me to be a few odd little quirks, like insisting on planting his shallots on Boxing Day. He would always say that a shallot needed to be chilled, just like garlic, if it was to grow well. And in February he watched carefully for the right weather and soil conditions for sowing his parsnips. He reckoned that if you could get your parsnip seeds in then, when everything was just right, it didn’t matter if there was a fall of snow afterwards because that would blanket the ground, trapping heat underneath to help them germinate, and as the snow melted they would be ready to benefit from the moisture and rising temperatures.
My mother rarely had to buy vegetables in those days, because my father aimed to grow everything we needed and usually succeeded. This meant growing fruit as well as vegetables, and he had a range of soft fruit on the plots – no trees but lots of raspberries, redcurrants, gooseberries and blackcurrants. He eventually added strawberries as well, although these were not so popular in those days.
The problem with strawberries was that they were best eaten on their
own, whereas the other fruits could be made into more filling dishes. One of Mother’s jobs was to turn the fruit into pies and tarts to have after your main course, because the daily cooked dinner would usually finish with home-made custard and a tart made with gooseberries, blackberries or whatever was in season.
I rate strawberries pretty highly, though. I consider there’s nothing finer in summertime, when the vegetables and fruit are cropping well, than to sit at the top of my plot where I can admire the view up the valley, while I munch on a fresh-pulled carrot and a handful of young juicy peas, finishing off with a dessert of ripe sun-warmed strawberries straight from the plants. That makes everything worthwhile.
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Fitting in strawberries
WHEN STRAWBERRIES ARE absolutely laden with white flowers during May they can look a real picture, full of the promise of long sunny days to come. I grow two full-length rows. Some of the plants are ‘Honeoye’, the leading commercial variety – early with a lovely-shaped fruit – and some are a home-grown allotment variety that lost its name but proved so good that it was passed round the plots. The plants don’t crop well for ever: after three to four years vigour always declines and fruit size dwindles, so that the berries are then best used for jam. That’s the cue to replace the plants, ideally around the longest day.
The trouble with planting strawberries is that the only ground spare in June for making a new bed tends to be where you’ve grown early potatoes, and you should never plant strawberries on ex-potato ground. So I tend to save a bit of ground specially for them, somewhere that I’ve used for a salad like lettuce and radish, perhaps. I let the strawberry runners root by themselves in the soil next to the rows of main plants, so that they form a more vigorous root system than they would do in pots. Then, in late August or September, when they are growing strongly, I can move good-size plants to freshly prepared ground, one variety a year to make sure of continuity.
