by Terry Walton
* * *
Some things widely grown on allotments now were rarely seen then, if at all: tomatoes, for example, because nobody had a greenhouse. Almost every plot had a shed, and perhaps a cold frame, where people used to put their beans before planting them out. These were generally started in the shed and then moved to the cold frame as soon as they germinated. Nobody in my recollection ever sowed beans straight in the ground on the allotments, because slugs would be guaranteed to come and then you’d have lots of gaps. So everyone grew them indoors – in clay pots in those days, of course – and then transplanted them.
My father had a long narrow shed made out of old window frames, and in there he kept his chrysanthemums, both outdoor and indoor varieties, which he’d grow in big pots. These big incurved and reflexed varieties were moved outside for the summer and brought in again in September for cutting during November, December and January.
That was all I remember him growing under cover. As people acquired greenhouses, so tomatoes appeared, but that came later because there wasn’t any means of providing heat, nor were there garden centres where you could buy tomato plants. So it was difficult to grow them until the advent of more up-to-date facilities. When we did, the only variety was ‘Moneymaker’, which was red and a good size, and that was enough for most people.
In those early greenhouse days we also used to try to grow cucumbers, but the only sort we had was ‘Telegraph’, and that needed checking regularly as the male flowers had to be taken off: if the females were pollinated the fruits were bitter. There were none of these modern hybrids that are all-female. Very often you would have a wonderful big cucumber but if you had missed just one male flower a single bee could do all the damage and the cucumber would be bitter.
As I got older I learned more and more, not just from my father but also from the other plotholders. I think they treated me as a bit of a novelty, because there was nobody else that young, and I was very interested and always asking lots of questions. All the old-timers were quite happy to pass things on – there was nothing secretive about them at all – and they taught me all they knew, in the same way, I expect, that their gardening knowledge had been handed down to them.
Apart from my father, the plotholder who possibly taught me the most about allotment gardening was Tommy Parr, a soft-spoken man who always had time to explain growing techniques to a newcomer. So of course I was always asking him questions, as youngsters do. And he would always start his answer with the expression ‘there’s no half and half about it’. Don’t ask me where that came from or what it meant.
‘Why have the lower leaves on my beans gone yellow, Tommy?’ you might say.
‘Well,’ he’d say, ‘there’s no half and half about it, they’ve been chilled, but they’ll soon pick up with a feed of superphosphate.’
He was a showman who exhibited at many of the shows around the country, later becoming a judge, and he taught me a number of tricks for growing good vegetables. There was a great tradition of showing in the valley, but he was the only gardener from our allotments who exhibited vegetables; in fact there were probably only six or seven people in the valleys as a whole at that time who would regularly compete at all the local shows, sometimes even at venues throughout the UK. We had our own annual show, which goes on to this day in the Rhondda Sports Centre at the end of August. Anyone can enter if they’ve produced something that looks good, even though it might not have been deliberately grown for show.
Most of us grew to eat, or perhaps to sell, but for Tommy the main thing was getting that red card with ‘First Prize’ on it. That was his sole objective in growing, whereas we were more concerned to see how many beans we could get off that plant or, in my case later, how much money I could make. Tommy, however, was a showman to the core and the only member with the patience to master that strange art.
I remember distinctly the large onions he grew for the show bench. They were far superior in texture and size to anyone else’s on the allotments. He always grew them in the same bed, which was prepared meticulously in the autumn with plenty of well-rotted manure. He was fortunate enough to have a greenhouse in his back yard at home, and always sowed his onion seed in there on Boxing Day – a way of escaping from the family for an hour during the festive season, I suspect.
He potted these on and on into larger pots until they were ready to be planted out in late April in this specially prepared bed, and then he would feed them with his own fertilizer mix for the next two months, to give the onions plenty of green top shoots. This mixture was a closely guarded secret, although he told me once it was based on sulphate of ammonia and potash. He never divulged the proportions of the mix.
So great was the renown of his onions that among the stuff stolen when the allotments were broken into once were two large bunches of Tommy’s onions. Several days later the police raided the house of a known felon, and in his kitchen were hanging two strings of superb onions. The police knew immediately they weren’t his, recognized them as Tommy’s and returned them to their rightful owner. Such are the rewards of fame.
To show well, you need to grow well. I learned the essentials of good ground preparation for each vegetable type from Tommy, and he gave me some of the basic tips needed to get good germination of seed. He would spend an infinite amount of time preparing the site for each of his show-bench crops, studying its preferences to find out the nutrients it needed and then making sure the right balance of feeds was added to the soil.
He tended to prepare his soil with much more inorganic fertilizer than anybody else. He’d use lots of potash and sulphate of ammonia, for example, because he wanted high-quality appearance rather than flavour. It was essential that his vegetables grew quickly and looked good, and taste was secondary.
The rest of us would add manure if we had it, and if we hadn’t, well, we simply wouldn’t. Perhaps we’d give cabbages a handful of sulphate of ammonia to make them grow quicker, or add some superphosphate to the runner beans to make their flowers set, but this was always on an ad hoc basis. Tommy, on the other hand, studied the form, knew what he was looking for and gardened accordingly.
Something that always intrigued me was the huge amount of vegetables he used to get ready to find the right combination for the show bench. He would pick dozens of runner beans to find six of good length and size, which he used to wrap in damp tea towels to keep them supple and straight. Similarly with potatoes, he would dig a hundred to get six perfect specimens. So he grew large amounts of everything to find the right quantity for the show bench. And again, he built lots of shelters on his plot, constructing a wooden frame over his onions, for example, to keep the weather from marking the skins.
Winning is not just about appearances, though: how you present your entries can count for just as much, and Tommy would be up there for hours sometimes, grooming his entries. He used to show sweet peas and chrysanthemums – I’ve still got some of the green flower vases he staged them in, which he gave me when he left – and he’d go up there and after a lot of searching he’d finally pick six chrysanthemum blooms. Then he’d spend ages with a tiny paintbrush patiently opening every single petal until each flower looked perfect.
I never really got interested in all that, but I learned a lot from watching him. He willingly passed on information because he knew there was nobody else on the plots to compete with him, and he certainly appreciated that I wasn’t a serious rival: he might have been a bit more guarded if I had been.
Something he would never share with you, though, was the surplus of his show stuff. If he had a load of beans and had chosen his six for the show bench, he wouldn’t give you any of the others – these he would take home to cook or simply throw away. You couldn’t get hold of anything he didn’t want. Anything that was not intended for show he would give you, just like anybody else with a surplus. But if he had a row of beans for show, he’d go up there on Friday night to pick and check and measure them, and then take home all those he had rejected. It was the
same with potatoes: after he had selected his six perfectly clean, uniform specimens, the dozens of others he had dug he’d take home.
He’d never give you any of the onions he didn’t want either, and there were plenty of those. He was a master of the art of preparing them for show, peeling off the outer layers until the bulbs looked evenly brown and shiny. The roots were left on, but carefully teased out to look clean and white and a uniform length. Then he would chop off the tops at a particular point so that they were all trim and immaculately matched.
Those big onions might have looked impressive but they were not good keepers, and by the end of the summer would go rotten if you hadn’t eaten them. They were a special variety grown from seed and fed for size, whereas the rest of us grew ours from sets, mainly to produce an average kind of bulb that we could string and confidently store through the winter.
I would not insist that large size always sacrifices flavour because sometimes you can have both, but on the whole growing with the intention of producing unnatural dimensions means giving away the taste. To achieve your aim you have to do some things almost to excess, which is not what gardening’s really all about.
I’m a great believer in letting a plant extract what it can from the soil, nurtured by water and by the sun, growing slowly and in that way building in the flavour. If it is grown fast and furiously, I think it will lack something. Throw a handful of sulphate of ammonia on a cabbage, for example, and it will grow large and dark green and look luscious, but it will not have taken in the flavour of the sun in its own time.
But that is a viewpoint which combines my father’s insistence on patience and my later conversion to organic fertilizers. At that time I was still learning everything, and I soaked up all the information I could get. One of Tommy’s tips that has remained with me is the way he used to tie bean canes together, using a single piece of string so that the strength of the tie holds them all taut, however strong the wind. This is a method I still follow to this day, a well-honed procedure that some plotholders regularly come and ask me to do for them.
In time most of the plotholders who had been gardening there for many years became fatherly figures, and freely passed on all their accumulated knowledge to me. In my turn I have willingly passed that on to any newcomers who are prepared to listen. But I started off by absorbing my father’s gardening experience and wisdom, and I shall be ever grateful to him for that, because much of my knowledge and understanding of gardening I owe to him.
I kept that original little square by the shed where I had first started when I was four, even after my father had let me help out with other things. Eventually he would ask me to go and till a piece of ground here, or rake somewhere else ready for sowing, or go and put in a row or two of seeds. He would always watch what I was doing, and he’d never let me run riot. On his plot I was supervised in whatever I was doing, and if I did it wrong he would tell me in good time, because that was his ground and the vegetables he grew there were important.
Once I was eleven and took my own plot, though, I had to learn my lessons myself and he didn’t intervene at all. His attitude was different then: you’d ask if you wanted to know, and if you didn’t ask he’d assume you knew. If it didn’t work, you learned. But it wouldn’t be his loss then, it would be mine.
* * *
Terry’s Tip for March
Sowing hints
AS YOU START SOWING seeds this month, remember my father’s advice and don’t treat the instructions and sowing dates on the back of seed packets as gospel. The important information to note with any vegetable is the time a particular variety takes to grow from sowing to harvest. Even this is only an average for normal conditions, but it does give you a rough idea to help you plan your schedule.
If you want crops early, then sow at the earliest possible date, but make sure the soil is warm and moist, and cover the seeds with cloches or fleece in a cold season. Later sowings often catch up, if you miss or lose earlier ones. For the longest cropping season sow little and often, and protect the first and last sowings to extend the season a little. Most seeds germinate and grow fastest in the long summer days, but start to slow down as the days shorten from August onwards.
When faced with the full extent of an allotment, most beginners sow long rows of seeds right across the plot, which soon fills the ground, results in a lot of weeding and aftercare, and may yield more than you can use while it’s in peak condition. If you can give lots away or preserve it, this might be a good arrangement, but for a steady yield sow shorter rows (or part-rows) more often: they’re easier to manage, and you can often fit more in by resowing or planting as each short row is cleared.
* * *
Anthea’s Recipe for March
Rhubarb Jelly Special
IF YOU FORCE it under boxes and buckets for early sticks, there should be enough fresh rhubarb to pull this month for its subtly delicious flavour. Alternatively you might have frozen or bottled rhubarb left from last season, and perhaps even a few cooking apples still in store. This dessert turns them into something a bit special, with a hint of all the fresh fruit you could be gathering in the not too dim and distant future.
1 lb (450 g) rhubarb
1 lb (450 g) cooking apples
1 packet of jelly (raspberry or strawberry)
½ cup of water
brown sugar to taste (approx. 1 tbsp)
Wash and trim the rhubarb, and chop into small pieces. Peel, core and slice the apples.
Put the rhubarb and apple in a saucepan with the water and sugar, and cook until tender and pulpy.
Cut or tear the jelly into squares, add to the saucepan and stir until completely dissolved.
When the jelly and fruit are completely mixed, pour into individual dishes and leave until set. Serve with fresh cream or ice cream.
* * *
CHAPTER FOUR
Empire Building
RIGHT FROM THE start, taking on my own allotment was intended to be a money-making venture. This seemed to me an ideal arrangement: I could continue with my enjoyable hobby and convert some of the pleasure into good pocket money. It was like having your cake and eating it, the best way with everything!
As youngsters we rarely got any pocket money. When we went to school, we’d have our dinner money and sometimes a small amount to spend, but never very much and it certainly wasn’t guaranteed: we couldn’t be sure we were going to get it every week. If you did have money it was usually because you’d earned it in some way at home. There was always something you had to do for that couple of pence, because you weren’t given money for nothing.
Delivering the daily newspapers was a traditional and simple way for youngsters to earn some pocket money, and I was eleven years old when I started my paper round. A friend of mine, John Rees, who was later best man at my wedding, already had one, and said to me one day, ‘There’s a job going in the paper shop, if you want a paper round.’ It was something I had always wanted to do, so I was there like a shot.
I started on a weekly wage of 2/6d (12½p), working early every morning from Monday to Saturday. There was an extra delivery on Friday evenings for those people who had magazines but bought no dailies, and that was also when I collected the money. I used to call in at the shop on my way home from school on a Friday night and pick up a leather satchel and a book listing all my customers, marked up with the weeks. People were expected to pay their bills every Friday, or if anyone missed a week they had to pay double the following week. By the time I finished that Friday evening round, there must have been quite a bit of money in my bag, but you never thought in those days about getting mugged for all that change you were carrying about.
Bob Hands, who ran the post office and paper shop, had an old dark-green Rover, one of those round-topped models built like a tank. Each morning he’d get you to put your papers in a sack, then he’d load these in the back of his car and take you to the start of your round, which might be quite a distance along the valley. Boys who were more loca
l walked, but as I started about a mile away he would drop me off and I’d then walk back to where I lived.
What truly amazes me when I look back is that, compared with now when every daily paper contains full television listings, in those days everybody bought a copy of the Radio Times; when ITV came along, they’d buy the TV Weekly as well. Comics such as the Eagle, the Beano and the Dandy were popular too. Then there was the local Rhondda Leader on a Friday, and you could reckon that 90 per cent of those who took a daily paper would have a Leader as well. And there were all the women’s magazines, such as Woman’s Own. Almost everybody bought some kind of magazine, so the paper bag used to be quite heavy most mornings, and again on Friday evenings.
John and I would also get together to make money picking blackberries up the mountain. In those days tomatoes came in hardened cardboard baskets with a metal handle at the top, and these were ideal for picking fruit. Up just beyond the top of Llwynypia Hospital there were a lot of wild brambles, and we would go up there, fill our baskets with berries and then go round the streets selling them at the door. I think we charged about a shilling (5p) for a half-pint (300-ml) glassful, and we’d do that all through the blackberry season.