by Terry Walton
At Christmas John and I formed a two-man choir and went out singing carols around the local streets. On New Year’s Eve we’d be out at midnight knocking on doors and wishing the partying occupants a happy new year, to earn an extra bob or two.
So John and I were already earning regularly when we were eleven, experienced entrepreneurs at that early age and always interested in new money-making ventures. Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that John would realize taking on a plot at the allotments might be another good way to make some extra income during the summer months.
‘Why don’t we share one?’ he suggested one day.
The trouble was that only one tenant could have a plot and officially you weren’t allowed to share. There’s nothing in the rules to say somebody else can’t help you, but the plotholder has to be solely responsible, to avoid any arguments about who owns which bit and who should be doing what.
We decided I would take a plot as I was already known up there, and I told my father what I wanted to do. He looked sceptical at first, and it must have seemed a bit early to him. But I’d been pottering around on his plot from the age of four, so I had a bit of knowledge by then and was familiar with most things that were grown on the site.
Finally, when a plot became available at the top, he said, ‘OK. You’d better send a letter in to the committee then, to apply.’
There was no interview, and the committee met behind closed doors. They didn’t invite you to meet them – if you didn’t get a plot, that was that, there was never any explanation. Even now there’s never an interview for a plot. People put in for one, the letters are dated in order of application, and we do a bit of enquiring into what the person is like and who knows him, and whether he (or these days she) is trustworthy. The committee would never take anyone unknown, but in the valleys somebody on the allotments would be sure to know you. And the committee all knew me, of course, because I was in there all the time, so there was no problem.
The others on the allotments couldn’t believe it, though, and there was a bit of humming and hawing about letting an eleven-year-old have a plot on his own. But my father was on the committee at the time, and he said I was always up there and always asking questions, so why not give me a chance?
They probably realized they had nothing to lose, and if I didn’t last long it wouldn’t be a disaster. When you took over a plot it was always relatively clean. People never clung on to them until they were so derelict that anyone new coming in had to start at square one. The regime was so rigid that if the plot did deteriorate, they would put pressure on the member to sort it out or leave. If there was no sign of anything happening after that, they would quickly evict, so you always took on a plot in reasonably good condition. They would soon let me know if things went wrong.
My father obviously swung it and they allocated me a plot up near the top, a good place to be because you had first access to the water up close to the top fence. But anything else I needed, such as manure, was hard work to bring in because I was almost the farthest I could possibly be from the gate and had to climb up the hill to reach the plot.
So we started our new money-making venture, and John came along to help me, full of enthusiasm at first. But he had never been interested in gardening, nor had his family, and he had underestimated the amount of work it needed and couldn’t get into it. He hadn’t realized you had to dig for a start, or that you had to spend to get something back. The main attraction for John had been that growing to sell seemed a good way to increase his earnings in the summer months, to supplement the couple of shillings he was already making from his paper round. In a short space of time he just disappeared: we started in the spring of 1957, and by the time we were getting busy, about June, he’d completely lost interest. I was left with the whole plot, all to myself.
It seemed a lot of ground, but the advantage was that it was clean and I was enthusiastic. And it didn’t take long after school to walk the hundred yards up there from home and put in some work. My paper round gave me the money to buy anything I needed, and it was always possible to scrounge off my father the odd half-packet of cabbage or carrot seeds, or any potatoes he had left over – he’d buy a whole sack of seed potatoes and there would usually be some to spare.
It was the same with runner bean plants, because everybody puts in that extra few as a fallback, in case there are a few gaps later. If you had a full germination you would have half a dozen or so plants that were not wanted, and I used to get all the leftovers. This sharing and passing on was all part of the traditional allotment culture. The advantage was that we all grew the same varieties: I dread to think what might happen these days if you were to scrounge three plants here and four there, because you could end up with a row of runner beans containing as many as fifteen varieties, all performing differently.
It was hard work, especially in the summer when the vegetables started cropping ready for sale. It was that which really put John off. We were both up early every morning of the week doing the paper round, but there were no Sunday papers to deliver. John didn’t want to get up and go to the allotment on a Sunday morning: with no school and no paper round, that was his day off and he could have a couple of extra hours in bed. But I was selling, so on Friday nights I was there in the summer harvesting the crops and preparing what I was going to take out the next morning. On Saturday mornings I would be delivering, and Sunday mornings I was doing all the routine cultivation work. There was a pattern, even if a demanding one.
As often happened, I proved that my father was right. Part of the secret of staying on top of the work was to keep up to date with winter preparation, because whatever I could do in advance saved a lot more time and effort later on in the busiest season.
My allotment customers were all local. Word soon spread that I had stuff to sell, and I used to go round asking neighbours if they wanted any beans or potatoes, or whatever was ready. At my peak, when I had ten plots, I had between fifteen and twenty-five regular customers throughout the summer, but there were others who used to come up to the allotments and ask if there were any beans to spare. They’d be people in the street who didn’t have plots, and who simply came to the gate and asked, ‘Anybody got anything to sell?’
Everyone up there on the allotments sold something, but none of them on a guaranteed weekly basis like I was doing. They’d just sell their surplus, whereas I had no surplus as such because everything I grew was for sale anyway. My father was providing all we needed for the house. Occasionally he would have more than we needed, and if I was short I’d add it to my orders. But mine was the only plot that was quite openly a business.
The rules of the allotments stated that all produce was strictly for the plotholder’s own use – that still applies today – but nobody really objected because growing for sale was keeping the ground under cultivation. I think at first some of the older members were a bit dismayed that I was effectively breaking the code about selling produce, but everyone was doing it to some degree, so it would have been hypocritical to complain and might have compromised their own activities.
I was soon earning good money. It was only about three months before I was able to start digging potatoes and cutting cabbages, and by late June I was already into the peak of the runner beans, always a popular vegetable with customers. I grew only what I could sell, and in those days people’s requirements were fairly narrow; there wasn’t the huge range of different crops and varieties. The demand was for potatoes, runner beans, cabbages and carrots. Nothing much else was readily available as seed. People’s eating habits did not include ‘fancy’ vegetables and as there were no supermarkets no one had heard of peppers, courgettes and aubergines. Herbs were limited too, and most people used only mint and sage. Even parsley was a bit exotic then.
I didn’t have a bicycle or any other means of transport, and simply carried the orders to people’s houses. I used the trays that tomatoes came in from Guernsey, flat wooden ones with four triangular corners, and I could stack two or
three of these on top of each other to take out at a time. Sometimes, especially if people had ordered a lot of potatoes, they could be too heavy and then I’d have to take them one at a time. But I never had to carry them that far because the streets were all pretty close together, and all my regular customers lived nearby.
That first plot I kept for a couple of years before another became available. Nobody wanted that, so I took it on as well, which increased the amount I could raise and sell. Then another fell vacant. I took that, too, and my empire began to grow, especially in my mid-teens when allotment membership was diving.
Circumstances and attitudes were beginning to change at the turn of the 1960s. New industry with its higher wages was moving into the valleys to replace the declining coal mines, women were going out to work and so many families now had more money coming into the house. With this increased disposable income people wanted to go out and enjoy themselves. Gardening seemed hard work in comparison and was time-consuming. At the same time the older long-term tenants were beginning to find that keeping a plot under control was increasingly difficult and they were dropping out, just when the allotments didn’t seem to be attracting anybody new.
So the ‘swinging sixties’ were good for my business. Whenever a plot became vacant I would take it on, until by the time I was sixteen or seventeen I had ten under cultivation (and Tommy Parr had eight).
As I took on more allotments, I’d increase my quantities, which made planning much easier: instead of dividing an area up into different crops, I could put a whole plot down to potatoes or beans or cabbages, all of which still formed the bulk of my orders. Rather than expand into other crops for which there was little or no demand, I stuck to the things which were easy to sell and to grow. If I could put a whole plot down to potatoes, for example, there was little to do other than dig the ground, plant the tubers and then go through with a hoe occasionally. Otherwise they almost grew themselves and tended to keep the plot clear of weeds.
A whole plot of cabbages was simple to manage too. I needed to keep a good succession of maturing heads going because I was cutting over a long period to meet demand. I’d use the same varieties (‘Primo’ or ‘Winnigstadt’) all the time because growing other kinds would have meant messing around with different cutting times. All I had to do was start a fresh batch every three or four weeks. I would sow these in a drill to one side, thin them out and then sow more as the young plants reached the transplanting stage.
Even with a lot more ground at my disposal, it was still very difficult to get the right balance and a steady supply of vegetables. I couldn’t always predict the season or the demand, and some weeks I’d be struggling to fulfil orders, especially for potatoes, which everybody bought in large quantities. Some years I’d run out altogether halfway through the season, while the beans or cabbages were still cropping well.
My solution was to go to the local wholesaler on a Friday night and pick up however many bags of potatoes I needed to complete the orders next day. Then I’d dig a big hole in the plot, tip all the potatoes in, heap the earth back on top and spray the lot, absolutely soaking them with water, and then leave them all night. When I dug them up the next morning, they’d have earth on them and look as though they were mine. And the customers would always say they could tell the difference with such fresh produce!
* * *
A matter of good taste
THE STANDARD COMMENT from my customers the next time I went round to deliver would be, ‘Oh, I’m glad I had this from the allotments. The stuff’s always better than what you can buy in the shops.’ Even now people often say that vegetables tasted better long ago or that they have more flavour when grown organically or by someone you know.
How much of that was psychological, the result of knowing where the stuff was grown, I don’t know. There was no organized organic movement on the allotments in the early sixties to offer any comparison, and people were making those comments even while I was using artificial fertilizers and insecticides.
I do wonder if the reason wasn’t really much simpler, and that good flavour has a lot more to do with produce being on the plate within hours of harvest rather than lingering in the shops, maybe for days. This was certainly why my father went up on Christmas morning to gather the veg for dinner, and why I started off married life doing the same.
* * *
Although there were sometimes small hiccups in supply, especially with potatoes, I can’t remember any occasions when I seriously failed to meet demand in the peak season. There were always years when the season began late or finished sooner than usual, and then I would break the news to some of the customers that, for example, I was starting to run out of beans now and probably wouldn’t have any more for that week. But the better customers, the ones who were regular and always looked after me, I tended to keep supplying as long as I could.
My busiest time I reckoned to be from June, when the first early potatoes came ready, until September, with a peak for about nine weeks during the bean season, from early July onwards.
Even though everyone used them, I didn’t grow onions because they took up the ground from late March through to mid-to late August before they were ready, and by then everything else would have been starting to run down. I suppose I could always have bought a bike and a beret, strung them from the handlebars and hawked them round the houses, but basically they did not fit well from a commercial angle.
Similarly I didn’t sell in the winter. It’s difficult to predict demand for winter vegetables, and with so much to grow to meet the summer trade there was never the space to grow winter crops. Whereas I tended to concentrate on harvesting from June through to September, a crop like parsnips would go in during March and I wouldn’t be digging them until the autumn. In the winter there wouldn’t be the daylight on a Friday evening to go up and harvest them.
I could not have supplied enough maincrop potatoes anyway, and once I stopped offering them customers would go somewhere else. Some people would have 20 lb (9 kg) per week because of the vast amounts they used at every meal, and even then they might come back for more in the middle of the week. When you’ve got a family of four, five or six you can get through a lot of potatoes if you cook the same basic meal every night. Other vegetables, too: I’d often pick 2 cwt (100 kg) of beans regularly on a Friday night.
Sometimes I might plant some very late cabbages as a successional crop to follow an earlier batch, or perhaps put some spring cabbage in to start the next season along with a few of the earliest potatoes that might be ready for harvesting in May. But on the whole the plots tended to be empty during the winter, and that was when I did my digging, turning all the ground over.
One huge advantage of having several plots was that it made life simple from the point of view of rotating crops, moving everything round regularly to avoid a build-up of pests and diseases. Some gardeners undervalue rotation, but it’s something I’ve always done, initially within my first plot and then, when I had more, by rotating whole plots at a time. This was a particularly important way to keep crops healthy in the late fifties and early sixties because we didn’t have many remedies for controlling diseases, and rotation was recognized as the best precaution. Having my empire made this much easier because I would mark off complete plots for a single crop; otherwise I had to rely on memory or keep a record on paper to remember what I did the previous year.
I made a profit from the original allotment in my first year, and by the time I was market gardening in earnest I was probably earning a good £300–400 per season – and this was at a time when I was selling runner beans for about 6d (2½p) per pound. In fact I remember thinking when I started my first job that I was earning £6.4s.8d (£6.23) a week at work before stoppages (paid in cash in a little brown envelope!), whereas I earned more than that selling my allotment produce, something I enjoyed much more too. But of course that didn’t apply throughout the year.
I always kept the money in the house because in those days you didn’t
trust banks. Everything was done with cash, anyway, not cheques or bank cards, so if you had anything to save you simply kept it in a tin. And it would usually stay there: there was nothing much for a youngster to spend it on, apart from the odd few sweets for yourself. Over the years while I was at school the money accumulated, so that by the time I was seventeen I had enough to buy my first car.
* * *
236 RTX
AS SOON AS I was seventeen I started having driving lessons (something else my allotment money paid for), and my brother, who already owned a Ford Anglia, used to teach me whenever he came home from his teaching job in Wimbledon.
I passed my test second time, and the minute I had that driving licence I bought the car, a three-gear Ford Popular (100e engine, registration number 236 RTX) that cost me all of £236, paid for in cash from my allotment and paper round savings. It was bright canary yellow all over, which went well with my fashionable fluorescent socks, and was known by everyone as ‘Walt’s Wagon’.
Gaining my own wheels at the age of seventeen gave me a great sense of achievement and seemed a handsome payback for all my endeavours. There were not many cars on the valley roads in the early sixties, so I was among the elite. It certainly impressed my schoolmates, who all joined me regularly on our little excursions outside the valley, although I have to say it didn’t seem to impress the valley girls much. Perhaps the bright colour clashed with their lipstick.
* * *
My father had plenty to do on his own allotment growing the food for the household, but he took a great interest in what I was doing and managed to get more involved as I took on extra plots. He’d often say, ‘Well, what else can we grow now?’
It was thanks to him and his enthusiasm that I branched out and got involved in growing flowers, because he reckoned there was more money to be made there. This was a novel idea to me. I regarded my allotments as a solely vegetable enterprise, whereas he had always grown flowers as well – sweet peas, dahlias and chrysanthemums of all kinds in pots for flowering indoors. And it was he who spotted their money-making potential.