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My Life on a Hillside Allotment

Page 14

by Terry Walton


  When I had started some fifteen years earlier, my customers had tended to be older people in their fifties and sixties who were happy to eat vegetables every day – unlike many of the younger people now living in the valleys, the double-income generation who wanted faster food and often didn’t eat the meat-and-two-veg-with-gravy type of meal. Younger people were starting to look at rice or pasta dishes, egg and chips, and things in packets or tins.

  And the daily meal wasn’t central to family life any more. People didn’t sit down together: they simply went and cooked something quickly or opened a packet and sat in front of the television while they ate. The dining room as a key gathering place was going out of fashion.

  Although my old customers meant a lot to me, there was no way I could continue the business as before, and as I began to abandon plots I had less produce available. Gradually I stopped delivering. Many of my elderly customers relied on this home delivery for their supply of good wholesome vegetables, so I felt great sorrow over letting them down. But I simply couldn’t carry on what was becoming a frantic lifestyle, and still do justice to my family and my work. By the mid-1970s, if people wanted anything they would come up to the allotments and collect it. And over a four-or five-year period I reduced the number of plots from ten to two.

  Before I could finish running them down, my father had a serious heart attack.

  This was a major shock to everybody as he was a big guy, always active and considered to be extremely fit. When he came to Wales from the Midlands he had driven a concrete mixer on building sites, working on the new Aberthaw power station and then locally on housing developments. At the rear of our house in Church Street they built a large council estate of a hundred-odd houses, and his last job was there, quite close to our back gate and the old childhood route leading to our mountain playground.

  He would visit his allotment 365 days of the year, usually after he’d finished work, and very rarely took a holiday. And when he was up there he spent a long time on his plots because he always found plenty to keep him busy.

  Then, right out of the blue, he had this heart attack and was in Llwynypia Hospital for five or six weeks. In those days they didn’t know much about treating heart attacks and the usual regime was just bed rest. When he came out, his life seemed to have ended. He now lacked the confidence to go up to the allotments in case he collapsed again, and would get out of bed every morning and just sit there, his mind still gardening even though his body wasn’t.

  I used to drive past the house every day on my way to the allotments, so I’d always call in for a cup of tea with my mother and father, and he would give me a long list of instructions, without having seen what was happening on the plots. He’d say, ‘Don’t forget now to put these lettuce in and sow these beetroot. Do this and do that. And by the way, don’t forget to tie up something else.’

  He had no idea what was actually going on up there. So I just used to nod and say, ‘Yes, all right.’ And then I’d go up and do whatever was necessary, based entirely on my own judgement.

  It made a big impact on me, his not being up there any more. On a Friday when I was busy he used to go and get a few potatoes or pick the beans and prepare some of the stuff for me, so that when I came home I could do the heavier work and then box up the vegetables and deliver them. He was always there to help out with things. It was a strange relationship really because, although I looked upon the plots as my empire, I think he did the same, as if they were his. We never quarrelled or argued about things, so there was never any problem. It was always just ‘ours’.

  Even after he became ill he carried on trying to help run the business. He’d suddenly say, ‘Mrs Williams wants 2 lb of beans, Mrs Evans wants 2 lb, and Mrs Jones wants 1 lb of beans.’

  And I’d say, ‘Dad, I’m not picking yet.’

  ‘Well, why not?’

  ‘Because they’re a bit late this year, that’s why.’

  ‘You must have put them in too late, then.’

  It was always my fault!

  This went on for about two years. Then, while I was away working in Brighton for Perkin-Elmer, I had a phone call from my brother to say Dad had got out of bed during the night, collapsed and died.

  That seemed to change life completely. For two years he had not been up there in person, keeping an eye on things every day and doing jobs round the plots to help out. But now my mentor of the allotments over all those years, my teacher right from the age of four, had gone altogether.

  My mam was more devastated than anyone by the suddenness of my father’s departure. She was always the quiet rock supporting her family of three men, all standing six feet tall and towering over this lady of only five foot six. We believed we were the mainstays of the family, but it could never have functioned without her.

  She had always worked hard, never complaining about her lot in life, and kept us going with plenty of good solid food prepared with a meagre budget – we never went short, and there was always a generous dose of love thrown in for good measure. She became an expert at turning all the vegetables we grew into interesting dishes! My brother, Eric, and I owe her a huge debt for the way she brought us up and guided us into happy lives.

  Mam remained in the same house close to the allotments after my father’s death, taking an active interest in everything that went on there and visiting my plot on many occasions, a thing she had rarely done during my father’s days: the changes taking place in this once male-dominated world affected even her. And she lived on in very good health, with a plentiful supply of fresh vegetables from the allotments, for fifteen years after the passing of my father.

  When he died in 1977 I was already down to three plots. Now all I wanted to keep were his own original plots, which were more important to me than all the others put together because they were part of the family tradition. I wanted those two to carry on and not fall behind, so I gave them preference, gradually shedding the rest.

  Those two plots suited me down to the ground because he had built sheds and a greenhouse on them, which I didn’t have on my old plots. I’d never bothered because there was never any need: I kept my tools in his shed, and he would raise any seeds in his greenhouse, where he was growing tomatoes and starting other plants that needed protection.

  Two plots seemed enough for me then. I had no customers any more, but I was providing my brother and my mother with vegetables, and we ourselves were eating all the year round from there, including the children. Right from the time they began on solid food they had vegetables from the allotment, not preserves from a shop in jars and tins. Anthea used to take whatever was in season and liquidize it, so they were introduced to fresh seasonal food at a very early age.

  Looking back, I wonder if that gave the boys the taste for home-grown vegetables. While they were small they used to join me on my plots but were much more interested in playing games than gardening, and neither showed the same passion at an early age for allotment growing as I did. But now both of them have a yearning to grow things, particularly Andrew, who grows all his plants from seed to fill his pots, baskets and borders. Lately he has taken on a small piece of land to grow vegetables, so perhaps at last some of the latent gardening genes are coming to the fore.

  About the time my father went out of my life, Tommy Parr, my other great influence, gave up – his health was going and he couldn’t garden any more. His son Ray took over his plots, reducing them to two just as I had with mine. The big difference was that, whereas my father had left me to work out things for myself, Tommy was the keenest of showmen and a perfectionist. So when Ray came up to help him, Tommy supervised him closely and never let him think things out independently.

  I remember one instance when Ray was planting potatoes. Tommy grew lots of potatoes for exhibition, with a number of different varieties, and when you show a sample it has to be all the same variety. Ray was steadily planting these tubers and had reached about three-quarters of the way along the row when he ran out. So he sensibly started on
the next variety.

  As he was filling in the trench, Tommy came up and said, ‘Why have you started using that box there?’

  ‘Well, there wasn’t enough to fill the row,’ Ray explained.

  Tommy was furious. ‘Get them all up! Now! We can’t have mixed potatoes in a row.’

  And Ray had to dig up the whole row of tubers and throw them away. With memories like that, it was no wonder he was never really happy working Tommy’s old plots. Eventually he gave them up.

  I kept my father’s two plots going until about 1992, when I moved to the single plot where I am now, quite close to the gate. Joe Vickery had tended it for years, so it was in exceptionally good condition. There was a large 16 × 8 ft (5 × 2.4 m) greenhouse already on it, and I made a little wooden shed. Then Anthea’s father died in the same year, and he had just put up a new shed in his garden. I thought there was little point letting that pristine shed go to waste, so I moved it on to my plot, and it’s still there giving good service.

  * * *

  Joe’s gooseberry bush

  JOE VICKERY MUST HAVE planted my solitary gooseberry bush, a green variety with a reddish tinge and at least twenty years old by now. It’s a real phenomenon and completely abused, because I’ve never really looked after it since taking over from Joe. It just sits there at the top corner of the plot, where my trailerloads of manure are tipped and left until I have a chance to barrow the stuff down.

  This possibly excessive feeding is all the attention it gets, and must suit it because it regularly throws 30–40 lb (14–18 kg) of fruit each summer, even on our exposed hillside. Only exceptionally severe conditions will discourage a gooseberry because it is one of the toughest fruits, weathering most winters unscathed. The winter of 2005/6 was particularly hard though, the coldest for at least ten years, and a persistent run of cold easterly winds scorched some of the branches and growth buds, reducing the amount of blossom and fruit.

  I’ve never really pruned the bush or kept the centre open – there’s even ancient lichen growing up the main stem. It might not be what textbooks advise, but I’ve tended to leave it alone because it was doing what it had to do, producing lots of fruit. Other members see the crop on it and think it’s fantastic, so now its offspring are growing all over the allotments here. I don’t take cuttings: the weight of the fruit bends some of the branches down to the soil where they actually form roots, and I just chop these off and give them away.

  * * *

  Tommy Parr was secretary of the allotments committee when he decided to give up. That year we had the AGM, and Tommy told everyone it was going to be his last year. The other committee members said to me, ‘Well, you’re the longest-serving member, you’ve always been involved in all the procedures. Will you do it?’

  I said yes, all right, but I felt that we should be sharing the job round the different members so I said I would take over just for a couple of years until everything settled down. That was in 1977 and I’m still doing it now, because nobody else wants to take on the responsibility.

  So the seventies was a decade of change all round, both in the life of the valleys and in my own circumstances. I had a growing career, an expanding factory, a new house, a wife and two children. My market garden empire of ten allotments had shrunk to just two plots, I was now secretary of the committee, and neither my father nor Tommy was there any more with words of wisdom to guide and help me. I had had to alter my ways radically.

  * * *

  Terry’s Tip for July

  The protection racket

  AFTER YEARS OF GROWING crops with artificial fertilizers and chemical sprays I went almost completely organic, and soon found this can raise problems because pests don’t always recognize the fact and cooperate with you. They see all those luscious and vulnerable vegetables as their next meal, and it can take several years to rebuild the numbers of natural predators to help keep the pests at bay.

  Don’t despair! The easiest way to deter them without resorting to potentially deadly chemicals is to intercept them with protective covers and barriers, especially in high summer when so many are on the wing or migrating round the plot on foot. If you study the enemies’ behaviour carefully you can usually think of simple but effective ways to stop their game.

  Make a cage from wire or bamboo canes over your brassicas and sheet this over with fine mesh or fleece to prevent the cabbage white butterfly from laying its ‘eggs in a cluster, yellow as a duster’ underneath the leaves. Simply draping fleece over the plants as a ‘floating mulch’ can work just as well: it’s very lightweight stuff and the plants will push it up as they grow. Erecting fleece ‘corrals’ round your carrots (see here) will protect them from being decimated by the carrot root fly, which cruises around near the soil looking for choice sites to lay its eggs.

  * * *

  Anthea’s Recipe for July

  Gooseberry Chutney

  AS GOOSEBERRIES APPROACH maturity, you may feel hard put to find appealing ways of using their often very lavish crops. You can make fools, jams, wine and endless pies and tarts with them, and any surplus freezes extremely well. But they are also ideal for making savoury preserves, such as this really simple but almost addictive chutney from Anthea’s repertoire.

  3 lb (1.35 kg) ripe gooseberries

  4 onions

  8 oz (225 g) sultanas

  1¾ lb (800 g) brown sugar

  1½ pints (900 ml) malt vinegar

  2 tsp salt

  1 tsp turmeric

  1 tsp mustard

  ¼ tsp cayenne pepper

  Top and tail the gooseberries, peel and chop the onions, and put in a large pan.

  Add all the other ingredients, bring to the boil and then simmer for 2 hours.

  Pour into warm sterilized jars and seal.

  * * *

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Back to My Organic Roots

  AS A PROFESSIONAL chemist I might have been expected to see the light about the lavish use of inorganic materials in the garden much sooner than I did. After all, my main responsibility at the pencil factory had been to analyse raw ingredients for signs of toxicity, so I should have been alert to the more sinister qualities of garden chemicals.

  For several years, however, chemical fertilizers and insecticides made gardening so much easier – especially when life was crowded with other activities and time on the plot was strictly limited – that we all used them liberally, without question. We were grateful for their instant benefits. The fact that their effects were cumulative and in the long term poisonous to man and beast took a while to become obvious.

  These things had revolutionized gardening. I started my allotment career organically (although nobody called it by that name), simply because there was no real alternative. All of us used whatever manure and compost we could lay our hands on, in my father’s case much of it gathered by me on the mountainside, and that provided our fertility.

  Pests could be treated with a few lethal remedies, but were usually tolerated if the attack wasn’t serious, or removed by hand when their numbers grew to threatening proportions. Diseases were cured by the simple and time-honoured remedy of culling and burning affected plants – ruthless but effective.

  In my empire days I had all the opportunity I could wish for to do things the old way: my commitment was to the allotments, and I didn’t owe my time to anybody else. If there was a choice between doing something in the summer months on the plot and going out dancing or for a drink with my mates, then the allotments always had the edge. I had work to do, and there is no way you can mess about with nature and get away with it. When it stays light until half past nine at night, there’s still time to go and have a beer later or meet up with mates for an hour or so. But you can’t waste a good May evening going to the pub at seven o’clock when there’s gardening to do.

  Once I started work, however, I didn’t have all summer to go out and fetch bracken and manure from the mountainside, nor the time to inspect plants daily for signs of trouble. At
the busy seasons of the gardening year I for one was ready to welcome any easy alternative to the traditional laborious methods. And suddenly a panacea for every problem seemed to be available. Along came the now notorious insecticide DDT, a very little of which was guaranteed to kill almost anything that moved on your plants, and lindane, another lethal insecticide that was very efficient but took almost for ever to break down in the soil.

  Artificial fertilizers became more common – simple compounds such as sulphate of ammonia or nitrate of soda, and more complex balanced mixtures of feeds, particularly National Growmore – and these quickly made gardening productive and very easy indeed. No more worries about collecting large amounts of humus to feed the soil. Instead you raked in a couple of good handfuls of National Growmore just before sowing or planting. When everything came through, you gave it another boost with a sprinkle of sulphate of ammonia, a sudden fix of nitrogen that made plants spring into life. They’d shoot up green and healthy almost overnight.

  As soon as a pest attacked, you came out with a little pack of lindane or DDT, puffed the white powder all over the plants and nuked the pests to death. Every insect in creation was now easily bumped off, crops seemed clean and unblemished, grew extremely fast and looked luscious.

  This practice steadily spread during the mid-sixties and into the seventies. It was a revolution. We started to buy these chemicals for the allotment store, everybody began using them and the results were almost instantaneous, partly because we were overdosing everything, giving all our plants quite excessive amounts.

 

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