My Life on a Hillside Allotment

by Terry Walton

  And I was glad in the end I didn’t take a gamble, because later they put in a motorway which bypassed the place and took away all the passing trade. Garden centres began to spring up everywhere, big places selling stuff at prices I can’t even buy it for to sell on the allotments. Everything in the business became very competitive, with places fighting to get customers through the door. And gardeners are the tightest people under the sun, willing to drive around and use a gallon of petrol to save a few pence several miles away.

  So I carried on as before, earning my living in industry by day and spending most of my leisure time on my father’s two allotments. At first my brother Eric came and gave me a hand there: he called in regularly to see our mother and came up to the plots for a whiff of air and some outdoor exercise, but after she died there was no real home to revisit, and he became less and less interested in the allotments.

  The age difference between Eric and me is ten years and a week, so throughout our lives we’ve tended to pass each other ‘like ships in the night’: when I was only eight he went to university, and then qualified as a physics teacher and disappeared to his first teaching job in Wimbledon while I was still in my early teens. We had only fleeting contact while we were young.

  Eric returned to teach in the Rhondda, but soon got married and set up house close by in Tonypandy, and apart from odd meetings at our parents’ house and some brief get-togethers on the allotments, we mostly led separate lives. It’s a sad but familiar fact that work pressures and diverging interests keep siblings apart during early life, and only reunions back home with parents on special occasions recreate any sense of family. Once parents have gone and that focus disappears, links can be more difficult to maintain.

  But since we both retired we have met more frequently: there’s our common enthusiasm for bowls, and Eric comes up to my plot most Saturday mornings now and takes an interest in what’s going on there. The Walton link with gardening must still be part of his make-up, his return to the allotments a kind of homecoming!

  Like Eric, I felt that the old family connections had suddenly vanished after our mam died.

  And then Joe Vickery decided he was giving up his plot. He had been there for years and was a superb gardener, one of the neatest guys you’ve ever seen in your life. His plot was pristine, he’d built a greenhouse for himself, and everything was in really good shape. But his son-in-law had built a new house close to where Joe lived, with acres of ground where he’d be able to carry on gardening, so his allotment became available. Some of the members said to me, ‘Well, why don’t you go nearer the gate? You’re the longest-serving member here, why not move?’

  I pointed out that I had sentimental attachments to my father’s old plots, which were very good and down on the lowest row, about halfway to the gate. But they argued Joe had a nice greenhouse there, the plot was immaculate and had been well tended for years, so it was in a good fertile state, and it was only one in from the gate. After a lot of thought I began to see that it made sense. I wouldn’t be letting anybody down. So finally I made up my mind to move there.

  The prospect of leaving those two plots tugged at my heart-strings. They had been my father’s for so many years and held countless memories for me, especially that corner where I had started my allotment career all that time ago. As I continued working them after my father had gone, there had been many moments when I’d stop and wonder if this was how Dad used to do a particular job.

  On days when I feel like reminiscing, I still stroll over to the old homestead and recall past times with much fondness. But life moves on, and change is good for us. Memories can never be erased, though.

  Part of the attraction of the new plot was undoubtedly the superb greenhouse Joe had built. I’d put up one of my own, and I didn’t want to move to a plot without one and be forced to start all over again. Joe’s had been made out of old window frames so it had opening lights everywhere to provide plenty of ventilation in the summer months to help keep mildew at bay. (I leave them an inch or two ajar most of the time and get very little trouble.)

  The greenhouse also had a concrete path in the middle, down between the beds. In summer, when I water I always pour two or three canfuls up the path as well as using my power spray to spread a fine mist over the plants and keep the air moist. Using plenty of water ensures that red spider mite, which thrives in dry conditions, is never a problem there.

  Joe’s greenhouse was also more spacious. This meant that removing the side shoots of tomatoes became much easier. All tomatoes throw lots of side shoots, until a plant can become quite unmanageable, so it’s usual to remove these while they are still small. They tend to form at the base of leaves, especially just beyond a flower truss, and are easily overlooked if you don’t check the plant from top to bottom. Pinch them out from cordon (single-stem) plants to keep the main stem going straight up, without competition. There’s no need to do this with cherry-fruited kinds and bush (‘determinate’) varieties, except to keep the plant under control: the bushier these plants, the greater their yield.

  I couldn’t resist this appealing greenhouse upgrade, and it was that which finally persuaded me to move. All I had to do then to be fully equipped was add a shed alongside – the one I was leaving behind wasn’t suitable for the space on the new plot, so I joined the crowd of allotment builders and knocked up somewhere to keep my tools.

  * * *

  Water management

  NEXT TO MY BUILDINGS I arranged a row of water barrels, linked to each other with overflows and aligned to collect all the rainwater running off the roofs. In a dry summer I put the hosepipe in the first one and let them all fill. As this water coming from the mountain is icy cold, I leave it in the barrels until the following evening to warm up and then water my plants with a watering can.

  I don’t tend to water every day, except in the greenhouse. Outdoors I give things a good soaking every two or three days if it’s been particularly dry, and I only concentrate on certain crops. I never water root vegetables like parsnips and carrots because I don’t want them forking; I prefer to force them to grow straight down in search of water. But beans and onions in particular need a copious and regular supply if they are to grow well, and it’s important to keep seedlings, recent transplants and leafy crops like salads well watered too.

  * * *

  So I took over Joe’s plot when he left, and eventually I gave up one of my father’s plots and then the other shortly afterwards, to concentrate on the plot I’ve now been on for about sixteen years. Its completely different shape caused me all sorts of complications at first when planting: in the first year I grew too much of things like early broad beans, and as spring progressed I quickly ran out of space for later crops. But after three seasons there, memories of the planting regime on the old plots were dimmer and I was back in control, settling in happily.

  There have been several opportunities since for me to move along just one more plot and get to the gate, but there was no real point. That plot didn’t have a greenhouse, and in any case the old incentive to move along with seniority has completely gone. There’s no reason any more.

  Up to the 1950s there were never any buildings on a plot, no greenhouses or sheds, and you simply cultivated the ground. Under the old strict rules the plot you moved to was always identical to the one you left, and the only reason for moving was to get closer to plot no. 1, nearer the gate and more accessible from the road.

  But times have changed, the rules have been relaxed to encourage new tenants, and these people tend to be builders who put up such elaborate greenhouses and sheds that when somewhere else becomes available they’re reluctant to give up what they’ve built. Whenever a plot’s empty we put a notice up inviting applications, but the good gardeners don’t tend to move now because they’ve got their plot just as they want it, equipped with various buildings. Although the old rule of seniority still applies when there are multiple applications, newer members tend to come in anywhere on the site now.


  The old committee members would probably have a fit if they could come back now, and would think us very lax in the way we run the site. Certainly things have changed dramatically from the earlier, more rigid days.

  I took over as secretary in 1977, and Derek Lavis, who was an excellent gardener and a firm committee member who always spoke his mind, became chairman about the same time. He and I worked well together and our partnership continued into the nineties. Even though there was a full committee, it rarely met, and Derek and I would run all the affairs between us. When he gave up his plot in the mid-nineties I was somehow left to make the decisions on my own. I call a committee meeting whenever there’s any dispute, although the other members always say, ‘But what would you do then?’

  There isn’t a lot of committee business these days, anyway. At a recent AGM we did decide to do something about three plots that were not in a very good state. I called everyone together and we went to inspect the plots (just like in the old days), and decided we’d send their tenants a letter to say that if the plots weren’t cultivated they’d be allocated to people on the waiting list. One member responded by tidying his plot, one left and the third fought the eviction through the local council: he was given a further month to clean up the plot but failed to meet that deadline and was duly evicted, his plot going to a new tenant.

  Length of membership is no longer the sole criterion when allocating a plot. Our once inflexible rule of progression by seniority was changed some years ago when we had plots lying idle. New members would often come in, scratch about half-heartedly for a bit and wait for a clean plot to become available so they could put in to move on the grounds that they’d been there for a couple of years and were senior. So we changed the rules to allow gardeners to move on the basis of merit.

  For many years anyone who walked in looking for a plot was almost certain to leave armed with a key to the gate and a tenancy agreement in hand. But now there’s a waiting list – which at one point went up to five, although it’s now back to three – getting a plot means waiting until someone gives up, and that can be quite unpredictable. With willing tenants waiting in the wings, it helps to have eviction as a penalty for failure to look after a plot.

  That’s just one instance of the radical change in management style forced on us by circumstances. The old committee members, who were looked upon as father figures and ran the place with a rod of iron, all left about the time the allotments began to decline. Tommy Parr and my father were the last bastions of the old way, and after they went in the mid-seventies it became more and more difficult to apply the rules rigidly.

  New members had a different outlook, and there were some applying for tenancies who couldn’t or wouldn’t do a whole plot. There was no point turning them down while we had nobody else waiting to join us: better to have half or a third of a plot cultivated than total dereliction.

  That was my philosophy throughout the eighties until demand began to revive, because I felt we had to temper the rules with common sense to keep people gardening. We even contemplated letting what we were going to call ‘community plots’, where an allotment would be split into three for people who wanted smaller amounts to do. But suddenly there was an upturn in interest and we didn’t need to do that to get the ground occupied.

  There’s still a shop on site, and our storekeeper, Albie, lives nearby, where he can keep an eye on things. We now deal only in bulk materials, though, because the garden centres and supermarkets all sell gardening supplies extremely cheaply, often as loss leaders. And we run a seed-ordering system: in September I have a batch of catalogues sent and distributed to the members, they give me their orders and we get a discount depending on quantity.

  All twenty-five available plots are under cultivation, and after ninety years of continuous occupation most of the plots are in reasonably good shape, with a good depth of fertile topsoil over the pure clay beneath. I rarely have to use my foot these days when I’m digging (just as well, since I’m not inclined by nature to ‘put the boot in’!).

  In fact, most people who come in don’t have to struggle like they used to, which has to be a good thing. Anyone taking over during the doldrums of the seventies faced a jungle, which could be very demoralizing: they’d get something planted and then come back in a week or two, only to find the weeds had smothered their small seeds. Their heart would go out of the job then and they would often give up.

  Something I found strange when moving plots was how their differences in shape could affect the way things were grown. I could have rows right across my father’s long, narrow plots, whereas the one I have now is extremely wide, almost as wide as it’s long, and a full row across is in excess of 30 ft (9 m). I consider weeding to be one of the more daunting chores in gardening, and the longer the row the worse the job can be. With short rows you soon get to the end and feel elated, ready to tackle the next, but if you’re two-thirds of the way down a long row and the weeds ahead are still thick, you really think you’re never going to reach the end.

  So on my new, wider plot I moved the beanpoles from their usual place at the bottom and re-erected them across the middle to split the plot approximately in half. Now I have two smaller ‘plots’ and can grow everything down the mountainside in shorter rows, about 12 ft (3.5 m) long. It’s all psychological, of course, and just a way to make the job manageable!

  Short manageable rows are more sensible when you’re growing for your own use, making space for a greater variety of crops and more successional harvests. It was different when I was growing only a few crops for regular sale, when I could quickly clear a full 30 ft (9 m) row of some things. Shorter rows are also easier to mulch, a technique that has become very popular generally for keeping the soil moist and protected from hot sun and heavy rain.

  We have never tended to use mulches on the allotments, simply because we don’t have the large quantities of suitable material to spare. All the bracken and manure we collected was dug into the bean trenches as a bulky soil improver, and there wasn’t enough left over.

  Annual digging was part of everyone’s routine, just single digging in most cases although many gardeners used to trench for certain crops. Now, digging can be the most monotonous job on the allotment, particularly the big winter dig. You set a steady rhythm of push, turn, breathe, and this goes on continuously until you seem to drift into a hypnotic trance. This is the time to let yourself daydream, thinking of those things that give you the most pleasure (no, I’m not letting you into my secret thoughts!).

  But beware if, like me, you have a robin as your winter companion. He swoops down on every spadeful, seizing any unearthed grub or worm. One careless slip of the spade, and he’s a robin no more.

  The alternative practice of ‘no dig’ gardening has a huge following, but not here: it’s quite unsuitable for our clay-based allotments, where it’s essential for the well-being of the soil that we turn the ground over and leave it in large lumps, exposed to all the winter frosts and rain, which break it down into a friable material. This is then easily forked over in the spring to provide a fine tilth and comfortable bed for all those vulnerable seeds to begin their lives.

  I still trench the ground annually for runner beans, sweet peas and chrysanthemums, to get manure deep down at the base of their roots. I dig out the trench in the autumn, fill it with compostable materials and manure, and then leave it open for two or three weeks to settle and compact a little before backfilling it with the excavated soil. The result looks rather like a burial mound at first, but gradually sinks until the ground is level again and ready for planting.

  * * *

  The runner bean routine

  MY RUNNER BEANS GET special treatment. I don’t rotate them round the plot like other crops, because I grow them on a well-anchored permanent framework of scaffolding poles. Into their trench I lose all the waste material from clearing my back and front gardens at home and from my son’s garden, together with the contents of old hanging baskets, all topped off with a thi
ck layer of well-rotted manure so that there’s a good 15 in (38 cm) or more of waste material under the surface.

  I leave that to settle for a couple of weeks before backfilling it. Since the beans have been grown in the same place, trenched every winter, for sixteen years, it must be a particularly fertile spot now. I don’t know if the bed continues to get better each year; I think it probably peaked quite a long time ago. However, the plants provide plenty to eat all summer and to freeze, with a surplus to give away.

  For years I grew one complete row of runners and half a row of French beans, but these days I grow half a row each of French and runner beans, and use the other poles for sweet peas.

  * * *

  My onions stay in the same place for about four or five years before I move them to their other bed – I only grow them in two areas. I build up the ground for them until it’s extremely rich, and then start to do the same in the other area, moving them as a precaution against getting root rot on the plants. I haven’t had it yet and to make sure I don’t get it I feel it’s a sound policy to keep moving them every so often. It’s the same with strawberries, which are best moved every three years to avoid building up disease.

  Everything else I rotate annually around the plot and always have done, and I keep a plan up on the wall of the shed to remind me where everything should go. This is particularly important with potatoes, which are planted in well-manured ground, and then root crops can follow the next year without getting disorders from having their toes in recent manure.