My Life on a Hillside Allotment

by Terry Walton

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  Potatoes and blight

  I KEEP SEPARATE PATCHES for the various kinds of potatoes because they need different treatment. First earlies come fast and seldom develop problems because they’re too early for the potato blight, whereas second earlies are sometimes borderline, and with maincrops, which take much longer to mature, blight can be a real nuisance.

  August is the critical month, when blight can spread like wildfire from plot to plot on allotments, and you often have a hell of a job keeping maincrop potatoes totally clean. The problem is that there is no organic fungicide for treating the disease if you’re chemical-free. I used to use copper sulphate many years ago, and you can buy other chemical remedies now, but I prefer to control it by cutting off blighted leaves and disposing of them with the waste put out for the refuse collector, and then harvesting the crop earlier than usual.

  For that reason I tend not to grow so many maincrops these days. First earlies such as ‘Arran Pilot’ keep us going as I dig them steadily from June onwards, while later kinds like ‘Charlotte’ and ‘Kestrel’ – a tremendous cropper, as good as any maincrop – will usually take us on well into the winter. The potato foliage or ‘haulm’ goes on my compost heap if it’s clean, but I’d rather be cautious with the haulm from maincrops so I burn that instead.

  * * *

  Fewer potatoes are grown on the plots these days as eating habits have changed, but not the pleasure of harvesting them. Digging for potatoes is like unearthing buried treasure, and you never know what you’re going to find once you start. But no matter how thorough you are, you can’t get them all out in one go. You may think you’ve cleared them, and then you put the fork back in, shake the soil about and find four or five more, often bigger ones that were missed first time round.

  And Murphy’s Law (‘if anything can go wrong, it will’) definitely applies to digging potatoes, because you invariably stick one of the prongs on the fork through the best tuber. Some varieties have a spreading habit, so you dig further away, and others are more compact with all their tubers clustered together, but it makes little difference: I’ll put the fork in and hit the best potato nine times out of ten.

  And the tiny ones that always slip through are the worst gardener’s weed, coming up the following year somewhere awkward, like the middle of a row of carrots, so that when you try to get out this tiny tuber, no bigger than a marble, you cause a great eruption of disturbed soil because the root is so big.

  Even so, there are many other crops I’d give up before potatoes. There’s always room for a row of first earlies in the smallest of plots. They’ll be out of the way in June and then you can use that ground again, which I try to do wherever I can. I’m a greedy gardener and usually aim to get double crops off at least half my plot. Most of the early potatoes will leave you time to sow or plant another crop afterwards, broad beans likewise, and I tend not to plan large special areas for salads because they can go in as follow-on crops wherever ground becomes available.

  That’s how I came unstuck when I entered the allotment competition for the first time in 2005. I was persuaded to have a go by the television crew filming The Big Dig for BBC2, who thought an element of competition would enhance the programme. Our local Rhondda Cynon Taff Council holds an annual contest to find the best allotments in each area and then select an overall winner. Roger, who has one of the best plots on our site, and I both entered, with the programme following our efforts to win and the judging of the plots. Neither of us is naturally competitive, but it all made good television.

  One of the things the judges check is the rotation system, or lack of it, on the plot, and when they came to mine in July they said, ‘But you’re not following the rules!’

  And I said, ‘Well, the reason I’m bending the strict rules of rotation is because these are my second crops. I planned what I wanted to grow early – potatoes, beans, roots and so on – and they were all rotated in the usual way. But when they’re finished I don’t leave that area fallow. By July some of my second early potatoes are out, and that ground has now gone down to salad crops. My broad beans have gone, and where they were is now cabbages, which were not part of the overall plan: I’ve got a main brassica bed limed ready, but this is an overflow planted to follow another crop. So I can’t rotate strictly according to the book because I’m getting two crops in a season, for example beans and cabbages from the same bed.’

  To me it makes sense, while the soil after lifting potatoes is nice and friable with plenty of fertility left in there, to plant some salad crops – some small beet and some lettuce or radish – because they’ll revel in the perfect tilth and leftover goodness. But according to the judges you should reserve an area specially for salad crops. They were looking for orthodox groupings of crops, which I don’t have.

  They were happy with the quality of the crops, and marked me high on the layout and cleanliness of the plot, the standard of composting and environmental matters. But because I don’t toe the line on rotation I came fourth. Roger, who is a very neat and meticulous gardener but has never shown a competitive streak, was very put out by the judges’ comments about his plot. After a heated discussion with them he stormed off, vowing never to enter a competition again.

  By making the ground crop for as long as possible each season (in this part of the world only four to four and a half months at its peak) I try to maximize the produce for eating, storing and preserving, to keep us all year round. I never quite make it and there’s usually a gap about May, when the winter and stored crops are finished and we’re waiting for the first of the new season’s harvest. But you can still get a hell of a lot off a typical allotment.

  One way to do this is by double-cropping; another is to protect with cloches early and late to extend the season. I’ve tried forcing strawberries on the plot, but that isn’t really worthwhile, although I do cloche a row or two when they start to make some decent growth, just to bring them on a week or two earlier (but you have to be careful because once they flower you need to allow pollinating insects in).

  Cloches are a great help, especially those made of fleece because this lets water through (polythene dries out everything underneath too quickly). I cover most things with fleece laid over hoops, and when crops don’t need it any more in early June, I cut the sheet in half lengthways and stake it right round my carrots like a corral to keep the carrot root fly off.

  I try to stretch the lettuce season by covering the plants with fleece, starting with the first January sowings of butter-head types, sown in my greenhouse and set out in April under a cloche for cutting about mid-May. Then in April I sow my first lollo rosso and my first icebergs in the greenhouse to plant in the second week in May, after which I sow more every couple of weeks. With a bit of help from Mother Nature and a lot of luck I can cut lettuce from the beginning of May until the end of September.

  It helps when raising seedlings for the allotment if you have an understanding partner (thank you, Anthea!) who is prepared to let you use part of the airing cupboard for germinating the more expensive or fussy stuff. I start my tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes and other large-seeded tender things in there, and after a couple of days in that warmth they’re through.

  Like most plotholders I don’t have a heated greenhouse at the allotments because it’s not so easy to keep an eye on things there or pop up in the evening after you’re heard a bad weather forecast. The greenhouse on the allotment tends to be my cold house, and when the seedlings are ready they leave my heated greenhouse at home and move up there.

  * * *

  True love

  USING THE AIRING CUPBOARD for propagation came about by accident several years ago. I’d been having problems getting my tomato seed to germinate because I couldn’t keep the temperature constant in the greenhouse. The instructions on the seed packet got me thinking that our airing cupboard had the precise amount of warmth I needed to start the seeds off, so I asked Anthea, ‘Would you mind if I move some of your towels to one
side to put in a tray of tomato seed?’

  I survived the few expletives that followed, and was granted a little of this heated space. And it worked beautifully, so much so that little by little over the years an increasing number of seed trays have been finding a home in there during early spring. I understand that Anthea’s now contemplating having a new airing cupboard built for herself and leaving this one to me.

  The situation’s made worse by the fact that germinating seeds must be taken out promptly into the light as they appear, or the dark warm conditions will draw the seedlings and make them too tall and lanky. Moving them straight to the greenhouse is too drastic, so they all end up on the landing windowsill, and I try to convince Anthea they look more appealing than the artificial flowers that normally stand there.

  I think she’s quite relieved when all my tender seeds are sown and growing normally, so she can take full possession of her airing cupboard and reclaim her windowsill.

  * * *

  Another way to make the most of your crops is to eat only what is in season. I don’t like all these things that are flown halfway round the world, notching up thousands of air miles and totally lacking in flavour. Eating an imported strawberry in February is not my idea of pleasure, and I’d rather wait for a ripe sun-warmed dishful off my own plants at the right time.

  We do eat beans almost all year round because I grow enough to freeze and they’re extremely good from the freezer, especially French beans. But otherwise we have whatever is in season, which in the winter months means swedes, leeks, parsnips, Brussels sprouts, the remnants of the carrot crop until around Christmas, and potatoes, onions or shallots out of store. Winter seems the wrong time of year to eat many salads, and in any case tomatoes are somewhat tasteless then.

  Something I’ve always done every year since I started gardening is provide all the vegetables on the Christmas dinner plate. We used to dig the first early potatoes, par-cook them and roll them in butter, and then keep them in an ice-cream tub in the freezer to roast on Christmas Day. Saving the first potatoes from the start of the season for Christmas seemed almost ritualistic and a real celebration. We don’t do that now, though, because I grow maincrops and there are usually plenty of them tucked away in store.

  Even though the children aren’t always with us these days, we still make something of the Christmas veg each year. My dad would do that, going up on Christmas morning to gather everything, and when we lived a hundred yards away I did the same. But now we’re five miles from the plot and the chances are that we’ll be having dinner with the family, I harvest on Christmas Eve. A concession to the times perhaps, but when we eat it the veg is still barely twenty-four hours away from growing.

  The Walton Christmas lunch is truly special: as well as gathering all the vegetables, I actually prepare them, something that rarely happens at any other time of the year. This is by way of a thank you to Anthea for her patience and understanding throughout the year.

  I watch all the family tucking into the vegetables and enjoying them, and a great feeling of satisfaction comes over me when I think that all this sumptuous food has been nurtured on this Rhondda hillside, absorbing vitality from the sun, rain and other elements. Grown exactly as nature intended, it’s now releasing all this goodness for the pleasure of my family on this particularly joyous occasion. The empty plates afterwards bear witness to the quality of the home-grown food and crown the sense of gratification. Long may this extra-special celebration continue.

  When I was growing to sell I avoided winter vegetables for a number of reasons, one being that they complicated life, occupying the ground for so long and often overlapping with one or more seasonal growing periods. Even now I find they can muddle the rotation and mess up the neat divisions on the plot.

  I try sometimes to get them as close together as I can so they’re all in one block, leaving the rest clear for me to dig or sow a green manure. But it can be difficult because my leeks tend to go in at one end of the onion bed to keep all the family together, my Brussels and swedes go in the brassica bed, and my parsnips go next to the carrots. This satisfies the rotation groupings from the point of view of preparing the soil and confining certain pests to distinct areas, but it makes the plot look disorganized in late autumn when each rotation section still has bits and pieces lingering on, sometimes into the following spring.

  I tried growing winter cabbages for a few years but they were not very successful, simply because of pigeons. You can put nets over them but the mountainside is very exposed, the gales come along and blow them off and the pigeons find the cabbages in no time. I grow Brussels sprouts, but I don’t mind if the pigeons feed on their crowns in November because I don’t use those, and as long as the sprouts themselves stay clean and are not pecked, that’s not a problem.

  It was not unusual for the people living in the house adjacent to the allotments to come over for a few plants to grow in their back garden. One day when I was busy weeding on the plot, I looked up and found Jack standing there.

  ‘Do you have any plants left over of those little cabbages that grow on trees?’ he asked.

  ‘Which do you mean, Jack?’ I replied, bemused.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘they grow up the stem and then you pick them off when they’re ready.’

  ‘You mean Brussels sprouts?’

  ‘Aye, that’s right.’

  ‘No, I haven’t at the moment,’ I said. ‘It’s too early: come back in three weeks.’

  He came back in three weeks and had his little cabbages that grow on trees.

  The Brussels usually keep going until about February; leeks and swedes last all winter, as do parsnips some years, although in a bad season I may get an outbreak of canker that spoils the roots. April through to June can be a problem, though, if you’re aiming for self-sufficiency. It’s not worth growing purple sprouting, kale or spring cabbage here in the Rhondda because they are a real magnet for pigeons, and there can be very little during those months unless the swedes, parsnips and leeks last well. I can have cabbage by late May if I grow ‘Primo’ under a cloche, started in January in the heated greenhouse, and the broad beans come in then as well, or in early June. So May’s the really difficult month when we have to eat out of the freezer.

  It seems a far cry from my original empire, when activity was concentrated into a hectic summer season and everything was cleared in September (we could depend on my father to feed us through the winter). Now my allotment year lasts a full twelve months, so I’ve matured into a full-time gardener instead of just a seasonal worker.

  That suits me. The plot is a good place to be, even in a winter gale or typical Welsh downpour: there’s always someone to talk to and somewhere to shelter, now all the sheds and greenhouses have turned the place into a kind of shanty town. When the weather’s nice, there’s no finer place to be. As the allotments are sited on the side of the valley, the sun comes on the corner very early in the morning, shines on us all day as it moves round and still favours us while it’s setting.

  And the view is tremendous, whether you look down across Llwynypia to the hills on the other side of the broad Rhondda valley, or up the valley itself, where you can see the long ribbons of houses hugging the road as it climbs up through Treorchy and Treherbert to the high mountain beyond, all purple and gold in the setting sun.

  Gone now are the blackened hillsides scarred with coal waste and debris from the pits: the land reclamation and landscaping of the nineties has restored the valley to its former splendour. The contours of the land have been altered for ever, but to the casual visitor this brings new beauty to the hillsides. I have viewed all these steady changes from my plot and constantly marvel at the returning scene, the hillsides green once more and trees flourishing again, studding the hills with blossom. A gloomy industrial wasteland has been transformed into a place of breathtaking light and variety, and one of my most precious and enduring memories is witnessing from my hillside allotment the rebirth of the Rhondda over the half cent
ury I’ve been working there.

  I’m never going to get to the last plot by the gate now, and I’m not sure that matters any more. Especially as I’m right opposite Albie’s allotment café …

  * * *

  Terry’s Tip for September

  Secrets of the leek

  WE MAY HAVE BEEN a little late discovering leeks on our valley plots, but we’ve quickly learned how to grow them to perfection. Here are the key points:

  Sow them in a small pan, prick them out into a standard seed tray (thirty-five per tray), and then pull them up at planting time to expose their roots. Trim off the growing tips to minimize the shock of transplanting and shorten the bare roots by half to get the plants deeper in their holes.

  I make the hole so that about an inch (2.5 cm) of the green remains above the soil, and use a crowbar, not because the ground is hard but you can twist it round to make the sides of the holes firm. Drop a leek in each, make sure the roots touch the bottom of the hole, and then fill the holes with water, leaving them open to gradually fill in.

  When the plants are about a foot (30 cm) high, extend their blanch by covering each one with a 6 in (15 cm) length of 3-in- (8-cm-) diameter ducting pipe – a friendly BT engineer should have offcuts you can scrounge. Bury the bottom inch (2.5 cm) in the soil for stability. With 3–4 in (8–10 cm) below ground, plus the extra inside the pipe, your full-grown leeks should end up with good 8–9 in (20–23 cm) pure white shanks.

  * * *

  Anthea’s Recipe for September

  Marrow Rum

  1 ripe marrow

  5–7 lb (2–3 kg) demerara sugar

  wine yeast (general purpose)

  yeast nutrient