My Life on a Hillside Allotment

by Terry Walton

  As a really surprising bonus, particularly when you added some of this compost to the greenhouse borders or to the bean trench, there’d be copious supplies of mushrooms. Some days I could fill two or three carrier bags with them, so I had my money back in my crop, let alone in the lasting worth of the compost.

  We were really enjoying this situation. The price began to creep up by the odd five or ten pounds, but for a few years a lorryload was still extremely good value split between three of us. And then some gardening programme or magazine extolled the virtues of mushroom compost as a soil improver, and suddenly people were queuing at the mushroom farm in their cars, paying something like 70p for a bag of compost and taking it away. Abruptly our deliveries ceased, and after that we had to find a van and fetch our supply ourselves. It was still worthwhile, however, and we continued to use and appreciate it as before.

  But what’s happened now, in the twenty-first century? Apparently Polish farmers can bring mushrooms into this country cheaper than people can grow them in Wales, and all the mushroom farms in Wales have had to shut down. In 2006, for the first time for years, we were unable to get a supply of mushroom compost from anywhere. That vast source of natural organic material has gone completely.

  Sadly there isn’t a convenient and affordable substitute for a full-size allotment. No one can afford to dig proprietary compost into that extent of ground, so all we can do now is go back to using manure and then grow roots the following year to mop up the residues. But the mushroom compost spoilt us, and the old traditional way of working seems less effective to us now.

  A lot of the manure I do get is handy for the particularly greedy crops, like beans, potatoes and of course all the various squashes, which thrive on rich food. I used to grow marrows but I don’t do that now my supplier of potent rum is no longer around, and instead I grow courgettes, harvesting them as small fruits and then leaving the last few to grow to the size of marrows. And the pumpkin I grow needs at least a couple of wheelbarrow loads to itself.

  The trouble with pumpkins is that they’re rampant plants and take up an enormous amount of space, especially when you are growing for size, as I do. One plant occupies a patch 24 ft (8 m) by about 8 or 9 ft (2.5 m) wide, which is a lot of allotment to give up. The pumpkin itself forms at least 8 ft (2.4 m) from the main stem, and then you need another 12 ft (3.5 m) or more growth beyond to ensure enough strong foliage to feed the fruit. And that’s for just a single champion pumpkin.

  It sounds extravagant, but it’s fun and a bit of a challenge. It all started in 2003 when my daughter-in-law Alison gave me one of those kits for Christmas with odd seeds in: giant sunflowers and square tomatoes and that sort of thing. So to keep her amused I thought I’d try out all these things. Quite a few pumpkin seedlings came up. I chose the strongest and gave the rest away. I planted it at the top of the plot, not really knowing how much space it might cover.

  Jeremy Vine took a particular interest in pumpkins that year, and mine became a focus on his programme. We watched the plant grow and flower, and I gave a regular report on its progress. Eventually a fruit set and started to form. I described this pumpkin to Jeremy and confidently told him, ‘It’s slightly smaller than a golf ball, so we’re on our way, we’re looking good.’

  A fortnight later we did the next show, and I had to report, ‘Disaster! This pumpkin, I went to look at it this morning, and it’s hollow. A slug has eaten all the flesh.’

  This was the same day that Jeremy Vine was doing an interview with John Major, the ex-Prime Minister. At the start, at noon, Jeremy announced, ‘Today in the studio we have John Major talking about his life as the Prime Minister. And news just breaking from the adopted allotment: the slugs have eaten the pumpkin!’ That made the press as well.

  But I managed to get another to develop, and in the end I produced a pumpkin that year weighing 35 lb (16 kg).

  During the same season I had been involved in my spare time with a local charity called Bobath, which worked on behalf of children with cerebral palsy. I rang them up and said, ‘Look, I’ve got this 35 lb pumpkin here. Can you make some money out of it?’

  ‘Oh yes, we’d love to have that,’ they said, because of course it was now associated with the famous Jeremy Vine Show. So we got hold of a photograph of Jeremy for publicity, and the pumpkin ended up as the star of a Guess the Weight competition at the Hallowe’en Ball in a large hotel in Cardiff, with several hundred guests. Tickets were on sale at a pound a time, winner takes the pumpkin.

  But when they did the raffle, found a winner and came to give out the prize, it was gone. Somebody had openly pinched the pumpkin and walked out of the hall with it. However, it had made several hundred pounds for the charity, which was great.

  At some point on Jeremy’s show I was talking about the pumpkin when a listener rang in to suggest that the best way to make it grow large would be to feed it on beer. When I mentioned this ploy at my local pub, the landlord said he’d keep me all the part-barrels of real ale. There is always a small amount of beer left in the barrel that cannot be pulled and he would pour all of this, together with the slops from the drip trays, into one barrel for me.

  The following year Wayne on the plot next to mine was ill and unable to look after his plot, and we decided I would tend it for a year and devote the bottom half to my own use. I sent off for special giant pumpkin seeds, supposed to grow anything up to 1,000 lb (450 kg) in weight. I sowed several of these, selected the best seedlings, and planted two on the neighbouring plot.

  A fruit set and grew to a reasonable size. Then I started feeding it with the beer, and it got bigger and bigger until it was pretty huge. Then another one formed, a little further along the plant. I somehow felt sorry for this one and fed it in the same way, with the result that the main fruit stopped swelling while its rival grew larger still. I ended up with one monster and another that weighed about 80 lb (36 kg).

  By then Hen Felin, the school for children with learning difficulties, had taken on their plot at the allotments, so I asked Jim, the community policeman, whether the school had any fund-raising days. Like most of these places they were always looking for extra funds, and when I mentioned my monster pumpkin they decided to do something special and make a profit from it.

  The local press were told, and then the story made the Welsh national news, especially when the tale got round about how it was fed on beer. To make something of the weigh-in, we invited the local fire brigade to come and transport it for us.

  The guys on the allotment couldn’t believe their eyes when a fire tender pulled up outside the gate and all the firemen came in with a blue tarpaulin, which they carefully unrolled next to the pumpkin. We got one of the schoolchildren to cut it free: I gave him my knife and then together, very carefully, we severed the stem. With a fireman at each corner of the tarpaulin, the pumpkin was lifted out to the tender, and then we set off with three police cars to escort us to Llwynypia Hospital where it was to be weighed on the patients’ scales – there was nothing else big enough.

  Our arrival there caused huge excitement, with patients and nurses gathering to find out why all these police cars and a fire tender had pulled up outside. And then the back opened up and out came this pumpkin, to be carted into the hospital, where it turned out to weigh 12½ stone (175 lb or nearly 80 kg).

  Those schoolkids were very inventive. First they scoured out all the flesh to make various kinds of chutney, then they turned the shell into a giant Hallowe’en lamp and touted that round to make money, and they even collected all the seeds to sell in packets. In the end that pumpkin raised about £700 for the school.

  The next year, 2005, I decided to have another go, and thought I’d grow my plants from some of these seeds. ‘Oh yes,’ the kids said when I asked if there were any spare. ‘Yes, you can have a packet. That’ll be a pound, sir.’

  So I had to buy back my own seeds before I could begin.

  * * *

  A winning technique

  I ALWAYS START
GROWING my pumpkins by burying two good barrowloads of manure in a big pit and covering this with soil which I raise into a slight mound.

  To produce a giant you need seeds from a giant. Those I sow are about as big as the average thumb. I plant two with their pointed ends downwards in good seed compost in a pot that’s at least 8 in (20 cm) in Ô diameter. Germination can be spectacular, because the seed leaves muscle their way through the surface like an erupting volcano. If both emerge, I remove one and leave the other to grow on unchecked until it has six or seven leaves, and once cold weather is a distant memory it’s planted out on the prepared site and watered in well.

  I don’t let any fruits set until one appears about 8 ft (2.4 m) from the main stem, to allow plenty of strong growth to feed it – and there’s more manoeuvrability that far from the base, because any closer and the weight could pull the plant over. I hand pollinate the flowers because you can never be sure insects will fertilize them naturally. When the female flower (the one with a tiny fruit at the base) is fully open, I peel back the petals on the male to leave the stamens exposed and rub these over the centre of the female. If there are enough flowers open I might do two or three to make 100 per cent certain of success.

  Once the first fruit has reached the size of a tennis ball, I take the rest off and surround the plant with half a dozen beer barrels (as a testament to its drinking prowess). Then I feed the plant with beer, 2–3 pints (1–1.5 litres) twice a day poured on about 18 in (45 cm) away – no closer or it might scorch the plant. I don’t give any other feed because all that manure underground is enough for it to thrive on.

  * * *

  That year several of us on the allotments were involved in making the TV series called The Big Dig (shown on BBC2 in 2006). By now my pumpkins were becoming famous and the production team wanted me to grow another, this time competitively. The series was also focusing on another allotment site, in Highgate in London, where they had a Terry as well. So it was decided that my namesake there would compete with me to see who could grow the biggest pumpkin.

  Well, the one I started just grew and grew, but I had to keep potting it on into a bigger container to fit the shooting schedule, when really it was long overdue for planting. That checked growth a bit and it finally went out into the ground later than I would have liked. But it still made 10½ stone (147 lb/67 kg) when it was weighed at the hospital, this time after a ceremonial collection by representatives of the four Welsh army regiments, who delivered it in an armoured car.

  The pumpkin grown by Terry in Highgate failed to make the grade because he fed his on Pimm’s. And Roger, one of the cast on our site, had a go and was ahead of me at one stage, but he started feeding his with cider, which burned it and made it rot. There’s clearly no substitute for good local real ale.

  It looks as though I’ll be growing a large pumpkin every year now. It’s a bit of frivolity really, but a good fund-raiser and a popular talking point when drip-feeding with beer is mentioned. People even come into the allotments to have a look at it, and the press like to follow its progress as we get into autumn. And when I say that it’s real ale from the Barn the landlord’s happy too, because he gets a well-deserved mention in the media.

  In all honesty I’m not sure whether the beer actually helps, apart from creating an image in people’s minds, especially when I tell them the plant has its own barrel with a pipe coming out to supply it with real ale every day of the week once it’s a big lad. There might be a little feed in the yeast, perhaps, but I suspect the main benefit is simply a constant supply of ample moisture.

  What started out almost as a joke seems to have become a tradition now, with benefits all round, and as a new season arrives I feel compelled to start again and try to better my results. I guess in many minds I’m now the pumpkin man, and the expectation’s there each year that I’ll grow another monster for everyone’s amusement and to help swell the funds of a local charity.

  And to think I told Tommy Parr, our showman, long ago that I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in competitive growing!

  * * *

  Terry’s Tip for November

  Looking after brassicas

  FORTUNATELY FOR ORGANIC GARDENERS you don’t get too many diseases on allotments, especially if you keep the soil in good heart and regularly limed. Liming is important because most organic materials like manure and compost are naturally slightly acid, and calcium is always steadily leaching out, especially in wet areas like the valley, so that most soils tend to become acidic over the years.

  Make a point of testing your soil with a simple pH test kit now and again. This will tell you whether it is acid or alkaline, and explain how to adjust it to suit what you want to grow. Most vegetables are happy with a pH range of 6.5–7.0, but the cabbage family prefer less acid conditions up to 7.2 or even higher (pH 7.5 has been shown to suppress clubroot, a real problem on acid soils). Liming the soil every autumn or spring before growing brassicas should keep the ground sweet enough.

  We’ve got clubroot on our allotments, unfortunately, and I tend to control that with regular liming, plus extra precautions when planting out brassicas: I don’t just make a little dibber hole and then push the earth back over the roots. Instead I use a trowel to make a fairly big hole, line this copiously with lime and then two-thirds fill it with fresh potting compost before fitting a pre-cut collar round the brassica stem to keep the cabbage fly from laying its eggs. Then I top up to surface level with more potting compost. This way each plant has a chance to make a fair-size root in sterilized soil before clubroot can take hold.

  * * *

  Anthea’s Recipe for November

  Sweet Pumpkin Cake

  1 small pumpkin (about 1¼ lb/550–600 g), cut in wedges

  9 fl oz (250 ml) sunflower oil

  10 oz (300 g) muscovado sugar

  8 oz (225 g) self-raising flour

  3 large eggs

  1 tsp baking soda

  2 tsp ground ginger

  Grease a 9 in (23 cm) cake tin generously with butter and dust with flour. Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6.

  Put the pumpkin wedges on a tray and roast for 40 mins or until tender. Set aside to cool for 15 mins. Reduce oven temperature to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.

  Scoop 9 oz (250 g) of flesh from the cooled pumpkin, and blend this to a purée.

  Put oil and sugar in a large mixing bowl and whisk for 2 mins. Whisk in the eggs, one at a time.

  Gradually fold in the flour, baking soda and ginger with a metal spoon. Add the pumpkin purée and stir.

  Pour into the cake tin and bake for 40–45 mins, when the sides should start to shrink away from the tin. Turn out and cool on a wire rack.

  Serve with vanilla ice cream.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sharing the Adopted Allotment

  A NEW FEATURE of life on the plot, which I’m just about getting used to, is that I can be working away up there when someone I’ve never seen before will come through the gate and ask, ‘Where’s Jeremy Vine’s plot, then?’

  ‘He hasn’t got a plot,’ I reply.

  ‘I thought he had an allotment here,’ they’ll say. ‘Who are you then?’

  And I say, ‘Terry. Terry Walton.’

  ‘Oh, you’re Jeremy Vine’s gardener, aren’t you?’

  The Jeremy Vine Show seems to have a loyal following of listeners who love the allotment features and write in regularly to the show’s message board. At first some of them were a little reluctant to believe that my bit actually goes out live: they suspected it was all pre-recorded and cut together in the studio. So it was agreed that a few of them, all regular ‘posters’ on the show’s website, could come to the allotments to watch how it all happened.

  Six visitors turned up one Friday lunchtime, arriving from west Wales, London and north-west England. They looked round the allotment, were introduced to Jeremy on air over the phone during the broadcast and then followed events as a live audience. Jeremy did
his stuff in the studio and I did mine before their watching eyes, which proved conclusively that everything really is 100 per cent live, come rain, sun or snow, and that what they heard coming through their radios was actually happening.

  In reality this can be a bit awkward at times because I have to create all the sound effects. I’m constantly nagging Jeremy to equip me with a hands-free device so that I don’t have to hold the phone all the time. But he wants me either to put the handset down briefly or to do the gardening with it in my hand – which can make things somewhat difficult.

  The point is that the phone captures the noises. An important aspect of radio broadcasting is that you have to make noise to create the ambience and paint a picture in the listeners’ minds of what’s happening. So I need to make sure they can actually hear all this rustling and banging and moving about to help them conjure up what I’m actually doing.

  Some of the tasks are very difficult to do one-handed. There was the week I had my runner bean canes to put up, for example. It wasn’t easy to push an 8 ft (2.4 m) cane deep into the ground with one hand while juggling the mobile with the other: the phone kept slipping down, the bundle of canes would follow and the canes would go in at the wrong angle. But I gather it made absolutely fantastic listening!

  Another characteristic of live broadcasting is that you can’t entirely predict what will happen until you do it. I was supposed to be digging my first early potatoes one summer, and I had to put the phone down briefly while I got the fork in place to lift the first tubers. The fork caught on something in the soil and instead of lifting the potatoes cleanly out of the ground it jerked up and buried the phone. Everybody could hear over their radios this thunderous sound of earth falling on to the phone, and I had to explain, ‘Sorry, Jeremy, I’ve just buried you.’