Digging for Victory!

Hey, another interesting article from SE10 Magazine, shout out to Jonathan. A few weeks before the virus really struck home in the UK and we were all dragged into the world of lock-down and furloughing (why does this sound
so horticultural?), I finally realised that, after years of avoiding the issue, I needed to join the ranks of the allotmenteers. What really swung it was a dog walk through the local allotment patch. I looked at the plethora of little plots with ramshackle sheds and homemade greenhouses; the enterprise and creativity on show was incredible - I just had to have one! I tracked down the Allotmenteer-in-Chief and virtually begged to be allowed into this venerable club. A few weeks later my wish came true and we had been ‘allotted’ our very own piece of England.

To be fair this, wasn’t my first encounter with the world of allotments. During my degree I did my final dissertation on what was gloriously entitled “The Nature and Future of Urban Allotment Systems.” For an entire summer I became an allotment groupie – hanging around with old blokes in flat caps while being regaled by stories of their monster cucumbers and the best homing pigeons in Rotherham. Amazingly, my dissertation did draw some useful conclusions – one of the most interesting being that not everyone had a flat cap and quite a few were middle-class “lifestyle” practitioners. Some of these people even had proper jobs and were bringing new methods and crops to the ranks of cabbages and carrots. Beehives, bantams and exotic fruit and vegetables were starting to infiltrate the site, much to the amusement of the old boys – and some even had the audacity to ignore vegetables altogether and cultivate flowers instead!

So, decades after submitting my academic masterpiece, I now find myself the proud owner of a real-life allotment – and the story doesn’t stop there. As of a few days ago we were miraculously upgraded to be the proud custodians of a king- sized plot that had been abandoned for some years. Clearly this had been a much-loved
project and featured no less than two sheds, a lovely greenhouse, a huge pile of pallets (every allotmenteer’s dream) and a walk-in chicken run. My flabber was gasted at the possibilities of this veritable smallholding and I couldn’t believe my luck at taking on this challenge at a time when the gods of weather, lockdown and furloughing had all come together in my favour! Ever since my partner and I got the green light, we’ve spent at least three hours every day digging, chopping, shifting, incinerating, weeding, daydreaming and getting to know all our brilliant neighbours.

However, the most important lesson so far has been re-purposing. Nothing gets thrown away on an allotment and it’s probably fair to say that most allotmenteers are by nature skinflints. We haven’t spent a penny on our plot so far and it seems that there is a fertile allotment grapevine - if we need the odd plant pot or spare tomato plant, I’m sure it will miraculously appear. Likewise, I’ve already re- homed some of our inherited pallet mountain and I’m well on the way to passing my allotmenteering initiation!

So, what do you do with a magnificent allotment once you’ve finally cleared out the pesky weeds and clutter? Remarkably, over the years I’ve spent a fortune on all sorts of flowers and shrubs but have never spent anything on edible plants. Until now that is. Like the rest of the world, I’ve been desperate to get my hands on as many scrummy vegetables as I can – and finally a box full of seeds arrived yesterday. Now they are spread out on the dining table and we are planning the next stage on our journey to Dig for Victory over Coronavirus. More to come next month as the first seeds are sown and we start to see the fruits of our labours... exciting times!