The Plot Thickens

Eat Seasonably is the first initiative from We Will If You Will, a consortium of the great and good inspired by a challenge from Gordon Brown:

I believe there is even greater scope for business and the voluntary sector to work with Government to mobilise individuals to take action. So I have asked Fiona Reynolds of the National Trust and Ian Cheshire of B&Q to recommend how this might be achieved.

Gordon Brown November, 2007

It brings together Landshare, who are connecting people who want to grow their own with the land to do it, and both the RHS and Garden Organic, who are organising advice for all the new gardeners.

And to give us all something to aim for they’re encouraging every single one of us to get together with friends and neighbours over lunch on Sunday July 19th and have an afternoon of fun and games. It’s absolutely brilliant. It has to be far and away the most concerted effort to get us into our gardens and allotments since the World War Dig for Victory campaign.

But where does it leave allotments? Gardens let through Landshare will be allotment-like, but mostly they won’t actually be allotments. There are other successful forms of cooperative agriculture for sure, but the allotment movement has almost two hundred years of history and development and it’s only the allotment movement that has the capacity and tradition to make the initiative self-sustaining.

So what are the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners doing, and what are the Parish Councils doing?

By slothful neglect a building will be brought low: and by idleness of the hands the house will fall to pieces.

The RHS are auditioning for the Voice of Wisley tomorrow (Wednesday). They already know that talking to your plants makes them grow better but they want to find out what kind of voice does this best, and they’ll be testing a variety of texts from prose and poetry to nursery rhymes. You’re invited to audition tomorrow at Wisley between 10.00am and 2.00pm, just turn up at the gate and say your there for the Voice of Wisley - but you still have to pay to get in!

I’m a little cautious about the idea. I can see that it could have applications in agriculture where a field-trialled voice could be played in commercial greenhouses, but successful recordings won’t be cheap. The commercial success is likely to encourage allotmenteers to experiment, and that’s going to be quite hit or miss. Take the Mediterranean vegetables; address aubergine, courgette and peppers in polite English tones and they’ll just ignore you, become insistent and thier growth will slow to a standstill. Then there’s the question of language: Few of our vegetables are English natives. For example, French beans are going to be ill-disposed to encouragements in English, but anything other than an perfect French diction will set them back drastically.

Ohayo gozaimasu, O genki desu ka?

It does however raise the possibility of the technique being used as a non-chemical herbicide. For example, Japanese Knot Weed is very hard to eradicate conventionally, but greet it with familiarity and over time it will find the shame unbearable.

Ten years has made a big difference on allotments. Pre-Hamilton dinosaurs are all but spent, this is the age of the post-Hamilton allotmenteer, conditioned by BSE, H5N1, salmonella, and foot and mouth scares; awake to the reality of anthropogenic climate change; and motivated by a flange of TV personalities.

I find myself a little concerned about where this is all taking the allotment movement. I’m pleased that so many folk are discovering the pleasure of growing their own, but it’s changing allotmenteering and I don’t want that to happen.

Councils are responding to the shortage of supply and increase in demand by making allotments more expensive. They’re also making allotment plots much smaller - two poles isn’t unusual where ten poles was the rule. That obviously limits how much you can grow, but it’s also changing allotment tradition because ponds, lawns, flowers, and sheds, are being squeezed out, sometimes by allotmenteer choice, sometimes through regulation by the council.

What we need is more allotments. Lots more. Received wisdom is that allotmenteering is popular, but all that means is that for the first time in ages there are waiting lists. Thing is there are only something like 300 thousand plots nationally, whereas there were almost 1.5 million plots after the war so the current popularity is nothing like where it needs to be. We need a serious dig-for-victory campaign - at least a doubling of allotment provision in the next three years, and that’s just the start.

But who’s leading the allotment movement? The National Society Allotment Leisure Gardeners? Hardly, they’re just a bunch of tired old codgers sitting on their hands. The National Allotments Gardens Trust? Oh, mercy! The Allotments Regeneration Initiative? They’re a possibility, but I can’t see that they’re doing anyting other than spending their funny money. There’s now the South West Counties Allotments Association, the new voice of the allotment movement, and a new voice it needs, but they’re not it, at least not yet. It’s a problem, there isn’t any organised movement, and we need one now more than ever.

I’m thinking seriously about trying to grow some brassicas this year. Thing is I’m not a very good gardener and brassicas are really difficult. They get eaten by pigeons, caterpillars, white fly, slugs, and flea beetle, they get club root, they don’t like lose soil, and they need regular watering. Did I forget anything?

This is my battle plan:

• Grow under horticultural fleece propped up with loops of MDPE water pipe.
• Lime the ground before planting.
• Let the bed rest after digging and really heel the plants in well.

I’m thinking I’ll grow sprouts, broccoli, swede, and some kind of cabbage - but there’s such a bewildering variety I’m not at all sure which - some kind of savoy would be nice. I’m not going to use any chemicals but I’m open to any other advice.

That’s it for the leaks this year. They’ve done well, but they’re past their best now so I’ve pulled them up and I’m digging their bed - which is already on the dry side. The back end of my plot tends to be heavy and waterlogged in the winter and I took a bit of a gamble planting the leaks where I did, but it looks like the ground is improving where I’m cultivating it and the leaks didn’t suffer at all. I haven’t put this year’s seed in yet - am I a bit late already?

I grow musselburgh and I find it tasty and reliable. Last year they picked up a bit more rust than I’d prefer but they did well this year and they’re very easy. Some people were being bothered by leak moths, and one chap lost his whole bed to the pest, but I escaped with almost no damage at all. I planted them a bit deeper than usual - almost 4″ down - and they responded very well.