Develop a taste for the grander things in life
WE ALL KNOW home-grown fruit and veg is a lot fresher, tastier and better for you than anything you can buy, but there’s a limit to how much you can produce from a small back garden. So if you’re sold on growing your own, maybe it’s time to find an allotment.
FINDING ONE
Autumn is when tenancies change hands and vacant plots are relet, so ask your parish council or district council what’s available. Allotments often fall under parks, recreation or leisure services, so give them a ring.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
A standard allotment is 10 rods (the land is still measured in delightfully archaic parcels) which is a sixteenth of an acre. Unless you have a lot of spare time or a lot of help, you might prefer taking a half-sized plot. Near London, where demand always outstrips supply, you may find smaller areas available. Alternatively, share the plot with friends.
HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?
Rents vary all round the country but expect to pay somewhere between £20 and £100 per year. In return for your money, you get the use of the plot for growing whatever fruit, veg, salads and cut flowers you want.
Some people plant them up like little gardens with paths and beds, while others stick to the traditional rows, and a few folk even grow vines for home-brewing.
Some allotments have running water, electricity, a secure perimeter fence and use of a shed for your tools, but others don’t.
STARTING OUT
When you first take an allotment over in the autumn, don’t leave it until spring to start work. If the plot has been left vacant for a while, it may be full of weeds, so have a good clear-up.
Dig the ground over, take out all the roots and crop remains, then invest in lots of well-rotted manure and work it in.
Don’t try to tackle the whole patch at once – spread the work over several weekends. Go back every week or two to hoe off any new growth as it appears and, by spring, you’ll have made enormous inroads into your weeds, using purely organic means, so you’re ready to start growing.
But if you’re new to the game and especially if your plot is heaving with weeds, plant no more than half of it with veg in the first year and sow the rest with a green manure crop, such as lucerne or red clover, in April and cut it regularly.
You’ll be improving the soil and eliminating the worst of the weeds. Alternatively, plant potatoes, which smother most weeds.
ALLOTMENT STYLE
When you’re used to growing veg in a domestic garden, you need to learn a new technique for allotments.At home, where space is short, crops are planted close together in soil that is virtually pure compost and watered just about every day.
However at an allotment everything needs to be done on a much bigger scale.The soil won’t be half as rich and your use of water may be restricted – if it’s available at all.
It’s no good planting closely as veg can’t cope. Plant everything roughly twice as far apart as you’re used to doing.
That means you’ll have lots more weeding to do but on the plus side, wider spacing does mean it’s easier to run a hoe between the rows.
But the extra space means it’s suddenly worth growing all the veg you’d never had room for at home, such as outdoor tomatoes, pumpkins and cauliflowers, kale and broccoli.
Don’t forget maincrop spuds which stay in the ground from mid-april until November. Also soft fruit – indulge yourself in rows of raspberry canes, gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes and plant a “hedge” of blackberries and loganberries around the perimeter of your plot.
For the fruit and veg lover, an allotment is the next best thing until your lottery ticket comes up.