The Allotment Chef: Home-grown Recipes and Seasonal Stories. Paul Merrett

minutes and am now reduced to a writhing wreck. I feel a complete fool as MJ and Doug carry me to the car to take me home.

      But what makes the experience so much more humiliating is that, after I have been carted home, MJ returns to the allotment where she meets Keith, the committee Chairman. He obviously takes pity on this poor husbandless woman digging her vegetable patch and offers to bring over his rotivator; he proceeds to clear half the plot in ten minutes.

      It’s bad enough to be humiliated in such a way, but we have also used a rotivator to clear cooch grass, which is exactly what we were told to avoid doing. I had told MJ Chris’s warning about spreading the cooch grass, and she had quite obviously ignored my advice.

      To make matters worse, Keith tells MJ that, since it’s March, our first bed should really be put aside for potatoes as they are due to be planted soon. On the back of this, MJ has bought three bags of seed potatoes on her way home … at bloody Tesco. Now the very shop we are working so hard to avoid, has sold us the first thing we are going to plant.

      I ask MJ what variety of potato she has bought, determined to pour scorn on whatever strain she has got (huh, Desirée are so common, we’ll simply have to take them back), but she finds that the labels aren’t attached so we don’t even know what our potatoes are. I am away from the project (due to a serious industrial injury) for two hours and, all of a sudden, the whole thing has gone tits up.

      There’s no doubt that allotments are dangerous places – I see the osteopath three times in one week. On my first visit, Mal next door literally has to carry me to his car and slide me in horizontally across the back seats, before driving me up to the Old Isleworth surgery. It is obvious to me that Stuart the osteopath had rarely seen a man as badly injured and he has to draw on all his experience to gain me just a little comfort. He uses gels, manipulation and acupuncture to relieve the pain. I am not able to walk, sit, lie or stand with any comfort, though sympathy at home is, quite frankly, in short supply.

      A few days later I go to our local garden centre with MJ. She has spoken to her mum about our imminent potato patch and has been told that, before we plant them, we should get some manure dug in. My back is still so sore I can hardly get in the car, but I manage to hobble about pointing at the things I think we should buy before returning to the car and collapsing once more. People give me very strange looks as I sit in the car and watch my poor wife load three twenty-kilogram bags of manure into the boot!

      After lunch we return to the allotment, where MJ digs in her manure (not her manure obviously – we are not that green yet) and plants our unknown variety of potatoes that she has so carelessly purchased from the supermarket. I am still way off ‘planting fitness’ and, to be honest, I feel that, since she has taken the decision to buy the things regardless of the fact that we have not done a stitch of research on the topic, she can darn well plant them. I (slowly) terminate weeds with a (very light) can of (hopefully green) weedkiller that we bought.

      We arrive home to a phone message from Doug saying that he is picking up the shed and we can put it up the next day. This will make going to the allotment a whole lot less hassle as we can leave stuff there.

      The next morning my back is still sore but I am determined to get the shed up. I meet Doug at the allotment at 11am and we get cracking; cracking probably isn’t the right word as we make painfully slow progress. We have purchased the cheapest shed in the shop (1.8 x 1.2 metres/6 x 4 feet); it is tiny but it still takes us the best part of four hours to assemble. This is not only because the assembly instructions have been written, I reckon, by a dyslexic foreign teenager on work experience at B&Q, nor completely due to me being bent double with a serious back injury, but also because of the never-ending stream of goodwilled advice from our allotment neighbours. The gist of this advice is as follows:

      1 Face the shed into the prevailing wind (north?) or else it will blow away in a high wind

      2 Have the door on the south side so that we can sit outside when the sun shines

      3 Have the window facing south southeast (or something) so the rain doesn’t get in

      As neither Doug nor I have a compass on us, we decide to just get the thing erected and take our chances with nature. Having put it up we realise that good old B&Q has given us the wrong size of roof boards and we are about six inches too short. Rather than go all the way back to the shop, we decide to bodge it together with a couple of redundant floorboards that we find lying about; I feel this represents the green option both in recycling the floorboards and also in terms of saving fuel emissions by not driving back to the shop (actually, we simply couldn’t be arsed to go all the way back – sometimes ‘green’ is the easy option).

      During the final stages of construction the kids join us and Sheila pops over to chat to them. On seeing us finishing the shed, she delivers the most useful advice of the day – always remember to keep an emergency bottle of wine hidden in the shed in case there is a thunderstorm. This gem apparently comes from her experience one time when she was stuck in her shed for almost two hours without a drop to drink!

      Despite the shed being in place, the allotment continues to feel like it will never be conquered and, as a novice, it’s really hard to see it taking shape. It is now April; the only things we have planted are a few potatoes, and the part of the plot that isn’t knee-high in weeds is still so strewn with rubble that it will take days to clear.

      On top of all this, it turns out that on the Friday when I got very drunk with Chris, he apparently offered me (and I accepted) 50 cubic metres of topsoil. This is great – it is good quality soil and will help our digging efforts – but 50 cubic metres weighs around 6 tonnes and I have one wheelbarrow and a bad back. If it comes soon I shall have to tell MJ to shift it, which could see me on the receiving end of a spot of domestic violence.

      Allotments aren’t all about marital strife and industrial injury though. We now have crops in the ground, something to look forward to. Ok, so they weren’t quite planted to plan but at least they’re in the ground.

      The fun in this vegetable growing game is in the anticipation. Having sown our potatoes, it is hard not to start imagining what I will cook with them. The potatoes are of an unknown variety – they could be new potatoes, waxy or floury – so, for the time being, I am content just to imagine eating as many chunky chips as I want.

      Photograph by Mary-Jane Curtis

Chapter 4 | Read What You Sow

      Back pain doesn’t really have an upside but, in my case, having been banned from digging for seven days by my osteopath, I at least have the opportunity to do some reading and research into this allotment business.

      Over the years I have accumulated a mass of cookery books, which has cost me a fortune. Where gardening is concerned, I am reluctant to do the same, so we decide to rely on four or five books for advice. I now see the chance to get stuck into each of them. As with any subject, each writer has his or her particular take on the gardening question. I don’t really know which books are the best to buy, so the following short list is simply my choice rather than the ultimate selection:

      1. Geoff Hamilton – Gardeners’World Practical Gardening Course

      I don’t know where I got this book but it’s been on the shelf for ages. Geoff was a man who liked to lean on a hoe and gaze wisely at the camera – he reminds me a bit of my grandpa with his checked shirts and sensible shoes. He writes quite well and doesn’t presume the reader is already an expert; he includes lots of pictures, which is helpful, though a little intimidating as his vegetable gardens are totally perfect.

      2. Dr DG Hessayon – The Vegetable and Herb Expert

      It would be tempting to dismiss anyone who called themselves a ‘vegetable expert’ as a horticultural megalomaniac, but he is a doctor and that must mean he’s well qualified.