October is Sweet Pea month ...

Sowing sweet peas in autumn produces bigger and better plants that will bloom earlier, and go on for longer – and the best sweet peas I’ve seen for decades are grown by our very own Ronald Buckman. At the end of October he starts a process that allows him to have the most beautiful flowers I’ve even seen.

It’s well known, horticulturally that sweet peas started in the cooler months put all their energy into a rigorous root system to sustain them over the winter, resulting in strong, stocky plants when they come to be planted in their final positions in mid spring. Ron improves on this system by having developed his own germination tricks that seem to guarantee huge and perfect blooms. Here are his secrets …


1. Dig a trench one foot deep and wide and fill it with your own compost or farmyard manure – let it ‘mellow’ over the winter and you’ve got the perfect home for your sweet peas come spring

2. Choose the best possible seeds, Ron prefers to go to garden shows where he can see the flowers the seeds will produce, not to rely on catalogue descriptions. Sadly, many specialist sweet pea suppliers have gone out of business, but you can still shop around for good varieties if you put in some effort.

3. Plant seeds in a tray filled with moist peat. Lay the seeds on top and press them down, don’t sprinkle peat over them. Cover with glass and then newspaper. After three days, many will have shoots, and those can be put in modules in compost, one shooting seed to each module.

4. Keep the rest of the tray covered and as the seedlings appear, lift them out into modules, because they are uncertain generators, you can find it takes several weeks for all the seedlings to appear, but this doesn’t seem to affect their flowering time or rate.

5. Pinch the tops when there are two or three true leaves to ensure you get a stocky, flower-filled plant.

6. In spring, plant your sweet peas, each plant to an individual cane, in your trench. Take off all the flowers until they are three feet tall, then at three feet, remove the plant from the cane, lay it along the ground and bring it up the next cane! For show quality sweet peas you need four blossoms on each stem, and that means pinching out all the side tendrils … but just look at those flowers, it’s got to be worth it, to have sweet peas like Ron’s!

Labels: allotment-flowers, allotment-holder-interview, allotment-personality, flower and vegetabel show, sweet peas

What does harvest festival mean to you?

Three people intimately involved in the world of allotments share their views:

First, Crispin Kirkpatrick – allotment officer.

What does Harvest Festival mean to you (in terms of being an allotment holder)?

I'm not an allotment holder..... although I hold a lot of allotments (about 2500).

What's your favourite autumn/winter crop?

Fave winter/autumn crop gotta be apples, sweet chestnuts (my countryside roots coming out) and maybe curly kale. Thinking about it, one could probably live solely off the above for ages. It’s been an odd year for plot holders- never going to get one that's good for everything. There are great plans afoot for allotments … watch this space- can't give any more clues, but could be exciting!

Second, poet and allotment holder Ellen de Vries who says she has a love-hate relationship with her allotment. She's written several poems set there, on the valley side at the edge of Brighton. The poems 'Longitude, Latitude' and 'The problem with imagination' can be found in her recently published collection 'Girl in the air' (Pighog Press) illustrated by Patrice LeGarrec. Visit her website at www.ellendevries.org or get the collection from Amazon (http://tinyurl.com/3dlqbn).

What does Harvest Festival mean to you (in terms of being an allotment holder)?

I'm not especially religious. I don't hang out with religious people, but I don't like to think of myself as aethiest either. Last year I went to church with a friend who wanted to restore his faith in God and it happened to be the harvest festival. My allotment harvest hadn't been too bad, for a first year. A few knobbly turnips, some tiny, partially munched spinach leaves, quite a few stumpy carrots. I was glowing with pride. I did realise however, that our soil probably needed more 'feeding' as everything we harvested was like a miniature version of the vegetable it should have been.

So there we were, in church, and along came the parade, all God's sons and daughters bearing the fruits of the harvest: Tesco baked beans, Pasta from ASDA, Sainsbury's value flour. Upon arrival at the pulpit the priest asked the kids '...and what do we make bread with?' and the kids were stumped.

So it seemed that I'd missed the point. I was wanting to celebrate the joy of germination. In a basic way, I kind of hoped God, or mother nature, or whatever, might see reason to give us another year based on my devout praise and thankfulness for the beauty of growth, and the joy of plucking my little miracles from the soil.

I felt like I'd come to the wrong party. Though I guess we were all still being thankful for abundance, despite it being non-organic highly corporate supermarket produce.

How was your harvest this year?

I don't know if it’s because the communication lines with 'God' have gone down, but this year has been a dreadful year for crops. In April the soil was parched, in June and July the Size 12 slugs (shoe size) munched their way through the lot, and then there was the Blight. I did everything I could, I fed the soil with everything I could think of. Dung, old fruit, toenail clippings, leaf-mould, anything... At harvest time I only got a few semi rotten potatoes, some partially munched strawberries and four blighted tomatoes.

Perhaps allotments aren't high on God's agenda anymore now that church services concentrate on big-chain supermarket farmed produce.

Not sure what to do about the allotment now. Time to start again and hope for the best next year. I'd like to post a quiet little non-ceremonial 'thanks for the bits, God' in his comments box for when he gets round to it. Just in case it could influence the weather next year.


Finally, Andrew Faulkner, Chair of the Allotment Association:

What does Harvest Festival mean to you (in terms of being an allotment holder)?

The Catholic Church doesn’t have a Harvest Festival service but it means the fruits of the season to me. I see myself as working in partnership with God in the garden.

How was your harvest this year?

Excellent – the fruits, especially apples and soft fruits, were fantastic and I’ve had a bumper crop of potatoes.

What is your favourite autumn/winter crop?

The apples from my Bramley and Cox trees. My friend Flo makes me apple pies through the winter, from apples she stores in cool, north-facing room and that’s one the things harvest suggests to me!



Harvest festival photograph from Bert Hay's allotment!

Labels: allotment-holder-interview, allotment-personality, autumn-allotment, harvest festival

Is it a bird ... Is it a plane ...?

No, it’s our allotment officer – Crispin.

If you’ve ever wondered exactly what an allotment officer does, you’re not alone. And I was fascinated to discover how Crispin’s workload actually breaks down, because it’s not what I expected at all.

His job, put in the simplest terms, is to get as many people using as much land as possible through the allotments. That means encouraging the people who’ve already got allotments to use them, and getting people off allotments who aren’t using them. Obvious, isn’t it?

But there’s a complication. Each individual plot under debate has to be examined against three criteria in our district at least. Is it 75% under cultivation? Is it free from flowering weeds? Is it tidy? If those three are breached, the allotment holder may be asked to leave. However, one person’s ‘tidy’ may be another person’s ‘mess’ and 75% under cultivation is hard to judge – dug over ground may have no crop planted while apparent grassland may hide native herbs and flowers … so Crispin spends a lot of time looking, talking and discussing. Not as much time as he’d like though, because his work also involves answering thousands of letters, emails and phone calls every year, from allotment holders or the public. These calls and queries deal with many issues – bonfires on allotments, vandalism, vacant plots, disputes between allotment holders, disputes between allotment holders and nearby householders, rights of way, theft, dilapidation, insurance, waiting lists, giving up allotments, finding co-workers … it’s an endless process.

One of the major issues is crime – and he wishes that more people who suffer vandalism or petty theft on their allotments would get a Crime Report Number from the police and then call him with it, so that he can use that statistical evidence to bring about change: maybe better security, maybe more police patrols, maybe more education in schools … but it seems that allotment holders rather assume they will ‘get hit’ at some time in their allotment careers and that’s something that we all need to take on board. If our houses were raided we wouldn’t brush it off, so we shouldn’t ignore allotment theft and damage either. We’re not helping ourselves, or the community, if we do.

Interestingly, the demographics of allotment rental in this area are changing – many people in the 20 - 35 age group are seeking plots; and many of them wish to be organic gardeners, but our 2300 allotments are already oversubscribed. Is there any chance of more land being brought into use for allotments? Possibly so – it’s under discussion at the Council level, so finger’s crossed for an allotment friendly decision!

It was an eye-opener to spend time with Crispin and see how complicated his job is – I still think he’s a lucky man to have it, but I have a greater respect now for the balancing act all allotment officers must carry out, to keep the rest of us happy.

Labels: allotment-eviction, allotment-personality, allotment-secrets

Allotment holders up close

This is Ron Buckman, local allotment site representative and Grand Old Man of allotmenteering. Normally, when we use the term Grand Old Man we’re talking about a star of the stage and screen, a theatre impresario or a literary lion, but it fits Ron extremely well. Not only has he had an allotment on our site for over twenty five years, but prior to that he had allotments at two other sites as well – it’s a lifetime of experience and it shows when you see his plot, which is workmanlike, thriving and productive. He’s a Grand Old Man for another reason too – have a guess how old he is?

Ron is also very modest about his achievements, which are not just about being able to produce good crops from his land – as you can see, he’s been recognised for his contribution to the world of allotments generally. He’s a stalwart of the shop, where we buy our various supplies and provisions, he’s a fount of information about what to grow, where, when and how, and he is the repository of local history about our site and its characters and development over many years. Walking round the site with him is an education – he seems to know almost everybody we pass, and he can sum up the history of nearly every plot, tell you its soil conditions and what its been used for in the past, and what has succeeded and failed on it, drawing on his in depth knowledge of the land and its users.

I’ll be describing in detail how Ron grows his unbelievably large and highly-scented sweet peas a bit later in the year, so that we can all have a go at emulating his methods, but in the meantime he has one piece of wisdom for all new allotment holders which is worth bearing in mind. “To keep a plot going,” Ron says, “you need to put in about ten hours a week. A lot of people come here, clear their plot, plant a crop and expect to come back in a couple of weeks and find something growing – they won’t. You need to put in the time at the beginning, and then you get something out at the end.”

It’s a statement that’s true about most things in life, but you don’t often get such a detailed prescription for success, so when it comes to an allotment, ten hours a week is what you need, and Ron should know.

As to how old he is, I still don’t quite believe it myself, especially since I visited his plot and saw how much of it he’d dug over ready for planting, but Ron is actually eighty seven – and if that’s not evidence for how good allotments can be for your health and fitness, I don’t know what is!

Labels: allotment-holder-interview, allotment-personality, allotment-tips

What’s happening on the allotments this week ...

Today was the BHOGG open day. BHOGG is Brighton and Hove Organic Gardening Group and they were showing off their excellent achievements between midday and five. Sadly, I had to be somewhere else by twelve, so I sneaked along at ten for a preview and, as you can see from the photograph, they’d laid out tables and chairs and the visitors’ book, all ready for the hordes that I hope turned up. I’m going to get a full report from Helen, later in the week, on how it went.

I also managed to sneak along to Andy, and pick up the beautiful striped geranium that I paid for weeks ago, but failed to collect from the Hurstpierpoint Allotments open day. So now the gorgeous thing is finally mine. Andy tells me that I can take a photograph of him (he’s been resisting the idea for quite some time) but only if it’s one of him feeding his seagull, Henry, from a fork. Hmmm. A couple of years ago I wrote a story, based on fact, about a man who eats a seagull’s egg and gets attacked my the mother bird. Then, last month, eating doughnuts on Brighton pier, I was dive-bombed by one of the damned birds and it scratched my face quite badly – the friend I was with noted with some admiration that I didn’t let go of the doughnut though! So my encounters with seagulls have been generally of the negative persuasion, so I shall be preparing carefully for my encounter with Henry who is, let me tell you, a large bird!

In other news, Ron gave me a superb bunch of sweet peas from his allotment and described in detail the methods he uses to raise such wonderful blooms, so look out for that in the weeks ahead, and Andrew’s tobacco is nearly ready to harvest.

Where did I have to be at twelve that could possibly be more important than an allotment open day? I’m glad you asked. My other half is a wizard with wood and cement and paint and glue, and I’ve asked him to make me a very special container for my geraniums: the stripy wonder already mentioned, and the lovely variegated scented one called Madame Salleron which I did buy at Hurstpierpoint. One nursery in the USA says, ‘We like to be honest - this plant does not flower!! We keep it in our collection because it is always in demand for bedding, particularly edging a border. It grows very bushy and is quite beautiful as a plant - the only one in our whole collection of over 1,000 varieties that doesn’t flower!’ – well I’ve got news for them … mine is! So as he had to go to the Bird of Prey centre today and build a door, I went along to hold bits of wood and nails and try to be useful, so that he could come home early and work on the geranium container.

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-personality, BHOGG-open-day

Does allotmenteering make you a better person?

In my case, the answer is no. Sadly, not.

This week’s sins are pretty substantial I’m afraid. To begin with, look at that picture – couldn’t it feature on the cover of Country Life? Those are Louise’s stained glass cane-toppers, which I’ve mentioned before. And the sins of greed and covetousness are the result of me getting my hands on them for long enough to take a photograph. Now I really want that kind of pretty thing for my sweet pea canes!

I’d only just started talking to Louise about her allotment, which she’s had for three years, and her garlic harvest, which she lifted early this year because the last two years she’s encountered onion blight, when my phone rang. One of my nearest and dearest had managed to get himself stranded in the wilds of Sussex, where he’d been volunteering, so I had to abandon the interview and head off to find him. That added impatience to covetousness and greed, and then when I couldn’t actually find him (my sense of direction is feeble at best) I did a bit of taking the Lord’s name in vain too! And what made it even more annoying was that Louise and I had just begun a fascinating conversation about some glass sculptures she’d had in the Chelsea Flower Show – which is a pretty big deal, as we all know – and how she wants to develop her glass sculptures by accepting commissions from gardeners. It feels like a real cliff-hanger not to have finished our talk, and now I’ll have to wait until we find ourselves up at the allotments together again.

So that’s four sins, resulting from one single allotment visit. Add to that the frustration that I’m feeling because I still don’t have the beautiful striped geranium that I’ve been after for weeks (so that’s double covetousness and double greed, actually) because Andy and I keep passing like ships in the night. Each time I get to the allotment he’s just leaving, or I’m just leaving (in a rush usually) as he arrives, so we haven’t coordinated the collection of my desired plant yet.

And to round out the sin collection, my broad beans have developed rust as a result of all the rainy weather we’ve had recently, so I’m envious of all those folk who still have smooth green bean pods now mine are speckled and scabbed with red/brown spots. So, let’s add it all up: two lots of greed, two lots of covetousness, one impatience, one bad language, one frustration and one envy. Eight allotment related sins.

I’ve got to admit that at present, allotments seem to be bad for my moral health!

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-personality, allotment-secrets

Allotment-holders up close

This is the Chair of my local Allotment Association – Andrew Faulkner. He says all he has to do as Chair is head up the AGM and sign the minutes, but I suspect his wry, convivial nature makes him an ideal figurehead for a bunch of highly individual and dedicated allotmenteers. He’s been an allotment holder since 1983, when he didn’t have a garden so thought he’d get an allotment … his mother became interested and helped him work that plot until she was eighty-four!

Since 2006 he’s been sharing a new allotment with Dick, whom I haven’t met yet, because he’s been on holiday, and who spent around 200 to 300 hours rebuilding the greenhouse on the new allotment. It’s a masterpiece of ingenuity – it has a rainwater irrigation system that funnels off the roof to fill both the water butt and the pond, which contains a newt and has been thronged with damselflies every day I’ve visited. Andrew has a surprise for me, and for his co-allotment holder, he’s installed a pretty little waterlily in the pond. He’s faintly apprehensive about it (Dick says waterlilies are invasive) which is why he waited until he was on holiday – and he’s bought a peace offering too, a new bird-feeder for the allotment, which he hopes will offset any waterlily-related problems!

Waterlilies apart, the two men get on brilliantly, although they are only on the allotment together for about an hour every day, and the allotment shows it – there are melons and globe artichokes, a tiny wildlife meadow, salad vegetables, fruit trees, onions, the famous tobacco which Andrew is growing for his pipe and maybe some cigars and a beautifully comfortable and well-insulated shed where we drank squash while I interviewed him.

It’s not all fun though; in the 1987 hurricane his allotment greenhouse blew away, and its replacement was taken by a storm in 1989 and last year, he had a terrible attack of sawfly on his gooseberries – because there’s no natural predator for them, he had to go and squash each one by hand! Andrew’s been a pioneer of organic gardening, switching from pesticides in 1987 because he became persuaded that there was a logical balance in nature that provided a predator for every pest (except the sawfly!)

What advice would he give somebody wanting to take on an allotment? “Don’t accept a corner plot, garden organically, provide plants used by small mammals and invertebrates so that you’re doing your bit for nature.”

Labels: allotment-holder-interview, allotment-personality, organic-allotment, sawfly