Growing up the DIY way - Kate Brudenell

I'm back. My left hand isn't quite what it was, but I'm being a brave little soldier nonetheless. I'm just flouncing around the land and mentioning the pain every other minute or so. If I'm suffering...

I feel compelled to share quite how much of an effect taking on the allotment has had on my attitudes towards large DIY outlets.

Since I was a youngster, I have taken a zero tolerance attitude to crossing the thresholds of 'sheds' (as I believe the trade experts call such retail outlets - ahem) and eschewed all opportunities to browse their rows of tools, pallets of turf and trollies of vacuum packed compost.

As a child, I accepted that I had little choice but to accompany my parents and siblings on our obligatory Sunday trips to out-of-town retail parks to visit B&Q or suchlike. In the same good spirit, my parents accepted that it was safer not to force me to go into the warehouses with them and we reached a sensible compromise.

We agreed that I would indeed go with them, but on the proviso that I was allowed to stay in the car, in the car park, while they enjoyed all the delights that the outlet had to offer. As per rules about dogs left in cars, my window would be wound down a little to allow fresh air to circulate and if I was a really good girl, I was allowed to have the radio on. This happened with the explicit understanding that if I went anywhere near the car keys and/or the ignition, my unthinkable punishment would be to have to go with them into the shop every time they went from that point on.

I find that having acquired the land, I have not been able to avoid facing my fear/hatred of DIY places. I couldn't get around needing a fork, spade and rake. With a racing heart, my first trip to B&Q was perfunctory and businesslike. No browsy pottering for me. I found what I wanted and I made my escape in about 15 minutes.

The second time I visited, I'm ashamed to say that I betrayed my former self and found myself, well...almost enjoying looking at all the plants and earthenware. I was lured down the seeds aisle and led astray by the seedling trays and before I knew it, my trolley was filling up and I got that retail therapy buzz. That normally happens to me in Topshop, not Homebase.

What has become of me?

Paraffin, planting and pestilence

James here…

The days are getting longer, the weather is warmer, and you’ll be pleased to know work on the land has been progressing well, despite Kate being out of action for the last few weeks. She spectacularly managed to break her hand on a bouncy castle. No, we’re not sure how she managed to do it either!

So, it’s over to me to give you the lowdown on our progress. The spuds are in, the onions are sprouting and after an expensive trip to a large DIY outlet last weekend, it feels like things are finally coming together.

The war declared between the three allotmenteers and the deadly Switch Grass hangs in the balance. After weeks of painfully digging out several hundred tonnes of the weed (no, I’m not exaggerating) and it’s winding roots, it is now a waiting game to see if the roots we left behind are going to fight back, or accept defeat. Knowing the sheer strength of this weed from my farming days, I’m not predicting an early victory. In fact I fear it will try to fight on, and reclaim the land as its own once again. We’re ready, armed with yet more weed-killing juice and 60 yards of weed-proof matting.

So, the pesky weed aside, last week we reached our first milestone. Yes we’re planting - our first carrots, peas, parsnips, onions, potatoes and beetroot are all in. Katy has been busy in fruit corner, which she’s extended to include gooseberries, redcurrants, rhubarb (is that a fruit?), a plum tree and raspberries.

The newly created herb garden looks the part and appears to be doing well, its also being looked after by our first allotment gnome, who goes by the name of Tacky.

Since taking on the land, we’ve met many characters down at the allotments. This must be the friendliest places around. Everyone around us seems know who we are already: ‘You’re the ones who have taken on plot 162, are you then? Good to see someone sorting that out”, they say. It truly feels like we have been welcomed and accepted under the wing of some of the more experienced allotment residents.

Inevitably, with all these over the hedge chats, everyone has got tips for us, which we promise to share with you. Here’s the disclaimer: we’re not saying they will work, because we haven’t tested them out ourselves yet, so please be gentle with us if they don’t!

Tip One: soak your peas in paraffin to stop mice and other rodenty-types from eating them (surely they are joking about that?).

Tip Two: buy mid to late fruiting raspberries to help stop them getting mildew on the fruits.
Tip Three: plant carrots in bath tubs and cover the lot in net curtains to protect them from being chewed up by carrot fly. Luckily the previous residents of plot 162 left us 3 baths, so we are suitably bathed up to try this one out.

The land is a haven for wildlife. Frogs, field mice and the occasional lost chicken have all paid us a visit since we started. The tall hedges and many trees that surround us are home to hundreds of birds, all of whom we regard with the deepest suspicion. Surely they have an eye on the land for a quick snack?

With this in mind we have decided to build our very own lady scarecrow. She’s going to be a retro sort and will prevent any air invasions from our feathered friends by dazzling them with her sartorial choice of vintage psychedelic prints.

If that doesn’t scare them off, nothing will.

Apocalypse allotment - Kate Brudenell

Switch Grass. It’s no laughing matter. It’s the kind of stuff that potatoes have nightmares about. Horror stories abound. Rumour has it (if you’re squeamish, move on to the next paragraph this minute) that it’s roots can grow right through a potato, skewering them as indiscriminately as you like, growing into them and growing right out the other side. The poor little spuds don’t stand a chance against the Switch’s lightening-quick tentacles of death.

This Switch character is not only a ruthless tater assassin, but also a master of disguise. You might know it as Couch, Cooch, Quick, Quitch or even Quack Grass. Sneaky.

‘The land’ is riddled with the stuff. All over the place it is, looking like butter wouldn’t melt above ground, pretending to be harmless blades of Grass while all the time it’s conducting stealth missions underground in a bid to increase its stranglehold over our soil. We’re ready for it though, armed with spades, forks and spray stuff which James has reassured me is biodegradeable. Failing that, he has unsurprisingly, informed me that we may have to resort to setting fire to the lot.

In some ways though, it’s been something of an achievement to actually identify the Switch Grass as being a particular problem. When we first set foot on the land in November, we could barely see down to the bottom of the undergrowth, what with all the weeds, rubbish, corrugated iron, barrels, glass and generally grim detritus that covered our patch. There’s a whopping great big boiler still in one corner, which the most helpful scrap metal man from a neighbouring allotment has got his eye on.

Since November, we’ve essentially been clearing the land of all the aforementioned unsightly tat. The weeds were over waist high in many places and it was with quite some satisfaction and a certain degree of pathological intent that we took it in turns to scythe the weeds down to size like wellied-up, swinging grim reapers. Personally, I found it to be quite a cathartic exercise. In fact, the scythe is now broken.

The scrap metal has all been chucked down to one end of the land and that is slowly being taken away by our ally, the scrap metal man, who is schlepping it away bit by bit. We think a greenhouse must have come to something of a violent end on the allotment at some point, because shards and remnants of glass are just scattered and hidden everywhere. We’ve picked up a lot, enough to fill two bathtubs, but you know what it’s like when you drop a glass on the kitchen floor, you just keep finding more painful little bits stuck to your socks…

It was actually pretty enjoyable, slowly but surely ridding the view of the top layer of rubble, rubbish and ruin to see what we really had to work with. There are a few blackberry bushes at the back of the land and whilst the brambles can be a bit tricksy, I think we can all feel some fruits of the forest desserts coming on. There’s an elderflower tree that’s still alive, a grapevine that’s most definitely dead and right now as I type, I can see some daffodils out the corner of my eye that are freshly cut from the plot sitting in a vase (well, a pint glass) on the side. Twee, but true.

That’s not to say that it’s not hard work. I think we’ve done pretty well so far, but its taken nearly 4 months to get the plot clear enough to start digging over so that we can start to think about planting our first potatoes later in April. I’ve lost count of the times we walked onto the land and panicked about how much there is to do. We had piles of brambles and weeds heaped all over the shop and carcasses of old carpets lying about that had previously been laid to kill off all the Switch. They were all either heaved over into the ditch at the side or if dry enough, piled up and put on a bonfire (small and controlled).

It is something of a haven up there and we know each other well enough to be able to work together in companiable silence, punctuated with a few seasonal outdoorsy sniffs. A colleague on a nearby allotment keeps doves, so we watch them circle and swoop above us in formation from time to time and James was delighted to find a brown hen strutting her stuff across the land the other day. Each allotment is enclosed with hedges and fencing, so it feels quite snug and almost private as you amiably potter around and about.

I would be lying if I said it was entirely peaceful. The unmistakeable sound of sirens sometimes cuts through our little urban oasis, but lest we forget, St Anns Allotments is pretty close to the city centre. Before Christmas, a spate of devastating break-ins at the site brought home how easily years of hard work can be undone in a single night.

We’ve got a long way to go before anyone might want to steal our veg though, we don’t leave our tools there, and if the Switch wins, we won’t have any eatable produce anyway. So, for now, we’ll keep sieving the roots out with our forks and rakes and killing it off the best we can, but something tells me this isn’t the last you’ll hear from us about the evil Switch.

The Three Allotmenteers

More and more people are getting allotments – but how difficult is it for those starting out? Three novices have taken on a plot at the St Ann’s allotments, and have agreed to keep an online blog for the Evening Post. KATE BRUDENELL (left) explains how they are getting on

Allotments. They’re all the rage. If you’d told me five years ago that I’d be sharing 740 square yards of prime St Ann’s turf, I’d have tottered slightly, raised a quizzical brow and told you that it sounded a bit too much like hard work.

Indeed, when I told my supportive older brother that I was to write a blog about our allotment, he spluttered: “Blog? Blag more like!”
The first thing that happens when you get an allotment, is that people start buying you thermos flasks. I got two for Christmas and one for my birthday, so I now consider myself adequately tooled up in the keeping hot liquids hot department.

The second thing that happens when you get an allotment is that everyone asks you to grow their favourite vegetable.

The third thing that happens, is that it soon becomes clear that, in spite of your promise that you will indeed strive to grow their favourite vegetable, their enthusiasm for some hearty home-grown goodness does not extend to a reciprocal popping down to lend you a hand for the afternoon. You know who you are.

Three of us share “the land” (as we refer to our allotment; it makes us feel grand). I don’t think any of us were aware of one another’s allotment-related day dreaming before the silence was broken last October, when Katy and I both confessed to having a hankering for a bit on the horticultural side. When James said he was interested in taking on an allotment too, our fate was sealed.

Before any of us could change our minds, we swiftly held an Allotment Summit Meeting in the public house of our choice (the Golden Fleece), agreed that the faded glamour of Grade-II listed St Ann’s Allotments – the patchwork on the hill off Hungerhill Road – was our preferred choice and pored over the plans of the available plots.

After some highly technical discussions about which plot was the biggest and closest to the car park, we identified the fuzzy little patch on the map that we wanted, highlighted it and arranged to pay it a visit.

At this point in proceedings, my conscience tells me that we probably owe somebody an apology. It turned out that “our” plot was actually already taken, but we didn’t realise this minor setback until after we had scurried all over it, been excited by the quaintness of the little house/shed on it (oh, it had a lovely little chimney and everything) and planned exactly what we’d do with it. Sorry, comrades.

After a week or so of uncertainty as to which plot we could actually have, we ended up securing the patch it turned out we were looking for in the first place. Some of the allotments share the same number, depending on where they are on the site. We got there in the end.

Typically, we all reacted in our own special little way when we were handed the keys to the land. Katy consulted her allotment guru at work and immediately placed an order for organic seeds. Our very own little bonfire enthusiast James invested in some lighter fluid and matches, and I bought some wax crayons and nice paper so that we could draw a plan of our patch.

It can be a bit intimidating actually, St Ann’s Allotments, but in an inspiring way. It’s sobering seeing the neat compartments, raised beds and serious sheddage of the plots that belong to the people-who-know-what- they’re-doing. But, I guess they had to learn at some point too and that’s what we want to share with this blog.

Which all brings me around to wishing you a very warm welcome to the Allotment Blog, from Katy, James and I. We’re only just starting out as allotmenteers, so we’ll make mistakes, which you should feel free to laugh at. We will. But we also hope that you’ll enjoy reading about how we transform the said 740 square yards of overgrown, rubbish-strewn mess – anybody need two manky old bath tubs? - into something that we can be proud of. but produces some pretty big vegetables to boot!