How I juggle my five allotments

Yes, five. George Monbiot is on a quest for self-sufficiency armed with a

wheelbarrow and lots of good intentions. Can he really do it?

Saturday October 1, 2005

The Guardian

It was the onions that did it. I was already having doubts about the Co-op, but
this was beyond parody. Onions from New Zealand? In late summer, while our own crop
was being lifted? And they hadn't, by the look of them, been shipped. The skins
were smooth and tight: a few weeks in a steel container would have left them
looking like WH Auden. When I saw the label, I felt an overwhelming loneliness: the
rest of the world had gone mad.

But what could I do? The greengrocers have almost all gone, and the remainder now
sell the same globo-pap as the superstores. I joined an organic box scheme, but
found that half the stuff wilted by the middle of the week. I decided to boycott
the lot of them and grow my own. All of it. It took me a while to see the drawback.
How on earth would I find the time?

There's a small, well-used allotment site at the bottom of my street, and a large,
underused one a few hundred yards away. The big one was handing out plots for fruit
trees. Scarcely considering the implications, I took three there and one on the
local site. Four allotments. God.

Slowly, I thought up a way of making it work. Once the fruit trees were
established, I realised, they wouldn't need much time. That was quite a big "once".
One plot already had a row of young apple and plum trees. One had been ridged and
trenched by the previous user, and had grassed over. The third was covered in
brambles 10ft high. If I was going to stick to my rule of minimising my use of
fossil fuels by not using machinery, then I'd need extra manpower.

But trees, if they are well looked after, fruit almost logarithmically. In the
first year, nothing; in the second, perhaps five or six apples or pears from each
tree; in the third, a dozen or 15; and so on. I calculated that if I brought in
some friends to help me get started, and shared the fruit with them as payment, it
would delay my self-sufficiency by no more than one extra year.

We quickly cleared and levelled the second plot, and planted 14 trees: ancient
apple varieties such as the Pitmaston Pineapple, Ribston Pippin and Reverend
Wilkes, cherries, pears and a greengage, and about 30m of blackcurrants,
gooseberries and raspberries.

When those were in, I hacked down the brambles on the third plot. We've just
finished digging out the rootballs, and will plant another 14 trees this autumn. If
all goes well, by 2008 we'll have enough fruit to keep us going all year: apples
from September to May (we've chosen varieties that ripen at different times), then
rhubarb, then cherries, blackcurrants, gooseberries and raspberries, then
blackberries, then plums, then autumn raspberries, pears and apples again.

We'll have to water the new trees for a few months, scythe the grass in the summer
and mulch the bushes, and we should build an apple store, but from then on the
orchard will need no more than 12 hours a year.

When I first took on the vegetable plot, I realised why so many people give up. The
soil is lousy and the organic matter consists mostly of slugs, but the biggest
problem is that every unused plot is a mat of couch grass and mare's tail. They'll
overwhelm anyone who doesn't give up their job and spend their life weeding. If
you're not prepared to use Roundup - and wipe out the frog population - there's
only one remaining strategy.

I bought a roll of damp-proof membrane and covered the ground for 18 months. That
killed almost everything. Then I spent a couple of days digging a 2ft trench around
the whole plot. I cut a strip from the membrane and pinned it with nails to the
outer wall of the trench, then pulled the soil back in. This meant that once I'd
got rid of the survivors, the perennial weeds couldn't come back. I got the local
sawmill to cut me some nine-inch planks, boxed it all up in raised beds, and dug in
manure at the ridiculous rate of 70kg to every square metre.

I did something else that seemed a bit mad at the time: I planted almost everything
between mid-February and the end of March, and put cloches on the beds. I reasoned
that the plants would get roots down before the pests came out and dry weather
began, which would save a lot of time later on.

Setting up the plot took 10 days' work and cost 250. The plastic meant there was
an environmental impact, but the membrane should last 20 years and the cloches 10.
I started sowing in the warm period around February 10, with beetroot, lettuce,
rocket, chicory, broad beans, carrots, spring onions, leeks, radishes, dill and
coriander. Three weeks later, I planted new and maincrop potatoes, and sowed
sweetcorn, salsify and climbing french beans, then a few weeks after that kale,
courgettes, tomatoes and broccoli.

Despite the scepticism of my neighbours, they all came up. In late July, I planted
out the leeks and put in mooli and four kinds of winter salad. As soon as the
summer beds are clear, I'll sow broad beans and garlic and, later, onions. I've
planted everything in shallow trenches, to conserve water. This also cuts watering
time more or less in half.

The results so far have been extraordinary: beetroot 6in across, sweetcorn 7ft
high, and more vegetables on this small patch than my household, and quite a few of
my neighbours, have been able to handle.

I spent about eight hours a week there in the spring and early summer, sowing,
weeding and dragging blankets on and off the cloches, but since then no more than
the odd half-hour, watering winter seedlings. I've now wiped out the perennial
weeds, so next year there will be less work. I think, in other words, I've cracked
it. So what have I done to celebrate? Got myself a fifth one.

Perhaps it isn't the rest of the world that's gone mad after all.