‘Why do you cover a lot of the plants with those tunnels?’
asks Lottie as I sit down on the bench next to her.
I give her a stroke and her face looks straight at me
demanding an answer. Lottie is my ever faithful whippet who shares my plot, albeit without doing the work.
‘It’s to protect them from the cold, heat, birds, squirrels
and foxes,’ I respond thinking I must have covered all the bases.
‘What about those white butterflies you had a fight with
last year?’ she fired back.
‘Them too,’ I quickly returned.
‘So why are some dark green, other light green and others
black?’
‘They are all same and are simply from different suppliers,’
I again quickly responded wanting to relax from the enquiring whippet next to
me.
I thought for a minute, ‘I thought dogs were colour blind?’
‘Urban myth,’ Lottie says now relaxing and shifting into yet
another stretching pose. ‘We merely have a different colour range to you which
mostly is yellows, blues and violets.’
We relax with Lottie slowly closing her eyes again and leaves me surveying
the plot and deciding on my next task.
Lottie stirs once more and obviously has something on her
mind and for once it isn’t food, or squirrels, or that moggy cat from the farm.
‘Why can’t you just grow things in the fresh air without hiding them in the
greenhouse, under those tunnels and making them climb up those canes?’
‘They would be killed by the wind, shrivel under the sun, be
eaten alive by those pigeons and much more,’ I said.
‘Seems a lot of hard work when you can get them down the
supermarket,’ she responds before nodding off once more to dream of chasing
squirrels.
She has a point and you often conveniently forget to add up
all the extras needed to grow your own down on the allotment. There are the
basic tools; trowel, hand fork, spade, fork, rake, hoe, watering can, wheelbarrow, wellies, gloves etc. The
basic extras to keep others from harvesting your produce or to support them;
netting, frames, canes, repellents etc. The soil and plant enhancers:
fertilizer, feeds, compost, etc. This list goes on and we haven’t mentioned seeds,
pots, polytunnels, greenhouses, sheds and water butts. Many of these costs are one off and once bought last many years but some are recurring. Some are essential whilst others are bought over time as needed.
I often look at those catalogues from frame specialists and
the adverts in garden magazines and wonder how much some folk must spend. There
are a few high maintenance plots which would not look out of place in the Ideal
Home show and magazine, where the look of the plot is obviously more important than the
produce. These can be living next to a low-cost minimalist plot whose focus is
very much on growing on every conceivable bit of soil and recycling anything and everything. If you look across to
Europe, many countries and communities have a different approach to allotments and the associated lifestyle.
Then there is the rent, which can include water and utility fees,
insurance, and other site costs. The costs here can vary significantly and in
most cases are universally shared across all plots. The basic rental often is subject to the size of plot and whether concessions such as for pensioners are being
applied.
However for the vast majority of tenants the allotment
remains cheap compared to the gym and other exercise club costs. The annual rent
trumps any golf club fee for value. You get more exercise that that season
ticket for the football club whose performance can also give you mental stress
on a regular basis. Even the Ideal Home plots are cheaper than renting our owning a garden
in inner London. Perhaps it’s not about the true cost of the produce but the act of producing, the
social gardening club without fences, the exercise and fresh air, the good life.
I turn to Lottie whose eyes open slowly to look back at me.
‘But the food doesn’t taste the same in the supermarket,’ I
tell her and look out across the plot once more and decide that it’s time to weed
the salad bed.
