Neighbours With Tomatoes
While our own allotment is still full of tall weeds and needing a lot of work, it turns out it can already be very fruitful - you just have to run into your new allotment neighbours. Here is chapter 2 of The From Scratch Garden!
Chapter 2: Neighbours with Tomatoes
After getting very excited about our new allotment and all the possibilities and potential, the stark reality was that actually getting anything done there was challenging. Our life situation right now is that my husband is working a lot, setting up his new business (wedding photography, check it out here!), which means I’m spending nearly all my time with our wonderful little toddler.
Now the idea is of course to have our son join us and spend time at the allotment as much as possible, I have no problems with him digging in the dirt (he’s already shifted a lot of soil in the plant pots in our little garden!) or getting grassy knees. But we weren’t really comfortable with him being up there until we’d cleared some of the bigger weeds away - the reports we read on whether ragwort was harmful to humans were a bit conflicting, and besides - clearing a big allotment needs some time and focus (and ideally a strimmer!), so it wasn’t really an activity to have a child around for. We kept putting it off.
However, what I could do, was take him up with me in a carrier and check on the remaining apples on our wonderful apple tree of hope. So one sunny morning, I took a stroll up there with him and had another look at our new plot.
We ran into a lovely, calm dog with beautiful golden fur, and its owner, Gavin. Gavin is as calm as his dog, super friendly and loved chatting to my son (I could instantly tell he was a grandfather, and probably a very loved one!). I explained which plot we had taken over, and it turned out we were adjacent to each other. Gavin asked if we wanted some tomatoes, and invited us in to his huge allotment, brilliantly tidy and well tended to. He tends to the garden with his wife Hilary, and he explained they actually keep it for some older neighbours who aren’t able to do much gardening themselves, but who like to come up and sit there on a sunny day. How lovely!
He opened the door to a little greenhouse absolutely full of tomatoes, and that gorgeous aroma of fresh, fragrant tomatoes hit me. (I think it may be my favourite scent!) He gave us a whole bunch, and then remembered he also had beets, runner beans and huge, bright green cooking apples, plus a massive courgette! I filled a bag I’d brought (in case any of our apples were ripe) with the freebies, and my son held on to the courgette proudly.
Gavin explained that our allotment had been gorgeous when it was tended to. “You’ll get lots out of that plot, great soil”, he promised.
So, it turns out - keeping an allotment is easy! You just pop up there and make friends with everyone else and get free food.
But jokes aside, I felt so inspired by meeting Gavin, seeing what a well tended plot can look like and meeting someone we can learn from. It’s a great way to connect more with our community too - especially people we wouldn’t meet in any other setting, perhaps.
The tomatoes were used in a bunch of different dishes, some eaten as snacks (possibly the best tomatoes I’ve ever snacked on, and my son downed them like they were berries!), the runner beans were a big hit in both a miso soup with tofu and in a beef stew alongside the beets. The huge courgette served as an ingredient in about 4 different recipes, among them a pasta bake and grated in a banana bread! The cooking apples became the stars of a delicious Somerset apple cake.
Inspired and motivated by how much food can actually come from growing your own, I felt very eager to clear our plot and get it ready. More on that next time!
Like before, I very much welcome all tips, big and small, about gardening, allotment practices, weeding, growing… all of it! Please do share, I will be so happy to hear from you. You can comment below or email me!
