Introducing The From Scratch Garden
We have an allotment - and The From Scratch Garden is born. I will be sharing updates on how we get on with clearing and using it, and here is the first chapter: The Apple Tree of Hope.
Chapter 1: The Apple Tree of Hope
My husband and I moved to the south coast of England (from London) in the spring of 2023, and shortly after we welcomed our son to the world! Life has changed a lot since then, and so has the way that I have looked at cooking, time management, use of ingredients and everything surrounding home cooking. I grew up in Norway where it’s relatively common to have a large garden with fruits and berries growing in it (there’s just more space!), and my childhood was very privileged for this. We had an apple tree, redcurrant, blackcurrant and gooseberry, and we would go to farms to pick our own strawberries as well as pick blueberries, lingonberries, raspberries and cloudberries (an amazing berry native to countries in the Northern hemisphere – I’ll write about it one day!) in the wild.
The town we moved to on the south coast is great for accessing fresh produce, there is a lovely weekly fruit and vegetable market, you can get fresh fish (unsurprisingly) in a nice shop by the beach and there’s also a farmer’s market with rotating stalls every fortnight, as well as two big supermarkets and a big Waitrose. So we are not experiencing any kind of food shortage or indeed shortage of options. However, that desire to grow our own - especially introducing our son to growing and picking his own fruit, berries and vegetables - was strong after we became a family of three. It’s funny how becoming a parent takes you back to your own childhood and makes you really value what you had (or didn’t have) in a new way. Our garden is very small and has no grass or opportunities for growing anything, other than in pots – some of which I did successfully the first summer: I grew rocket, tomatoes and snack cucumbers, and actually managed to get quite a lot which we could use in our summer salads. But as our son got bigger and needed a bit more entertaining (those frequent baby naps were quite useful for watering the plant pots), that project kind of dwindled.
Near our house, and I’m talking very near, literally just a steep, but short hill away, is a collection of beautiful allotments. I used to see allotments where we lived previously too, and always thought it would be a great thing to have – but I had this idea that it was “for other people”. I was very uneducated on the topic of allotments, and assumed they would be expensive or hard to get your hands on. How wrong I was! We learned this spring that our lovely neighbours, who also have a young son, had been awarded an allotment by the town council after putting themselves on the waiting list a year earlier. They explained that they’d got a really big allotment, it needed a lot of work, but it was cheap as chips, a negligible amount yearly (especially if you manage to grow good food there and save on buying it!). This spurred me on to put us on the waiting list too, and surprisingly, this autumn we were already offered one. Wow! We were excited, but it was also a bit of a surprise as I had expected a similar wait time to our neighbours and therefore imagined a slightly bigger toddler joining me at the allotment, rather than the little, still-not-quite-toddling toddler I currently had in the house.
We were given a map of the allotments with the number of the one we were offered, and a few days to think about it. If we didn’t reply quickly though, the plot would be offered to the next person on the list, so there was no time to waste. Early one morning, as the sun was just rising, my husband suggested we take a trip up there (our son had got us out of bed anyway!) to have a look at it. We hiked up the hill with our little one in a sling. We walked past the big, tidy, well-kept allotments at the front, and then navigated our way through a narrow path on the left overgrown with blackberry bushes (here, my soon stretched his hand out and gave a very clear vocal demand for a blackberry to be handed to him). We found a beautiful black gate with the number 8 on it (“our” plot!), and walked in. The place was at first glance just a completely overgrown plot of land, with nothing but waist high grass and weeds, much of it what appeared to be ragwort (more on that later, I’m sure!). Walking through, we started noticing signs of how someone had clearly done a lot of work there… but it looked like that had been a while ago now. A bench was nearly hidden under long grass and weeds. There seemed to be some chicken wire around certain areas, and bang in the middle of the allotment was… an apple tree. With some healthy looking (though still a bit early to pick) apples. It felt like a sign. I got goosebumps!
Just to explain, I love picking apples. So much so, it’s become a bit of a joke between me and my husband. I will never miss an apple tree growing in the wild, I can almost smell an orchard before I see it and going on epleslang (the Norwegian version of scrumping for apples) is a favourite activity on autumn walks. I love cooking with apples as well, as is probably evident from the recipes on my website.
Not only was it perfect that there was an apple tree in there because of my love for them, but amidst the overwhelming amount of weeds and grass and obvious work that needed doing before we could plant a single thing in this allotment soil, it felt like a gift. A bit of hope. A free sample, if you will, to get you hooked in. “Here, have an apple. See – this is just the beginning of what you could get from this land!” And it certainly sealed the deal for us. Especially when we noticed that the blackberry bushes were growing around the surrounding fences. We accepted the allotment offer, signed the papers we needed to sign and paid our deposit (£100) and our annual rent (around £60).
So we now have an allotment. And with that, how can I not launch The From Scratch Garden?! TFSG will for now be very different to TFSB, as I will be learning in real time and sharing with you, and though I am an amateur cook, I am even more of an amateur gardener. I am completely … well, green. So this is me sharing my learning experience with you. Hopefully one day, or even along the way of learning and failing myself, I can share some useful gardening and growing tips. But if you are desperate for help now, I am not your resource just yet. However, if you are curious to hear how we manage to clear and hopefully use this allotment at some point, do follow along. I will be doing garden updates on the podcast and on the website regularly, and you can also find me on Instagram (The From Scratch Garden) for some very honest and real updates on how it’s going!
And 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!
