Finding our allotment has coincided with me a) moving to Brighton and b) making a serious attempt to stop chewing my fingernails and grow them as befitting a lady.
Both innovations are theoretically inconvenient in allotment terms. But I rather like taking the tube across London in my wellies with dirt under my unimpressive nails.
I'm wearing the soil like a badge of honour because I've only done container gardening for the last 20 years.
But I'm really pleased we're doing this - it's alarming how quickly we've lost our growing capacity in the UK. This country is now only 9% self sufficient in fruit and vegetables; between 1994 and 2004 UK food production declined by 24% and imports rose by 38%. Apple production has halved since 1989.
That scares the hell out of me.
Getting involved in the Observer's allotment offers a practical way of contributing towards change in the future, but it also brings back memories of my childhood when I had my own vegetable patch in the garden next to my dad's and we grew such miracles as corn on the cob. As we lived right next to the burgeoning A12, I can only imagine what noxious fumes were being absorbed by both produce and planters.
I also managed to poison my hard won veggies by tipping a watering can containing weed killer all over them - at least I can't make that mistake at Hampstead because we're doing it biodynamically and the allotments have been organic for decades - there simply aren't those kind of herbicides lying around.
We brought some untreated wood up from Brighton to make our compost system, next to the wormery from Wiggly Wigglers. The wood was sourced from palettes, millions of which are dumped in landfills around the world every year, rescued by Brighton and Hove Community Wood Recycling partnership (which has now expanded around the country).
There is a lot of organic horse manure lying around in bags, although we can't find any accreditation on the bags. Does anyone have a view on this? Can you actually get certified organic manure and does it matter? In any case, one biodynamic grower told us horse manure was the wrong 'head space' for our purposes so we're now waiting on Allan's cow manure to come to us from somewhere in Wales.
Incidentally, if anyone has any great (or even average) advice on how not to mess up organic compost and keep its integrity, please do share.
