Early morning. 6am! We are on the allotment with Jane Scotter, doyenne of biodynamic growers Fern Verrow, green goddess of Borough Market. She has come to share a 'stir', making a mix of horn silica to spray over our flowering fruits and beans. This is the gardening equivalent of jamming with Jimi Hendrix, a writing workshop with Philip Roth, cooking with Escoffier (and not at all as I told her the day before: like a visit from the Queen Mum, which hadn't gone down very well).
We had been frantically weeding for two solid days (our own fault for being away the previous weekend), but now she is here, for her first visit since the first few weeks in the life of the allotment. We are nervous and a little hungover (had got her a little drunk the night before on pink Champagne).
And scared rightly so, it seems, our stirring lacks vigour, no airy-fairy elementals here. After showing us how it should be done, Jane makes an inspection of the plot, saying kind and comforting things while her face twitches in disgust as she discovers yet another thistle! But I think we learn more in the next hour than in the past year. About thinning, weeding, feeding; about pulling onions, trimming tomatoes and when to plant your purple sprouting. She teaches us about tools, about articulated hoes and five-pronged grubbers. But above all else, we learn again the vital lesson: about the supreme importance of the soil.
