I have a dung dealer. He brings me 30kg bags, smuggles them into town, stashed among other deliveries. I get overexcited, anxious, waiting for my man. He farms the stuff, grows his own, brings it in from the Welsh borders. He is called Tom Jones. Honestly.
Farmer Tom supplies some of London’s finest restaurants. But I am not in the market for his Michelin-star meat. It’s something more precious I’m after: his three-year-old cow manure, the vegetable gardener’s holy grail.
Time was when, to get my hands on good cow manure, I would hire a flat-backed truck and drive to the Midlands, north of Birmingham, load up with tonnes of the stinky stuff and ride back carefully in a thick fug of farmyard. I’d then wash the van down and return it to the rental company, all innocent-eyed.
But no more. Jane Scotter of Fern Verrow farm turned me on to Tom. So he drops me off a few sacks of muck some time before spring and I dig it into the plot.
I supplement it through the growing season with doses of ‘herbal tea’. Not the sort you drink for insomnia. Just stuff comfrey or nettle stems into a barrel, top it off with water and leave to ferment for a few weeks. Warning: it smells of roadkill so your garden neighbours may complain. Dilute and water it on to the soil, not food you are about to eat. But I swear by it.
I also spray biodynamic Preparation 500, cow manure buried in a cow horn over winter then stirred in a bucket of water for an hour at dusk, a sort of garden yoga that works for me and the soil. I believe the beans grow faster, the beetroot tastes sweeter, the sorrel more sour. You might prefer to buy an organic seaweed feed. Whatever your favoured fertiliser, good luck with your growing. We are on the threshold now.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £14.99) is out now. Order it for £10.04 from guardianbookshop.com
