ALLOTMENTS
Hall Meadow Allotments Daphne Ledward, first woman panellist on Gardeners Question Time, celebrates ten years of the DSJ Allotments. It came as a shock to realise that it is actually ten years ago that I opened Hall Meadow Allotments. My recollection of the opening was that it was bitterly cold and anyone brave enough to take one on could be sick of ‘Growing Your Own’ very rapidly, as the soil was nothing like the silt I am lucky enough to have at home, where you can dig down a metre and still pull up something that would instantly support plant life, and a cricket bat could take root if you left it lying about in the garden. A decade on, what a transformation, but not without a great deal of hard work and dedication, when I visited again earlier this summer to judge the Best Kept Allotments. Beautiful, fertile earth, thanks to hard work, diligent composting, regular leaf collection and farm manure when it is available. A feast of healthy crops (thanks to barrier protection) and a fascinating variety of layouts, it is evident that to the holders 18
this is not a necessity but a pleasure to have an abundance of fruit and vegetables, with the satisfaction that they are all home-grown. Not just that, but good friendships have also grown and flourished amongst the potatoes and pears, methinks. It was a difficult job to pick out the winners, so much so that I suggested that there should be at least one runner up in each category as there was little to choose between the best. Perhaps the only disappointment was that a very tiny minority of allotment holders have not grasped that not weeding makes life not only harder for themselves, but their neighbours, as seeds blowing about quickly turn into rampant weeds in well cultivated earth. You all know the saying, ‘One year’s seeding, seven years’ weeding’… That aside, Hall Meadow Allotments are a credit to Deeping. May their second decade be as successful as the first.
Allotments Chairman Geoff Hurst and Daphne Ledward judge the best plot 2015
