We have an allotment!

I realised I needed more space when the Halloween pumpkins started strangling our currants. I also knew that I would not want to make a choice between the two. We've got a good-sized garden with an old pear tree at the bottom, a russet apple tree, a Marjorie's Seedling plum tree and two birches. It's bisected by a gently curving strip of lawn. When we took over the house some years ago, the garden was a large square lawn with slim flowerbeds along the side where, we were told, the previous owners used to plonk all the roses they ever got given.

Now that we've had a go, it's a lush jungle of planned and accidental plants, one workshop/studio, a tool shed, a bark-covered woodland bit, a wood pile, a nettle patch, a pond, a sun-facing kitchen garden plus a Goth garden with black and red shade-lovers.

In the kitchen garden and in pots on the patio we grow herbs such as thyme, which grows wild in the concrete and brick cracks on the patio, wild rocket (also by happy accident), basil, chives, tarragon, rosemary and oregano, then spinach, broccoli, accidental tomatoes, courgettes, Halloween pumpkins, sweetcorn, strawberries, raspberries, red- and blackcurrants, blueberries and gooseberries. Accidental tomatoes are those that come up by themselves because they were spread via our home-made compost. When it comes to making compost, we do everything wrong and our resident rat colony thanks us by turning everything over in the compost dalek. In return we always knock politely before taking off the dalek lid and putting our kitchen waste in. Rizzo and his mates always leave a tidy pile of crumbling soil at the top of the compost heap, and I resolved long ago to keep quiet about their presence. Our plants thank us by growing as if they're bonkers. And we have tomato seedlings popping up like weeds all over the beds.

There is also now a small greenhouse that OH built last year out of scrap. Our neighbour P is a self-employed builder who provides us with a steady supply of free stuff that I declare useful and drag onto our property before badgering OH to do something useful with it. Normally he tells me to go away and just burn it but this time he built a kick-ass greenhouse for his chilli seedlings.

However, during the course of the summer of 2010 it became clear to me that I was running out of room. I could probably have ripped up the remaining bit of lawn to make room for more beds but I quite like the lawn and the current meandering layout. I am thinking big; I want an allotment.

Crucially, I am and have always been susceptible to economic doomsday scenarios, which range from losing my job and not getting another to runaway inflation to serial bank failures and a mass collapse of supply chains, looted supermarket shelves, raided depots, foraging in the woods, trapping squirrels etc. There is probably a psychological reason for why, ever since I was quite a small child, I have entertained visions of lone self-sufficiency and grim-faced survivalism. What shook me the most about the Great Crisis of 2008 was the admission, by rather too senior figures in the then government, of quite how close Britain, and indeed the whole of the Western world, had been to a catastrophic scenario whereby people could no longer access their digital money to buy their daily necessities. And the problems have not been sorted out and could happen all over again.

An allotment, my (muddled, hopelessly naive) thinking goes, can at least theoretically provide an element of food security and can reduce our weekly and by now really infuriatingly high supermarket bills. Relying more on allotment produce means planning meals around roots and vegetables rather than slabs of meat. It would force me to do more cooking from fresh, i.e. spend less time thinking and worrying about work. It would also force me out into the fresh air on a fairly regular basis and provide me with hours of free exercise, saving me stupid gym membership fees and preventing me from reading right-wing finance blogs. Allotmenteering is a relaxing pastime and gets me away from the house. And it means that despite the essentially solitary nature of allotment gardening, I have to interact, and occasionally co-operate, with other people. Those who know me may be surprised to hear that this does not come easily to me. My job requires me to talk all day and every day but my default mode is hermit.

As hobbies go, allotmenteering comes with tons of benefits. So I want one. Now. Where can I get one? 

OH has listened to all of this and has, as he does as a matter of principle when it comes to anything I suggest, found tons of reasons for why my idea, like so many others, is no good. I usually rate his judgement very highly but on this occasion, I decide not to give a flying feather about what he thinks and I go ahead anyway. If he wants to tag along, he can. If not, he can stay at home and do other stuff.

In the late summer of 2010 I phone our nearest site, a privately-managed ex-council one near a small river and only five minutes away from our house on foot. It's ideal. I learn that there is a waiting list. The older gentleman who runs the site tells me they charge plotholders £15 pounds a year. I think I've misheard but when he repeats it, one-five, I am absolutely thrilled. I want a plot there! Now! When can I take over? He says there are some plots which haven't been farmed that year so he'll send out some reminder letters and see what happens.

I wait a few months and phone him again in October. Was there any news regarding a plot vacancy? It takes him a while to remember who I am. A couple more weeks later he rings us again. A young guy who had been farming four plots (four!) had been caring for his mum, who had cancer, and who was unable to farm the fourth one properly and was prepared to give it up. Bless him! He leaves us all the strawberries, raspberries and rhubarb roots, already dug up. He takes the Brussels sprouts. I don't care for sprouts so I think that's an excellent deal.(Sadly, his mum died,.)

OH, who had naturally taken a bit of a backseat during the scouting and acquisition stage, is now as excited as I am and is “all in allotment”. The plot feels huge to us – “10 rods”, says the allotment secretary, which makes me think of druids, cider and pitchfork-studded mansion raids at dawn. It's only 300 square metres – and it's full of weeds and rubbish but it has masses of sun, is a little bit off the main track and I can already see what we can grow. Excellent times ahead!