The Marvel of Allotment Gardens
And scaling up to larger systems- with input from Master Gardener Jim Skipp
I've been making a serious attempt to grow food on our place since 1992. We gained the first, temporary planning permission to live here at the end of October 1991, built our first low impact home in three months over the winter and took up residence in February 1992. Prior to that we'd commuted since 1986 from a rented cottage in Llanelltyd, giving us six years of protracted observation and interaction.
Once living there, I went straight into forest gardening. At the time there was very little in the way of practical examples in temperate climates. All I really had to go on were some of Robert Hart's early writing that Eurig ap Gwilym had given me, a few references in the early permaculture magazines, what I had learned and shared on my first permaculture design courses and my own observations of the re-vegetating system I tried to call Argel but persistently clung to its original label of “the rough patch”.
It was great fun and I learned a lot but still found myself buying veg at our local greengrocer. When David Holmgren visited to teach here in 1994 and showed us slides of his own food garden, a series of raised beds growing mainly annual crops, it came as a real eye-opener. I turned the central beds in my forest garden into annual beds and the combination produced the largest yields yet.
By about 1998 though, the problems were starting to show up- blight, disease, moulds, consequences of the high humidity of our forest environment and, at the time, a wet climate. Also, copying nature on the rough patch, I had over-planted, packed stuff in, forgetting that nature is absolutely ruthless at culling back. The result was a dense, jungle -like tangle of plants, lacking space, light and air movement.
So for the past twenty years or so I've more or less reverted to the organic allotment style for growing veg, deciding it might be an idea to learn a traditional way of producing food that had been developed to suit our temperate climate- turned out to be a good idea, duh!
I now grow most of the veg and a good proportion of the fruit that me and Lyn eat, with some surpluses to give away to family and friends. Soft and hard fruit grow at the north end of the annual beds with other more perennial stuff, so there's some cross over and opportunity for beneficial relationships. I'm greatly helped by the fact that Lyn still keeps equines so I'm able to make considerable quantities of compost annually.
As the climate continues to change, new opportunities appear, so up until four years ago I could only grow early potatoes as the perpetual damp meant blight would always come in and knock maincrop on the head before they'd had time to grow tubers. Since then I've been growing blight resistant maincrops and no sign of blight- a consequence of dryer summers. I think the opportunities for complex polycultures will steadily improve as the climate heats up, although no doubt new challenges will also appear...
Its worth pointing out at this point that on a square yard for square yard basis, a gardener can produce more food annually than large scale chemical farming. This is because a good gardener can get two or more crops in the same square yard in a year, in succession; for example, I follow potatoes with leeks. Also, as a gardener, it is possible to manage two or more crops in the same square yard, concurrently, that is, at the same time. Take for example the Maize, Bean, Squash trio, adopted form indigenous peoples of South America (many thanks!). I regularly grow the trailing squashes like cucumber or pumpkin under my runner and French climbing beans where the large leaves of the squashes shade the soil, preserving moisture and also suppressing weeds.
Jim Skipp, Master Organic Vegetable Grower
My good friend Jim Skipp has been growing vegetables organically on allotments and allotment style gardens for over fifty years. This means he has completed over fifty annual cycles of interaction and feedback, making him, in my mind, a Master Gardener. The figures for what follows arose through discussion and back of the envelope calculations with Jim. The intention is not to provide totally accurate data but rather to suggest directions and possibilities. Measurements are unashamedly imperial but you could say, very roughly, that one yard equals a metre (and three feet equal a yard).
Allotments vary in size but seem to have measured 250 square yards to begin with but often get reduced to 200 sq. yd. or 20 feet by 60 feet blocks. Jim's current garden isn't quite big enough so he “borrows” bits of a neighbours' garden to get nearer the 200 sq. yd. figure.
Half his garden (approx. 100 sq. yd.) is devoted to four beds growing potatoes, beans, roots and brassicas in a conventional annual rotation. On the other 100 sq. yd. he grows additional potatoes (to make up the annual supply), extra onions and sweetcorn. There's also room for a small (10 by 20 feet ) polytunnel for salads, tomatoes and carrots, several large compost heaps, two fruit trees (apple and plum) and several soft fruit bushes.
The major input to the garden apart from Jim's labour, is compost materials; it is only through adding large quantities of compost to this type of garden that fertility can be maintained. As well as composting all household and garden waste, Jim collects seaweed (he is within walking distance of the beach) and animal manures. He aims to be able to cover all the growing beds with at least a two inch layer of compost every year. His garden is more or less weed free.
Jim grows more than enough vegetables for himself and his wife Alison, every year, for an average of about one days work a week. He acknowledges that there are busier times, such as in the spring where he may do work on most days, and quieter times, such as the winter, when he may not be doing anything some weeks.
In theory then, a master gardener working a five day week could manage five allotments and produce sufficient vegetables and some fruit for ten people.
Scaling up
An acre is taken to be 4840 sq.yd. We could say roughly 70 yd. by 70 yd. This would allow us to divide it into allotments as in the following illustration:
One allotment space is given over to parking and somewhere to dump large quantities of useful materials, such as farmyard manure, for later distribution to individual allotments. Access to individual allotments is by 5 yd. wide paths, which would allow the use of cars and small trailers or large hand carts to distribute materials. We could reduce the size of access and storage to make more growing space but these figures will give an idea.
This arrangement gives 20 allotments of about 200 sq. yds. each, to an acre.
So, in theory, an acre of land divided into allotments as above would provide jobs for 4 full-time Master Gardeners and would produce more than enough vegetables to feed 40 people together with a good proportion of fruit. This would be hard work for the master gardeners!
A more realistic approach would be to say four part time Master Gardeners who manage their own allotments and provide training and support for 16 novitiates who manage their own allotments. Obviously there are multiple ways of putting together teachers and learners; the key point is that an acre of allotments can produce vegetables for 40 people and could provide four full time jobs
A further note is that a landowner can make more money renting an acre as allotments than as horse livery. Grass livery round here is about £20 per week per horse and one acre might cater for 1 horse, giving an annual income of 20 X 52 = £1040. Rent for an allotment is about £80 per year hence an annual income of 20 X 80 = £1600.
We're not trying to be prescriptive here, just giving an idea, the basic idea being that organic gardening can produce far more worthwhile jobs per acre than farming and considerable quantities of local food for low to zero carbon emissions.
With thoughtful design and a good dose of luck, the gardeners may yet inherit the earth!
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