Paul Merrett - The Allotment Chef - Home-grown Recipes and Seasonal Stories

Rhubarb bed – dug, 3 x 3 feet (0.9 x 0.9 metres), lined with boards

Soft fruit bed – dug, 12 x 5 feet (3.6 x 1.5 metres), lined with boards

Kids’ bed – dug, 10 x 5 feet (3 x 1.5 metres), lined with boards

Herb bed – dug, 2 x 3 feet (0.6 x 0.9 metres), lined with boards

Rotational bed two – under construction

OK, so we haven’t actually planted anything except potatoes so far, but, with all these beds ready, we are just one shopping trip away.

We have three gardening centres near us, if you include Homebase, which I don’t because it is owned by a supermarket. So, we have two gardening centres near us and both are good for the more general gardening requirements, but, when it comes to plants – especially the permanent crops – they can be a little lacking in choice. For example, if you are a chap who wants a blackcurrant bush, your local garden centre will no doubt obligingly flog you one, but, if you are a chap like me, say, who has done nothing other than read about blackcurrant bushes for the previous six nights, that is different. That marks this chap out from your common or garden blackcurrant bush customer, as this chap is obviously well up on Ribes nigrum and he simply won’t take the first bush he is offered. This chap needs a garden centre with a choice befitting his knowledge. In fact, this chap needs Wisley Garden Centre.

Wisley Garden Centre is the Wembley Stadium of garden centres. It is run by the Royal Horticultural Society and is situated just off the A3 in Surrey, just 30 miles away. I don’t actually want a blackcurrant bush at all – that is just by way of explanation – but I do have a rather particular shopping list gleaned from my previous six nights researching soft fruit, herbs and asparagus. In addition, my dad has recommended I try Wisley for all my permanent crops.

I have not seen my mum for some time – mainly because I am now a full-time vegetable gardener – so I suggest we meet at Wisley. She naturally thinks I am going all that way to meet her (which is fine until this book is published) but really I have plastic in my pocket and some very empty-looking vegetable beds to fill. I also have a detailed list:

Rhubarb – three varieties. The books recommend getting different varieties to prolong the season

Raspberries – these come as summer- or autumn-croppers. I want summer-croppers so that we can make summer pudding. Apparently raspberries can suffer from ill health, however, so a benefit of going to a place like Wisley is that they will be certified ‘virus free’.

Blueberry bushes – two varieties are needed to ensure pollination

Gooseberry bushes – these come as a dessert variety (which is sweet) and a culinary variety, which tastes sharper. I am not sure whether we will eat them from the bush or make jam so intend to buy both

Herbs – I intend to buy a general selection

Strawberry plants – my favourite are the Gariguette strawberry so I will look for these. I also love wild strawberries – we call them fraises des bois in the kitchen – which are tiny strawberries with an intense flavour. The gardening books call them Alpine strawberries

Asparagus crowns – Edward C Smith, author of the religiously endorsed Vegetable Gardener’s Bible and one-time front man for The Fall (possibly not), suggests buying the male hybrid plant, which is apparently better than buying mixed sex asparagus

All of the books I have read have made the point that you should buy plants from a reputable supplier. This doesn’t just apply to raspberries; you shouldn’t buy plants on the cheap, and you should even be wary of well-meaning old ladies at the allotment offering plants that they say they have raised from seed. You have to buy the right thing for position, climate, and culinary requirement, but also, crucially, for its disease resistance. Failure to do so can result not only in a poor harvest but also in an outbreak of death in the flowerbed.

With all this in mind, I head off to Wisley full of enthusiasm. I can’t wait to buy the plants and get them dug into the sandy soils of Ealing. I meet my mum outside and, after a quick cappuccino in le café (that contains lots of people in woolly jumpers and sensible shoes), we head straight for the shop, where I promptly part with one hundred quid on books. Then it is off to the plant department.

Mum suggests that we stroll through the manicured gardens that Wisley boasts alongside the nursery shop, but I decline. What she doesn’t understand is that I am not interested in orchids and rhododendrons; I am a vegetable man through and through.

The nursery is all I had hoped it would be. They have a huge array of plants and at least two types of each variety. From my list I manage to get the following:

Malling Jewel raspberries – a summer cropper and 100 per cent disease resistant

Blue Crop blueberry and Northland blueberry – to aid pollination

Herbs – lavender, sage, pot marjoram. I could have bought more types of herb but my trolley was too full. (Curiously, you don’t grow pot marjoram in a pot.)

Honeoye strawberries – I have bought this Honeoye variety from my vegetable supplier at work before and they are right up there with Gariguette for flavour. Apparently I am a bit late for Alpine

Rhubarb – early and late varieties (Red Champagne and Victoria)

There are a couple of things I do leave without:

Gooseberry bushes – these are not sold at this time of year unless container grown, and they don’t recommend container grown (naturally – this is Wisley after all), so these remain on the list

Asparagus crowns – I can’t find these until, at the checkout the lady says they are on the far wall; by this time, however, I have seen my bill and decide to quit while still solvent

At this point, however, I can’t wait to get back to the site and plant my purchases so I ditch Mum at the checkout and head back to Blondin. One small blip along the way is that I have totally forgotten to buy the plants that Ellie and Richie want to plant in their bed. I am halfway home before I realise my mistake and can’t turn back. I know that if I turn up empty-handed, however, I will be accused of only caring about what I choose to plant, so I make a small detour to our local garden centre, which feels like a corner shop after my Royally Horticultural experience. Nonetheless, I am able to pick up everything on their list – a list incidentally that does not feature words but pictures of vegetables, drawn by Ellie a couple of nights previously. It takes a few moments before I decide whether I should buy pumpkin plants or an orange tree!

I carefully leave the children’s plants to one side so that they can dig them in themselves, and then get started on the crops I have bought. I feel a real sense of responsibility as I dig in these permanent crops. These plants won’t be yanked out at the end of the season and moved elsewhere; these plants are in the ground for life. As I plant the impressively straight line of raspberries, I wonder how many allotmenteers will enjoy their fruit long after I am on the compost heap.

The plot looks so good with things finally in the ground. I know the guys back home will want to see this big development so I take some photos on my mobile phone to show them. Back at home I also find myself fretting like a new parent that the raspberries won’t take or the rhubarb will be unhappy where I have put it, but, really, I tell myself I have done my bit for them and now it is their turn to repay the favour.

These plants should all be in early enough to produce some fruit this year, which is hugely encouraging, because, at the moment, we have nothing to show for our efforts. The supermarket ban I tried to impose now looks ridiculous. As MJ points out we would all be dead of scurvy had we actually followed my plan. Personally, I have actually been trying to use local shops for fruit and vegetables but I am not convinced that they are any more in tune with the seasons than the supermarkets are. I recently asked my local shopkeeper if his vegetables were in any way local, and explained my desire to reduce food miles. He said that they were; they came from Covent Garden wholesale market each morning – which frankly misses the point, but I couldn’t be bothered to argue with him.