Bring and buy-selling produce on your allotment

Michael Wale explores how the pandemic brought a change of direction in raising funds for his West London allotment site.

- Michael Wale

The pandemic has had a lasting effect in one way or another on most of the UK's allotment sites. Whether it was bringing members closer together, fighting Covid-19, or in my own association in West London, a discovery that there was a huge market for specially grown plants.

This demand came from an entirely new market as far as we were concerned. Balcony growing flat dwellers, of which there are a large amount adjacent to our site in West Acton. The Chelsea Flower Show eventually recognised this change of direction by introducing a whole class reflecting it.

IN PRAISE OF THE POLY TUNNEL In recent times our Association installed a poly tunnel especially for growing vegetable plants such as differing sorts of cabbages, kale and runner beans that found a ready market among our members. It was not a very large market, but we sold enough to show a profit that could be set against annual debts such as the gargantuan water bill, which as a private allotment, unlike most council sites, the plot holders have to But the aftermath of the pandemic was to change all this. We still had to pay that huge water bill, and not even be granted agricultural rates, which I think we should. We also added another important means of income, as what had been before a small earner, turned into the makings of a small business There was much to learn.

Deborah Gynn, the project's chief grower and business brains, had been brought up on a farm in East Anglia, before ending up with an executive job at London Airport. Deb, as she is known on the plot, is the eternal optimist. While I saw drawbacks to many of her plans, she assured me all would not only be well, but booming.