‘I’m furious. Every year, my harvest shrinks…’

Illustration by Clara Dupré

Take yesterday… No, you can keep it. Although I want to spend all weekend on my allotment, logistics and “life”, so called, get in the way. But I’d managed to steal a couple of hours and I was looking forward to abundance. We may be nearing the end of this Good Fruit Year, but wasn’t this precisely what Keats was banging on about, with his apples, and something cottage something vines, and plump… hazelnuts?

Last week, when I’d almost hospitalised myself dragging home windfalls, there were blackberries galore. I’d even spotted a chestnut tree beside the bins, ready to drop. Besides, this is my fourth year, which means three winters of heavy manure-spreading, eggshell-strewing, comfrey-rotting, worm-nurturing, bits-of-carpet-removing. By now my soil should be almost illegally fertile.

And my wisdom, nay, expertise, has grown with it. This year I’d added drying beans to my usual French-bean jungle. I’d not only rammed extra cane pyramids in every possible corner but added keepers (Lazy Housewife (sorry); Greek Butter) to the purple Cosse Violette and flat yellow Meraviglia di Venezia. And, unlike in previous years, when I’ve frantically Googled “what seeds now salad for whole winter??” in November, I’d cleverly sown quick-growing komatsuna, tsoi sim and the frighteningly named Nine Headed Bird, last month, into pots ready to transplant. My blight-resisting tomatoes and experimental amaranth would be coming into their own; it might be time to buy some serious processing equipment. Given my imminent courgette-excess (a couple of plants is meant to be plenty, but I’ve never read a rule I don’t want to break), I’d probably have to open a shop. I kept hearing people say they were drowning in figs, or runners, or even blueberries; L, my plot-neighbour, said they were sick of home-grown Greek salad. Was it too late to invest in a passata mill?

Moments before I left, a friend had dropped round 20 quinces. “Do you know anyone else who might want some?” she asked, wild-eyed. I hadn’t the heart to tell her that, by evening, I’d be up to my knees in pickled cucumbers and nourishing squashes for the winter, inventive Italian condiments.

As I approached the site, my stomach began to rumble. It would be a cornucopia, virtually a produce mountain. I should probably have forewarned my neighbours. Sensibly, I’d packed extra carrier bags and Tupperware, just in case. But I’d brought no lunch. Who wants sandwiches when you’re wallowing in nature’s bounty? Besides, I’d need the rucksack-space. The kale might not have sprouted new leaves since last week, but seven or eight apples would do as a stopgap, plus autumn raspberries, a little mint-courgette-tomato salad… I’m not yet ready to be home-composted myself, but I once knew someone who ate so many raw beans he developed phytohaemagglutinin poisoning; what a way to go.

Oh. Could Keats’s “season of mists” mean clouds of whitefly? When he talked about “swelling the gourd”, which one did he mean? From my three cucumber plants, I had produced one undersized gherkin, more of a cornichon. Of the courgettes, white/yellow/striped, UFO-shaped, Lebanese, basic Roman, nothing remained. The bean leaves looked fantastic, verdant, felty. Underneath them would definitely be lurking… a big enough handful for, say, an undergrown shrew. The apples had vanished; those lying sadly under the trees bore evidence of munching: parakeet-pecks, feasting woodlice, large toothmarks I prefer not to identify.

And who needs full-sized beetroots anyway? Or beet leaves or, indeed, anything other than a couple of red marbles in a dustbowl? As for the potatoes… I reminded myself that they’d had a hard life: not enough water; a spot of premature pulling-up due to impatience and a minor labelling setback. But they’re meant to be easy. We’d probably be finishing the outliers in our Christmas lunch. Excitedly, I began to dig.

And that is how I learned the concept of a crop deficit. To grow potatoes, one plants potatoes, well-sprouted. In theory, the results justify the means. Not this time. When I found myself sitting back on my heels, wondering if the green and sluggy remains were themselves edible, I knew it was time to give in.

During my long wait for an allotment, I would dream of the fellow growers from whom I’d learn ye olde ways. I’d soften their rugged hearts with my coltish enthusiasm, we would share heartwarming banquets cooked on rudimentary camp-fires. Little did I realise the dark hearts concealed behind those Lands’ End half-zip fleece gilets. As I trudged towards the gate, rucksack suspiciously unplump, dangerously angry, my ex-friends enquired pleasantly about this year’s harvest. People can be so cruel.

Almost at the gate, I met V. He was watering his head-sized fennel-bulbs, one of which would keep off scurvy until I reached home. I decided to confide. “I don’t understand it. I tried so hard. All that manure, and...”

“How much?”

“A whole ton! It nearly killed me.”

“There you go.”

“I do three. Never mind,” he said consolingly. “Have some chillis.”