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To a six-year old, a war is something for the grown-ups to talk and fuss about. To me, it was (almost) exciting — I remember walking home from school three-or-so years into the war and thinking, “It’s not much of a war; we haven’t had an air raid or anything for ages.”
My earliest memory of the hostilities is being out in the street playing with neighbours’ kids while the Mums were gathered together chatting — no doubt about ‘the war’. Then, a whole bunch of airplanes flew over. We kids all cheered and waved; suddenly the air raid siren wailed its warning and the bombs began to fall on Croydon Aerodrome! There really was a war on!
I cannot remember whether my Dad got an allotment — his plot he called it — as part of “Dig for Victory” or before the war. It was always ‘there’ up at Grove Park by the Southern Railway tracks. It certainly sustained us through the war and after just the way the chicken house and the rabbit hutches at the bottom of the garden did.
Our allotment was one of many. How many ‘rods’ long it was is long gone from my memory — it just seemed enormous to a kid who had been told to do some weeding. My Dad grew all kinds of stuff there but mainly vegetables and soft fruits. He did grow a few flowers — wall flowers and fox gloves come to mind; a bunch of these on a Sunday for Mum when he harvested that day’s and the coming week’s veggies. The big difference between then and now is that “to everything there is a season” was truly the way things were. No lettuce in January!
Among the varieties were potatoes, peas, pole and bush beans — but no broad beans because they got a ‘blight’ that killed other stuff — carrots, parsnips, onions, shallots (the finest thing for a real pickled onion), marrows, celery (he hilled it up to make the stalks white), salad stuff like lettuce, radishes, spring onions/scallions (tomatoes were grown in the front garden at home), cabbage, cauliflower (you tied up the leaves to make the ‘head’ nice and white) and Brussels sprouts. The sprouts, like the parsnips, were ‘best’ when there’d been “a bit of a frost”. Dad even grew corn — pig food some of his neighbouring gardeners sarcily called it — we called it Indian corn. We liked to pick an ear and eat it raw — we were far from knowing the delights of corn-on-the-cob. It was so sweet and a welcome substitute for the candy/sweeties you couldn’t get without some coupons. Most of the corn was used to feed the chickens.
The fruit bushes were the source for many of our ‘afters’ on Sunday. Black and Red berries, black and red currants (Mum turned these into a very passable sherry type wine), gooseberries, rhubarb, but no strawberries — Mum didn’t like them! Mind you, we did get a few from the ‘old lady’s’ plot just across the way from Dad’s. That’s all she grew there and we never saw her but the fruit disappeared, anyway. We had a couple of apple trees in the back garden at home — a ‘cooker’ and an eating apple; we also scrumped the odd pear from St. Augustine’s orchard which was next to the allotment — you had to watch out for the priests though.
As each of them was harvested in its season, Mum was kept busy bottling, preserving, jam making — Kilner jars come to mind. Until sugar became to scarce, she made fruit and parsnip wine to be ‘matured’ in “stone ginger beer” screw top bottles.
She also preserved eggs (Isinglass?) for those who were registered with her for their egg ration. This gave her an allocation of oatmeal and bran for the hens’ mash. Many a time in the winter or when the hens were not laying we delivered an egg or two to these folk while we had to go without.
My wife — a born-and-bred Canadian — recalls that here in Toronto, her paternal grandfather had a “plot” — his “Victory Garden”. He had a beautiful back garden dedicated to his prize winning roses. His “plot” was in an undeveloped (at that time) area of Toronto’s famous Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Her other grandfather was a butcher — vegetables had their place but it was adjacent to a fine piece of beef!

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