We had our first crop this week. About a dozen radishes, fresh from the

soil we had dug and prepared a couple of months previously. They were delicious, and the best thing about them was that they were

completely free.

The radishes were quickly followed by lettuce and spinach, no more rummaging about for salad ingredients in Sainsbury's for our family.

It still seems strange to have an allotment.

Even as I tell people about

our new garden, an image flashes up of friendly old men bending down

over enormous cabbages, their pigeons softly cooing in the loft behind.

As a child growing up in the North-East, I often came across such men,

always smiling, always ready to brew up and chat.

But, bizarrely, there isn't an old bloke to be seen on our site. It

seems to be mostly women, of all ages.

In fact, apart from my husband,

I haven't even seen a man, let alone one entitled to a free bus pass.

I must admit, I worried before we took on this piece of land, about the

size of a half a tennis court.

What if our vegetables grew to be real beauties, our leeks the size of bollards and our onions like beach

balls?

I had read about the lengths people go to to sabotage each other's

crops. The jealousy that rages between growers.

What if I fancied entering our produce in the Great Yorkshire

Show?

I'd have to sleep on the plot, and line the furrows with razor wire to keep out rivals intent on destroying my super veg.

You can win big bucks for huge leeks, onions and the like, hundreds of

pounds in some competitions.

I was also concerned that the allotment might take over our lives,

particularly my husband's.

I fretted that every night after work he would disappear for a couple of hours to 'prick out' (sounds dodgy, but

as all gardeners know it's not an arrestable offence), 'pot on' or 'feed',

leaving me to put the children to bed, tidy the house and, horror of horrors, cook our meal.

And I was anxious that we would make a complete hash of it, on a site where most of the plots look like exhibits at the Chelsea Flower Show.

I worried that, among the lovely cottage gardens, neat rows of sweet peas

and attractive little ponds dotted with aquatic flowers, there would sit

a patch of weed-strewn earth, littered with bits of rusty corrugated

iron and old plastic lemonade bottles.

It was like that for a while, I admit, when we simply hadn't time to

tend it.

Well-meaning friends suggested we hire an earth mover and a couple of machines from Massey Fergusson. But in the end, a spade and fork did the business.

Most of my worries haven't materialised, although I have had to shout

at my husband for failing to come home at an agreed time, after getting

carried away with his hoe.

I don't think there's the remotest danger of us cultivating enormous

produce.

With our laughable efforts at weed control, we will struggle to get normal size, let alone huge.

I reckon that renting this patch of earth is the best £20-odd pounds a year we've ever spent.

We often go along as a family and it's amazingly peaceful.

One thing I would like, though, is a few friendly old men.

To me, brought up in the North-East, that's what allotments are all about.

Updated: 10:49 Monday, July 01, 2002