Michael Wale on Acton's seasonal delights

We run a Sunday shop from 11am till 1pm at our site opposite our friends, The King Fahad Academy. We sell everything you need to grow veg, cheap seeds, onion sets red and white and every sort of potato you might want.

My recommendation is Cherie, a lovely pink skinned French tuber that rewards you early in the summer if planted now. It is yellow fleshed and does not attract any nasty boring hole beasties. We also sell Franchi Italian based seeds cheaply. In fact everything we sell is cheap, just to pay our gigantic water bills and give a service to everyone.

I mentioned the King Fahad Academy, which is opposite our main site on Bromyard Avenue. They have a plot, and last week ten girls turned up fully clad in the hot sun and planted their early potatoes. Next come carrot, lettuce and other seeds. Overseeing a school plot presents problems. Not only do the gardeners not come in the holidays but as their advisor I have to work out what will reward us and be harvested in the summer term. After that it’s a new school year! Last year we had an excellent group of Bacalaureat boys, who had to complete a non academic course. Their allotment provided it, and when you think, as with the girls, when they arrived they had never done any gardening their results were remarkable. Needless to say they all got into university!

Everyone on our site has remarked how well behaved and polite the King Fahad pupils are. Old fashioned standards are observed and non-Muslim schools could learn a lesson!

Michael Wale

Acton Gardening Association Shop - every Sunday 11-1pm on Bromyard Avenue.

The View From The Shed, by Michael Wale is available from Amazon Books

11 April 2011