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7. WOMEN ALLOTMENT HOLDERS AND GARDENERS

It was the intention of this Survey to interview 250 women allotment holders. Unfortunately it was not possible to find this number and in the end only 183 were seen.

A number of supplementary questions were asked in order to discover what were the particular problems of the woman allotment holder.

Many of the main facts about women allotment holders and gardeners have been mentioned in the main report, but some of the more important points will be repeated in this section.

7.1 DIGGING THE ALLOTMENT

Of our sample of 183 women allotment holders, 68 dug their whole allotment without assistance and 114 had some assistance in this work.

Of those who had assistance either with digging or with cultivation, 29 were helped by their husbands, 18 by their sons and daughters, 14 by their father or brothers or sisters, 18 by other relatives, 10 by other gardeners or allotment holders, 25 by neighbours and friends, and 5 paid someone to assist them. This number is a little larger than the number who did not dig their allotment themselves because in a few cases women had help from more than one of these sources.

7.2 ASSISTANCE WITH CULTIVATION

90 of our 183 women allotment holders had assistance with the other jobs of cultivation on their allotments, but the same number had no assistance. Thus one half of our sample of women allotment holders had no help either with digging or with cultivation.

7.3 DIFFICULTIES IN THE CULTIVATION OF ALLOTMENTS

74 Of our sample of women allotment holders had found difficulties in the cultivation of their allotments, whereas 107 had had no difficulties.

The difficulties mentioned were so varied that it was not possible to code them. The following quotations under headings illustrate some of them, although we cannot say in what proportion they have arisen nor to what extent they are general.

7.3 1 SOIL

Many women mentioned that the digging was heavy, particularly the breaking of new ground or getting the soil into a usable condition. Some of the comments made were the following:-

“Heaps of Rubbish had to be cleared away before the crop could be sown”

“Entirely new ground - formerly a building plot and covered with rubble”

“Bad soil - formerly a racecourse”

“Had to get the turf off to begin with”

“Heavy clay soil. Bindweed”.

7.3 2 PESTS AND DISEASES

Many women allotment holders complained of pests and diseases, blackfly on broad beans, potato blight, leather jacket, wire worm, caterpillar and the white cabbage butterfly and carrot fly. On the other hand in mentioning these pests some housewives mentioned also that they had used derris powder to destroy caterpillars, sprayed and dusted potatoes.

7.3 3 GENERAL DIFFICULTIES

A great variety of general difficulties were mentioned -

“The failure of local authorities to provide adequate fences to keep children and rabbits away”

“The distance that had to be travelled to the allotment” - 2½ miles “the expense of tram fares”.

In several cases the time spent on travelling was mentioned as a difficulty. The stealing of onions was mentioned and the difficulty of obtaining fertilisers. Relatively few women mentioned the hardness and heaviness of the work, but this subject had been discussed earlier in the questionnaire.

From this very long list of difficulties, it appears that there are no special problems, peculiar to the woman allotment holder, and that she seems in general to be coping fairly well with her difficulties.

7.4 SOME POINTS FROM THE MAIN SURVEY

The main survey shows a number of points in which the women differ from the rest of the sample; they are mainly concerned with the reaction of women gardeners to publicity.

7.4 1 TAKING ALLOTMENTS

A somewhat higher proportion of the women than men had taken their allotments since the war.

The main reason given for both increasing garden space and for the taking of allotments was to get fresh food for the family.

7.4 2 DIFFICULTIES

About half the sample of women gardeners and allotment holders found no difficulties in cultivation. The main difficulties mentioned were bad soil and hard work. Almost none of our women gardeners had any difficulty about obtaining advice.

7.4 3 PUBLICITY

In almost all questions concerned with publicity or with obtaining advice, the women in our sample showed that they had been much less affected than any other group. The following are some examples:

Only 43% of our women had seen any advertisements of the Ministry of Agriculture, compared with 54% which was the average of the whole sample.

Only 26% had seen the Ministry of Agriculture’s cropping plan, compared with 41% in the whole sample.

The proportion obtaining “Dig for Victory” leaflets was 36% compared with the average of the whole sample of 44%.

The proportion who had seen the publicity about potato blight was 46% compared with an average of 62%.

This tendency was borne out by the analysis of the readers of gardening notes in newspapers, where the proportion was 69% compared with an average of 77%, and the small proportion reading gardening papers, which was 9%, compared with an average of 13%.

This tendency was also confirmed by the small proportion of housewives who had visited a demonstration plot - which was only 17% compared with an average of 27%. Likewise only a very small proportion had visited their local Allotment Secretary or Park Superintendent.

It would appear from these results that the present “Dig for Victory” publicity has not been nearly as effective in relation to the women gardeners as in relation to the men.

7.4 4 EXPERIENCE

About 62% of the women in our sample gave some account of their general experience with last year’s crops. This was a somewhat smaller proportion than in the other groups.

It is interesting, however, to note that of these more than two-thirds said that their experience had been good or excellent and almost one-third said their experience had been not too bad or fairly good. The number who said that their experience had been bad was less than 3%.

7.4 5 GARDENING AND ALLOTMENT HOLDING AFTER THE WAR

A test of the housewife’s enthusiasm for growing vegetables in her garden or on her allotment was the question about continuing cultivation after the war. 82% of our sample of women gardeners said that they would keep on growing vegetables in their gardens after the war and 92% of our women allotment holders intend to keep their allotments on after the war.

7.5 CONCLUSION

It is difficult to draw definite general conclusions about women gardeners and allotment holders from so small a sample. Nevertheless, it does seem that women are carrying on the cultivation of vegetables with a fair measure of success and are reasonably well able to cope with their difficulties. They also seem, in the main, well satisfied with the results that they obtain.

It is, however, very striking that the publicity and advice of the Ministry of Agriculture does not seem to have got over to women gardeners and allotment holders to anything like the same extent as to the rest of the gardeners and allotment holders interviewed.