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Free guide
A novella
Seed-Time and Harvest
Swarup Yadav
A gardener's first year in the ground, from March's promise to August's dry reward
30 pages · about 21 minutes to read · PDF
Inside the guide
6 chapters, and what each one leaves you able to do.
- 01
March's Promise
Mara takes a £200 allotment, meets gruff Arthur, and decides to prove she can grow something despite her office job.
- 02
The First Forkful
Mara digs her first bed, hits clay and old roots, and swallows her pride to ask Arthur for digging advice.
- 03
Sowing and Borrowing
Mara borrows Arthur's seed drill, plants carrots and peas, then ruins a row by overwatering in a spell of doubt.
- 04
The Long Green Wait
June's heat wilts her seedlings; she loses her lettuce to slugs, then furtively buys fertilizer against her principles.
- 05
The Dry Reward
August cracks the soil; she sacrifices her beans to save the tomatoes, and Arthur reveals he once lost his whole plot.
- 06
First Harvest
Mara picks her last courgettes, shares tea with Arthur, and decides to keep the plot even when the leaves fall.
Look inside
Two real pages, set exactly as they print.
01
March's Promise
Mara takes a £200 allotment, meets gruff Arthur, and decides to prove she can grow something despite her office job.
Mara stood at the gate of plot 47, her key in the lock, the cold March wind pushing a torn plastic bag against the chain-link. She had paid the council two hundred pounds for this rectangle of mud, the last plot on the site, and now it stared back at her, all couch grass and broken glass and one rusted fork standing upright in the corner like a scarecrow after a storm. She had spent nine years in an office block in Manchester, answering emails about software licences, and she wanted to dig her hands into something real, something that would not send her a calendar invite for its own failure. She pulled the gate shut behind her. The hinges shrieked. Somewhere to her left, a man's voice came out of the shed row. "You the one that took on forty-seven?
Yes," she said, turning. Arthur stood there, sixty-five at least, a flat cap pulled low, his hands wrapped around a mug that steamed in the grey air. He looked at the plot, then at her hands, then at the office shoes she had not thought to change. "Right," he said. "You'll need a fork, a spade, a trowel, a hoe, a rake, a line, a dibber, and about six weeks of good weather. That's just for the first forkful." He nodded at the rusted fork. "That one's mine. Left it to mark the plot so the goats don't wander. You'll want your own.