The first house I tried had a nice big microwave. It was heavy, but I managed to slide it into the wheelbarrow. I took it back to my garden, and using an extension lead, set it up by the heap of soil. I took an old ice-cream tub, filled it with soil, and put it in the microwave. Two minutes later and it was steaming hot. Then I looked around for somewhere to put it; all the pots still needed washing. I sighed and went to get the washing up liquid and a sponge.
The pots held about ten litres of compost and so each one would require five tubs of sterilized soil. That was at least ten minutes of microwave use. I set up an assembly line, with tubs of soil ready to go in, and washed the pots whilst I was waiting, but it still took ages. After an hour, I had filled only four pots. I was tempted to skip the sterilisation step, but the knowledge that the potatoes might be vital, come early spring, kept me going.
As I worked, I thought about the new crop. The weather had been pretty typical for August; summer storms had dumped a lot of water into the water butts, which had been fortunate, as they had been followed by a long dry spell. I anticipated that the autumn would run on late; last year the dahlias had continued flowering into November. I would take advantage of the long autumn by growing the leftover small tubers and keep them near the house to protect against any early frosts. However, the biggest problem was that potatoes had a dormancy period before they sprouted again and I didn’t want the tubers to sit for five months in the soil before they started growing.
After I’d put in a couple of hours work I went inside and asked on the forums. I was out of luck; no-one seemed to have tried re-growing harvested potatoes. I took to google and quickly found some scientific papers on breaking potato dormancy. Luckily, being a science teacher, although they were pretty technical, I could just about understand enough to know I would need to lace the soil with ethanol which should get them to sprout in about a week.
I went looking for ethanol. It wasn’t hard to find; most of the houses still contained their prior owners’ copious alcohol collections and in the house opposite, I located a bottle of vodka. Back in the kitchen, I dipped a couple of potato tubers in a weak solution of water and vodka, laid them gently on a tray, and slid it into a cupboard. I filled some small 3-inch pots with sterilized compost, pushed a couple more tubers down into the soil until they were completely buried, and watered them with the vodka solution. I set the pots on the windowsill where I could see them.
Five days later, when I checked the cupboard, I was amazed to see tiny buds on the potatoes. The pots weren’t showing any signs of life, but I waited. Two weeks later tiny green shoots were emerging from the soil. I rinsed all the small tubers in the solution and planted them in the waiting pots of sterilized compost. I arranged them around the outside of the house, setting up the drip irrigation system to keep them watered in the warm weather. I was busy and content. Delivering water supplies in the evening, gave me the opportunity to chat briefly with the other residents, so I wasn’t lonely, and I was enjoying the challenge of trying to grow enough food to survive.
I hadn’t organised another meeting. The families with kids were meeting up regularly; I often saw them running around the estate. However, I had no idea what the others were up to. But as I delivered the last bottle of water, a week after I had completed planting the potatoes, I got an unpleasant surprise.
Chapter 8: Hiding
The bottle was for the elderly gentleman who lived on the far side of the estate. His name was Frank, and he lived in a detached bungalow near to the main road. He was a keen gardener and a member of the horticultural society, so I had known him slightly before the outbreak. Although polite, he rarely shared more than a quiet greeting and a polite thank you when I took him his water.
I left my bike propped against the low wall at the front and knocked on the door. It took a while to open and the face that appeared was definitely not Franks, it was a youngish man and he looked tough; the type of person I would normally avoid. ‘Hi’ I said thrown by the unfamiliar face, ‘could I speak to Frank please?’
‘Yo, Frank,’ he turned away to shout inside, ‘some girl’s here, wanting you.’ The man spoke like he was from the rougher parts of inner London, mashing his words together and dropping half the consonants. He turned back to me. ‘Wha d’ya want?’
I took a step back, ‘nothing, I was just checking on Frank, like I sometimes do.’ I looked across at the bay windows but couldn’t see anything through the net curtains. I was nervous and getting more so by the second. ‘Are you a friend of his?’ I asked, making conversation.
‘Yeah,’ he replied with a smirk, ‘a friend.’ I didn’t like the way his eyes shifted from me and then up to my bike at the top of the garden. I waited a second and then backed away further, bending to pick a tiny weed seedling from the side of the path.
‘Is Frank coming?’ I asked, continuing to pluck weeds from the soil and backing further away as I did so. The man turned back inside to shout something and I bolted. Feeling utterly craven, I jumped on my bike and peddled away. I felt bad for Frank, but I didn’t want to risk my safety. I would come back at night and see if I could find out what was happening.
As I peddled back, I kept a sharp look out; there were more open doors than usual. I tended to close them after I searched a house, but now I passed several open doors and even heard some voices as I passed. It was close to dusk, and as I cycled past one house, the lights suddenly turned on inside. There were people here! How had I missed this? To my sensitive ears the estate suddenly seemed alive with noise.
I had been using my front door ever since the meeting in the school, but now I entered my garden through the tunnel under the cypress. I hadn’t used it for a while and there were crisscrossing webs that I brushed away with a shiver. Back in my house, I checked the internet and went on the forums; in my preoccupation with the garden, I had missed the big news. People were moving out of the city and camping in the fields on the outskirts of London. There were some photos in my local forum, taken at a distance, a field full of a tents and makeshift shelters.
I checked the boundaries of the garden and then went into the loft. I had toyed with the idea of sleeping in the loft previously, but hadn’t seen the need. Now though, I suddenly didn’t feel safe in my bedroom. I brought up the rest of the tinned and dried food and stored it in the crates in the loft. I had accumulated a fair few duvets and mats, and I made a bed of sorts between some of the cross rafters. Then I rigged the loft ladder so I could pull it up behind me and closed the hatch.
I sat, thinking about the garden. It obviously needed to be tended, but was there any way I could safeguard some of my crops? I could move some of the pots of potatoes into the garden opposite, next to the wood store. The wilderness was the best deterrent I could hope for, and would hopefully keep some of my food supply safe if my garden was plundered. I could rig up a water butt to collect water from the roof of the old greenhouse and rig some sort of irrigation… I could also harvest some of the bigger carrots and store them somewhere cool and dry. The loft would be too hot but perhaps beneath the cypress… If I could find some sand, I could create a clamp; that would store root veg for months.