Today, with the interest in organic gardening and food miles, enthusiasm for growing your own is stronger than ever.
Hannah Gray Digs deeper:

Total control over which chemicals do or don't go on your food, a chance to meet new people, get some exercise and spend time in the fresh air with mother nature – the list of benefits to growing your own fruit and vegetables is a long one.

Holding an allotment may have gone out of fashion for a while, once we had recovered from the austere war years and popping to the shops seemed an easier alternative, but today it's very much back in vogue.

Celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver extol the virtues of growing your own and more and more young people are taking up the spade.

In Peterborough, the people renting the 1,300 allotment plots from the city council range in age from 20 to 90.

Three years ago the occupancy rate was 50 per cent, but today it is 78 per cent, and at least nine of the council's 24 sites have waiting lists.

And allotments are growing in the area.

Two new sites are currently under development, and there are two further plots to come.

The Oundle Road site was recently expanded.

Peterborough City Council is one of the few local authorities which asks for new allotment sites to be put in with new developments.

As well as the city council's sites, parish councils also run allotment sites in the unitary authority area, taking the total available to 53.

It is quite common for groups of younger allotment holders, perhaps in their early 20s, to get together to run a plot.

The allotments are a mix of organic gardening and traditional gardening, and rent on a plot is £50 a year, although discounts are available.

Nick King is the community engagement officer for Peterborough City Council, and as part of this job co-ordinates the allotments. He has been an allotment holder for six years and currently has two plots. He grows soft fruit, including strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blackcurrants and vegetables including asparagus, cabbage and carrots.

Related: How to... tips on having allotment success
Nick King's tips for budding allotmenteers.
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Nick works on his plot three or four times a week.

So why do he and his fellow allotment holders like it so much?

"It's the food, the fresh air, the people that are on the sites. You make friends and pull each other's legs. There's a good bit of banter and friendship on there, it's a good place to be," he said.

But it's not all fun and friendship, there is hard graft to be done, as Nick confirms.

"The first three months are the hardest," he said. "We do get people who pack up in their first few months, so we are now trying to encourage people to take on a half plot."

Nick said the hardest thing to start with is doing battle with the weeds.

But he added: "If you can get through the first year you will be alright."

He advocates not trying to clear your plot in one day.

"Do a little at a time and often. Get a piece cleared, start another piece and go back and weed the piece you started on. It's a bit like plate spinning, you have to get one lot going and then keep it going," he said.

After all the hard work, there is of course the pleasure of eating your own, home-grown produce.

But because their crop may all be ready at once, allotment holders can sometimes end up with a surplus.

Allotment holders are not supposed to sell their excess crops, so often people swap with their neighbours.