I had my last allotment for 14 years and in that time I staggered home 14 times with carrier bags full of damsons to turn into jam and wine, luxuriated in 14 still-warm-from-the-sun tomato crops, and exhausted my friends’ and neighbours’ courgette recipe repertoires 14 times.

Among these successes were multiple and varied failures too, of course, turning me slowly but surely from optimistic new plot holder to gnarled and grizzled veteran, ever on the watch for the next slug, pigeon or cabbage-white assault. But the successes stood out not only for their taste – food you grow yourself just cannot help being better in flavour, even if you haven’t a clue what you are doing – but for that little brush with self-sufficiency, and with knowing that no creature or lowly paid worker was harmed in the production of my crumble.

Jeremy Corbyn and New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it seems, understand my zeal; the two politicians have been swapping tips on allotment growing, with the Labour leader happy to oblige last weekend when the Democratic party superstar announced on Twitter that she was going to be “tending to a community garden plot for the next few months”. “What should I plant?” she wondered. Corbyn was happy to oblige, and suggested she plant lavender or comfrey first for the bees. Ocasio-Cortez is reported to have planted basil, collard greens (spring greens), spinach, sage, and – touchingly – lavender. As far as bees are concerned, the nascent transatlantic socialist alliance is already reaping benefits. Meanwhile, Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex are reportedly creating an organic vegetable patch at their Windsor home.

With 90,000 of us currently on allotment waiting lists, it seems that right now, amid the turmoil and uncertainty of the world beyond, everyone wants a little patch of land on which to grow their own vegetables. Even those who own vast tracts of land.

During my years on the allotment, the public appetite for own-grown produce ebbed and flowed. At times the waiting lists were straining at the seams; at others spare plots grew weedy around us (our own was pretty weedy, mind) and at those times gardening magazines started printing features with headlines such as “Is the grow-your-own boom over?” In fact, reports of the allotment’s death were always exaggerated and now self-sufficiency seems very firmly on the rise.

Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) For a new plot, first see what is already growing! Then go for some flowers and plants that attract bees and thus improve pollination for everyone - lavender or comfrey good for bees. Best way to be healthy is to get your hands dirty - in the soil!

Those behind the shift are not Arthur Fowler-esque old boys in cloth caps of Corbyn’s age, but politically and environmentally conscious millennials like Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. A recent study found that 43% of gardeners under 40 in the UK grow vegetables compared with 32% of the over-60s, which suggests that this interest is a continuation and an echo of the environmentally conscious allotment boom of the 1970s: it’s the new Good Life, a natural reaction to a sharpening appreciation of how insecure our food system is and the harm it does to our environment. As food production accounts for about a quarter of the world’s greenhouse emissions, sticking your fork into the earth and scattering a few seeds is an instant and direct way of making a big impact, and lots of young people want a piece of that.

And then there is Brexit. In recent anxious months, as baked bean cans stacked up under beds and attics across the land filled with 24-packs of loo roll, allotments have been seized upon by right and left as the answer to our potential woes. In March, Labour peer Baroness Andrews asked of the communities minister, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth: “Does he agree with me that once we have left the European Union we are going to probably have to grow a lot more of our own food and therefore we are going to need many, many more allotments? Can he tell me whether the Department for Exiting the EU has this on its agenda?” On the right, our wartime experience of digging for victory was held up by people such as Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail as an example of how we would be fine in the event of a no-deal Brexit because of our plucky spirit and potato chitting skills. And it’s not just talk: people are desperate to start growing. As a joke, seed seller Paolo Arrigo of Franchi Seeds put together a “Brexit survival pack” full of vegetable seeds, but then found himself inundated with orders. “You can’t stockpile fresh food,” he has said. “So suddenly everyone wants to grow their own. The interest has been intense.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Allotment holders in Ilford, Essex during the first world war. Photograph: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

A few years ago I travelled around the country visiting a number of historic plots for a book project. It quickly became apparent that there had been four major surges in allotment creation. The oldest sites were all in the countryside and were created around the time of the enclosures in the 18th and 19th centuries, as the stripping of common land from the rural poor led to great hardship; kindly parsons and their ilk stepped in and secured small parcels of land that would just about fend off starvation. The second wave was in inner cities and created at the time of the industrial revolution, as people packed into the expanding urban areas and lived in squalor with little access to fresh air and fresh food; these were mostly created by apparently philanthropic capitalists keen to keep their work force alive and to provide a safety valve against potential rioting. The third and fourth waves all took place in the suburbs or what were once the suburbs, the third surrounded now by 1920s and 1930s housing and the fourth by 1950s housing: these were created during the first and second world wars as German U-boat blockades slowly strangled our access to imported goods. The enclosures, the industrial revolution and two world wars: allotments were created during moments of great national upheaval.

Perhaps it is no wonder that, as a no-deal Brexit has loomed threateningly above us, we have scrambled to get our hands on some soil and on a big packet of broad bean seeds.

In its most recent survey of allotments, the Association for Public Service Excellence noted that 36% of local councils were planning to increase the number of plots they offer, a significant number when the trend of recent years has been for cash-strapped councils to sell them off to fund other austerity-hit services. This was matched by a large number of builders and developers planning to add allotments to their developments, perhaps to make the inhabitants feel better about the fact that they can touch the facing walls of their bedrooms without moving their feet.

So are we about to see the fifth wave? Even though the threat of a no-deal Brexit receded last week – until October, at least – I hope that our interest in allotments won’t do the same. It’s use them or lose them, and periods of indifference lead to allotment provision being chipped away, usually irreversibly, as they are filled in with new housing developments. What this last couple of years shows is that crises will always come along, and that when they do we turn to allotments and to our ability to grow our very own basil, spring greens, spinach, sage and lavender.

TOP TIPS

Potatoes

Plant your potatoes now in trenches and mound them up with soil as they grow. Plant waxy varieties to eat fresh in summer, or maincrop varieties if you want to store potatoes after 31 October.

Courgettes

Plant just a few of several different varieties. Sow seeds individually into pots now, and plant out when frosts have passed. Pick when small to avoid a glut. To store, pickle, ferment or turn them into chutney.

Tomatoes

There is still time to sow seeds, one or two to a pot. Plant in your sunniest spot or in a greenhouse once frosts have passed. Cherry tomatoes will keep you in fruit in summer, but go for a plum variety if you want to bottle and store.