Grow your Own

GROW ON … you know you want to

Growing my own vegetables and a bit of fruit has been on my to-do list for a while. Twenty years, as it happens.

Having been raised on homegrown veg and the superb cooking of my Mum and two competing grandmothers, there’s no excuse. In what I took for granted at the time, but now seems an endangered kind of upbringing, the whole family regularly got stuck into weeding, picking, blanching and freezing (and eating, of course) whatever the garden threw up, and I have warm memories of our mini production line in the kitchen, jobs allocated according to age, size and the length of time we could stay on our feet without falling asleep into the peas. They were happy, innocent days.

Excuses, excuses …

So I ought to have started growing my own produce the minute I left home, but it just didn’t happen. My excuses are; firstly I rented accommodation without a garden. Then I rented somewhere else which did have a garden but the landlord, an arty type who’s mind was only on the Royal Academy, kindly fitted a new kitchen and created a wildfire in the garden by burning the old one, which resulted in a charred moonscape that wasn’t going to be producing anything in my lifetime except black soot on the washing. Besides, being a chef, I wasn’t at home during daylight in order to plant and harvest vegetables. Finally I got around to buying a house with a decent sized, south facing garden, but along with it two dogs, who until recently razed to the ground anything that dared thrust a green shoot more than a millimetre skywards. My spirit was willing, but the dogs were mad.

Now the dogs are five years old and their continual racing has abated slightly, I’ve dug up some shrubs, in the process extracting the circumference of the planet in roots and the weight of it in flints, but the result is a vegetable plot to call my own. Bring on the seed catalogues!

Pass on your expertise

One of the new features we’re cooking up for the Thoroughly Food site is an Allotment Blog. I’m so looking forward to hearing all your insider secrets, the potting shed do’s and don’ts of GIY (growing it yourself), and cunning plans for thwarting garden pests, all of which should help me on the way to bucket loads of happy, healthy, sun kissed veggies. So please get posting your tips and advice. Believe me, I need them.

 It’s A-lottery

Judging by the dismally long waiting lists for allotments, an average of 3 years around the country and a staggering 30 years in London (yes, really, put your name down now and you might be nearing the top of the list by 2040), multitudes of us have suddenly cottoned onto the benefits of home-grown food. Outdoorsy types have been extolling the virtues of GIY for years, of course, but the last time I had reason to write about allotments, four of five years ago, there were spare council plots aplenty countrywide. Alas this is no longer the situation, so get digging up those pretty but useless perennials and dig deep for vegetable space in your own back yard, or front, or wherever there’s a bit of soil and sun. The carrots and cabbages will thank you for it, even if the carnations don’t.

 If you’ve yet to take the muddy plunge and need more prompting, consider three reports of recent weeks: Firstly, scientists warn that imported food will become prohibitively expensive in the next 5 years due to climate change and rising water and energy costs. They say it’s imperative for the UK to become more self-sufficient and face up to less choice and more seasonal, locally grown produce. Secondly, the Daily Telegraph’s ‘real cost of living’ index demonstrated a 9 percent increase in food costs over the past year but, more specifically, the cost of staples such as carrots, onions, tomatoes, sugar and milk, etc. were between 14 and 38 percent more than in 2008. That’s got to hurt the housekeeping fund. And, more positively,, Psychology Today reports that certain strains of soil-borne mycobacterium, when ingested or inhaled even in tiny quantities by gardeners, sharply stimulate the immune system, possibly leading to health benefits before you’ve even eaten the fruits of your labour.

I’ll be in the garden, then…

Helen Barnard, Editor