The 'F' Word

Plum blossom

After some warm and sunny days, the garden is looking glorious, with the mid-season daffodils nicely set off by fresh green foliage of perennials such as aquilegia and astrantia.  The plums and damson trees in the front garden are in full bloom, and whereas last year I had only just planted the first early potatoes, this year the first shoots are already through the ground.

And with impeccable timing, we are promised a sharp frost tonight.  Great!  Virtually no frost all winter, and just when it can cause maximum trouble, we have a still night and clear skies.

That's the risk with 'growing your own', and I was worried that some of the City's movers and shakers had missed that when a few weeks ago an item appeared in the local press suggesting that some of the people affected by food poverty could help their situation by adopting a 'dig for victory' approach.  It might well seem to an uninformed observer that with the big gardens traditional Council houses have, someone struggling to make ends meet thanks to the 'Bedroom Tax' could dig over their back garden and get some onions and taters on the go.

Fruit, veg, cut flowers and shrub cuttings in the back garden

Except that people in that situation are struggling to find the money for food to eat right now. If they had £4 for a bag of seed potatoes, they wouldn't be at the foodbank.  If they don't already have tools, there's no money for them either.  It's depressing enough when you aren't absolutely depending on it to find your crop of salad leaves has been wiped out by slugs, your carrots are full of root fly holes and your spuds and tomatoes are blackened with blight after some damp and thundery summer weather; if you had skipped a few meals to get the seeds back in the spring, you'd feel well and truly cheated.

So all credit for the Appetite4Change team for looking beyond individual effort and risk at options for collective action.  I'll be interested to see what comes of it and I'd be delighted to share some tips and tricks of the trade, especially the ones involving recycling food packaging to make propagators and seeds trays, though can't honestly promise them a lot of time with my other on-going projects both in and out of doors.  Ideally, the project will employ some proper, professional horticulturalists - that would create some much-needed employment - though who will put up the money is anybody's guess.

Meanwhile, with Easter almost upon us, let's enjoy a few of this year's spring flowers...