Sowing seeds of veggie success

Monday, June 02, 2008

JUST occasionally something happens which gives me this nasty smug feeling that I’m a visionary who’s ahead of his time.

The other day I stumbled across an old typescript I had written as a rookie feature writer prophesying that oil supplies were diminishing and the price of a barrel of crude would go through the roof. It was written in 1969.

OK, it took nearly 40 years, but I was right, wasn’t I? And the other day I read a fascinating statistic. This year the amount of vegetable seeds sold to amateur gardeners in Britain and Ireland exceeded the amount of flower seeds for the first time since the 1940s.

I have been growing vegetables all my life. My dad started me off with a small plot about a metre square when I was nine years old. Occasionally seeds of nasturtiums, marigolds or sweet peas, bought by my wife, insinuate themselves into my greenhouse and are germinated in a bit of spare space. But I have no passion for growing flowers. I like plants you can eat.

I don’t know what motivates me, or anybody else, to devote hard labour to the often thankless task of growing food in the fickle climate of this island.

The man who wrote the piece which enlightened me to the startling news that I am no longer in a minority speculated that the change was due to the international credit crunch and soaring world food prices. I am doubtful.

My local supermarkets, particularly the German ones, sell excellent vegetables, including organic ones, at ridiculously low prices. I have never calculated what my home-grown produce costs. I don’t want to know because I think the truth might put me off. Gardening isn’t that cheap a hobby.

I am interested in food so there is the question of flavour and freshness. Often, though not invariably, stuff from the garden tastes better. We’ve been eating wonderful fresh salads for over a month now. I can be a bit fanatical about freshness. I remember my wife getting a little annoyed when I refused to pull the cobs of sweet-corn off the plant until she shouted out of the kitchen window that the water was boiling.

But I don’t think it’s the gourmet in me that drives me out to toil in the garden. Neither is it the fact that I get a lot of healthy fresh air and exercise. Nor is it the sense of communing with the world of nature.

There is something deeper than all these motives and rationalisations. There is an ancient and atavistic satisfaction to the business of producing your own food that is hard to explain.

I walk out of the house in the morning before breakfast and feed the poultry and collect the eggs. Then I check the seedlings in the greenhouse and open a ventilator if the morning sun is heating it up.

Then a quick walk round the garden with the dog to check slugs haven’t attacked the lettuce in the night, and that all the plants are doing what they’re supposed to.

Back in the house a few minutes later I notice something odd. I’m feeling good. My relationship with the world is in a healthy state. Even if the next thing I have to do is to sit in front of a computer my encounter with my small food production unit has put me in the right humour for it.

I hope all those people who bought vegetable seeds for the first time this year get equal satisfaction.

dick.warner@examiner.ie

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, June 02, 2008