Grow your own

MY MOTHER is a feisty septuagenarian. As mother of nine children, of whom I am the eldest, she has a decidedly pragmatic outlook on life.

She comes from a generation who ‘got up and got on with it’, so she has little patience with people moaning about everyday challenges.

Recently, she was irritated by the endless complaints about the price of food. “Why don’t people stop whingeing and go back to being self-sufficient - grow a few vegetables, plant an apple tree, keep a few hens.” How right she is, yet several times recently I’ve been reminded that the old-fashioned attitude of ‘the neighbours will reckon we can’t afford to buy it’ still prevails. Isn’t it about time to let that one go and to rediscover the joys of planting a seed and watching it grow?

The delight of growing your own food was clearly demonstrated recently when one of our teachers, Shermin, came bouncing in to work scarcely able to contain herself. She is now harvesting strawberries, beetroot, broad beans, sugar snaps, onions, garlic, potatoes and leeks. She is almost overwhelmed by the thrill of having grown all of this herself in a little patch of ground.

Then I discovered that Sue was also hooked. She is growing lettuce, spring onions, spinach, broccoli, potatoes, cabbage, runner and broad beans and herbs. Meanwhile, Emer is in her third year of growing raspberries, black gooseberries, courgettes, lettuce and spring onions and Rosalie had the first green gooseberries and also grows raspberries, tayberries and blackcurrants as well as lettuce, cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs.

Not to be outdone, Gail has cherry tomatoes growing in a window box; Toby and Penny have also started a vegetable garden and were beside themselves with excitement when they dug their first potatoes. We were so touched when they gave us some of their precious first harvest.

Little Willow, our granddaughter, 3½, has already become hooked on planting seeds - she’s the ‘radish queen’ and regularly presents us with a bunch of her ‘spicy radishes’. Penny also has a few hens which eat the scraps from the house and lay delicious eggs.

I’m thrilled so many young people have discovered how much fun it is to grow your own and cook the results of your labours. Apart from the satisfaction of growing some of your own vegetables and fruit, there’s the rediscovery of the importance of freshness.

This extra dimension comes as a big surprise when one is used to buying vegetables and fruit which are days and sometimes weeks old before they reach the shelves. Freshly harvested vegetables and fruit are on the table within hours of being picked and are packed with vitamins, minerals and trace elements. Is it my imagination, or do really fresh organic vegetables also cook faster? I’d love to hear readers’ observations.