Appreciating the imperfect - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Saturday 21 May, 2005

by Dan at 6:58am in Growing 1 comment Comments closed

When I first started growing fruit and veg I perceived it as a science, one which followed logical laws and principles, which could be learnt like any facts and put into practice with consistent and flawless results.

Sow seed variety x in month y at depth z at spacing a in rows b apart. Wait n days, undertake care instructions 1, 2 and 3, and there you have it, a perfect crop of carrots. Enjoy!

Of course one quickly realises that things just don't seem to work like that. It must be me, you say to yourself, and my lack of experience / skill / green-fingeredness, after all the pictures in the books show fantastic, uniform, unblemished veggies. You will have your early triumphs. The first year I grew sweetcorn the crop was fabulous, and in my naivety I believed it was all down to me, following those instructions to the letter and demonstrating my growing feel for, well, growing things. The next year my stumpy ears (of corn!) shattered the illusion, but got me thinking that maybe it wasn't all down to me.

What you eventually realise is that there are so many factors involved in growing stuff that a mixture of successes and failures is inevitable. The best you can do as a grower is to create the best conditions you can for growing, and observe your fruit and veg plot constantly. Learn to see the signs that your plants might need a helping hand from you (those gooseberry sawfly can devastate a bush in days if not hours), but at the end of the day it's just not possible to grown organically and produce flawless, photogenic results every time.

This year, for example, my early peas are gubbed. Something is eating them, and I don't know what. Even since the few remaining splindly shoots emerged they have been systematically nibbled and notched - mice or weevil I don't know. In previous years in my raised beds I've grown fantastic peas, sweet and copious (the freezer is still full of last year's crop). But hooray, my parsnips have germinated at a fantastic rate this year, and we're in for a bumper crop, something I've never managed before.

So don't be disheartened if things don't turn out quite the way you expected. The veggies won't have read the same books as you, and will just do their thing, whatever it is. Keep an eye on them, and offer a helping hand where you can, but learn to celebrate and enjoy the successes, because the occasional failure won't be far behind!