I THINK that you would have to be living on another planet not to have noticed the enormous rise in vegetable growing that is taking place.
All across the country people are sowing seeds and buying trays of young vegetables. It's a green revolution and it has come about for a whole bunch of reasons.
We register the fact that those tasty little french beans that we buy in the supermarket began life in Kenya and notice that bags of desirable baby salad leaves are twice the price of the old (and sometimes flabby) lettuce that we used to buy.
But it isn't just a matter of wanting to 'be green' or save money either. What the thought of global warming and the credit crunch have done is to make us want to take back some of that power that we have so heedlessly handed over to central government and commerce.
We can grow vegetables and feed ourselves. It's what our ancestors did and it is what our grandparents did in the last world war.
Admittedly a row of french beans or a pot with cut and come again salad leaves is more of a gesture than the way to self-sufficiency but I believe that there is a very deep and powerful emotion behind it.
We want to know that whatever the world may throw at us we can survive. If we can grow just a few vegetables then we know that we have the ability to grow our own and that is a very good feeling.
Vegetables are no longer the second-class citizens of the plant world, destined for the furthest end of the garden and screened from view by shrubs or trellis. We have discovered deep beds and realised that they can be ornamental.
We have decided that the pots and planters on our patios might just as well contain a mixture of salads or carrots and courgettes, why not?
Even hanging baskets are beginning to drip with Tumbling Tom tomatoes.
Containers for salads can be as quirky and as decorative as you like.
Tanners Wine Merchants very kindly donated the splendid wine crates pictured here for the Acorns Junior Gardening Club at the Derwen to plant up.
The garden centre itself provided red and green oak leaf lettuce, mizuna leaves, sorrel and marigolds. I provided some seedling asparagus peas that I had grown at home and we very carefully transplanted them with only one getting squashed in the process.
Now each child has a miniature deep bed of his or her own which should, with luck, provide a nice picking of leaves and more importantly instil that love of the earth and gardening which will give a lifetime of pleasure.
Vegetable Boxes
All Tanners Wine Merchants, including Welshpool and Shrewsbury, sell wine crates at a cost of £3 which is then given to charity. The boxes are not only sturdy but the name of the chateau together with a pretty design incorporating crowns for example, is burnt into the wood. We drilled five holes in the base for drainage and put a layer of Styrofoam in the bottom before filling with multi-purpose compost.