Famine in Heaton

It’s a good job that I wasn’t relying on my seed crop to feed us all this year.

According to reports in a number of newspapers today, vegetable seed sales have increased by 60 per cent as Britons attempt to save money while credit crunch hits and apparently vegetable seed sales are outstripping flower seeds for the first time since we were told to Dig for Victory in the Second World War

As one newspaper put it ‘Families faced with soaring food bills are reacting by raising more vegetables in their gardens, allotments and even in window boxes’.

We fall in to this category; we live in the city centre with no garden except a ‘Tyneside Yard’ as estate agents like to call them and for a number of years have been growing a small amount of salad vegetables in tubs.

Every February I start seeding little trays and propagators which fill up the airing cupboard.
These then make their way on to the windowsill as shoots start to show.
I spend many evenings re-potting and taking good care of them until they finally start to go outside in late April to grow and provide us with salad during the summer.

This year’s weather has been terrible for anyone with a faint interest in gardening.
Rather than leaves the tubs outside, they have had to be brought in every time the weather has got bad – which has been frequently so far this year.

This year however, I made the fatal mistake of going away for a week to visit family.
I left my little seedlings in the hands of my husband who was about intermittently.
I have just returned to find all but a few tomato plants and a couple of sad looking sweetpeas left alive.
He had left them outside, which normally, at this time of year and given their maturity, would be ok.
But this year they just didn’t like it. I felt so sad. All that work and care wasted.

What struck me though was that whilst I can pop to the shop and buy my salad and there is still time to get some seeds going again, there are others in the world that can’t.
If we really had have been reliant on this food then we’d be up creak without a paddle.

Never fear, I shall start all over again and next time I go away will take care to annoy my husband by ringing him many times to check on the plants!

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