Propagation
With sharp March winds and lengthening days, seed packets are the ultimate in optimism and looking forward. They are the garden equivalent of that late August/early September ‘stationery’ bought at the start of the new academic year. Full of promise. I’m drawn to the gawdy photography of the little packets, the uniformity and pleasure of the full display racks, the brash colour reproduction, the endearing typefaces. I forget the brand that Sainsbury’s carry, but I want ‘Mr Fothergill’ Empress of India nasturtiums www.mr-fothergills.co.uk , ‘Suttons’ aquilegia ‘Nora Barlow’ www.suttonseeds.co.uk and ‘Thompson & Morgan’ very early sweetcorn cobs www.thompson-morgan.com and this, finally, really will be the year I succeed with sweet peas and parsley from seed. I feel like buying the lot and growing a riotous muddle.
Sainsbury’s, like any slick modern day supermarket, is supreme at tuning into every marketing opportunity, suggesting what’s required for the ‘life style’ seasonal ideal, before we’re even noticed in our diaries. Sometimes this goes too far. (I was dismayed to see hot cross buns heralding Easter, when out for an extra pint of milk, only just after Boxing Day.) Such calculated unrelenting seasonality is too savvy to be charming. But there’s no denying that it has value.
It’s for this reason, I’m happy to be reminded that it’s soon time but I’m blowed if I’ll be buying seeds through a supermarket! (How I miss the local garden centre that, only a year or so later, is now a glistening clutch of aspirational dwellings. I used to love the topsey turvey well-informed slow paced gardening ways to be found there. But I expect the developer’s timely offer was just too good for the owner to resist!.)
Seed packet fairground gaiety prompts a search for my vegetable seed catalogues at home, tasteful in every sense – both the packaging, and the end result. I dream over the wonders of Thomas Etty www.thomasetty.co.uk and Simpson’s Seeds and endless variations of tomatoes, potatoes, chillies perfected, over umpteen summers, with lifelong passion and expertise. (The faster life becomes the more I admire those that elect to live at such a theraputic pace.) Summer can’t come quickly enough.
Seed swapping is really the way to go www.seedysunday.org. Guerilla gardening is also taking hold www.guerillagardening.org. I should be gardening with eco-frugality, spontaneously scattering whatever is swapped in my direction. Over-thoughtful ‘armchair seed selection’ soon kills the germ of inspiration I felt for those colourful supermarket packets that earlier drew my eyes and pulled at my heart strings.
Meantime I join more than 72 million monthly users worldwide, on Facebook’s FarmVille www.facebook.com and cultivate a sophisticated transatlantic selection of ‘eggplant’, wheat, soybean, artichoke and pumpkin crops, and soon develop a total neurosis over whether or not my farm becomes unavoidably neglected and everything shrivels, dies and I loose the opportunity to add to my livestock and acquire a bigger green house. Luckily my ‘neighbours’ are keen enough to water in my absence and earn bonus points! (Metered water clearly doesn’t come into the equation.)
Disheartened by my familiar erratic cycle of horticultural inspiration I convince myself that Sainsbury’s are, surely, just too early with their seeds, as they are with their hot cross buns. They can wait and I have time enough. March allows for just a few more happy guilt-gardening-free hours. I will spend mine engrossed in the SocMed art of ‘weeding, seeding and feeding’ so all is not lost on the propagation front. (Sarah Raven www.sarahraven.com eat your heart out! Managed the right way it can be just as fruitful and rewarding.)
When I turn my thoughts to real seeds again it will undoubtedly be too late and I’ll be ‘cheque book gardening’ as ever – buying potted plants at last-minute expense, and hiding the telltale shiny clean plastic tubs with their prices on. (Garden centres don’t just make their money from developing their land!) www.hillier.co.uk
Posted by Katie Barr-Sim about 1 year ago in
About Katie Barr-Sim
Katie is a business development director. She still wonders what she’ll be when she grows up but has always had a keen eye for design and a way with words.