It’s great what you can dig up in east end of Glasgow
supply is coming from, and also want to grow food knowing it hadn’t been sprayed by a variety of chemicals.
Others want to encourage their children to get involved in getting back to nature. Said Jan: “That’s the thing about vegetables and encouraging children to eat them. If they grow them they will eat them, or at least they will try it.”
The trick is, said Jan, is to allow your children to have fun. If you dragoon them along to your allotment and order them to pick weeds, then they will probably not want to rush back. “If they just want to sit there making mud pies, let them,” says Jan.
Not that every parent has green fingers. Jan reckons that grandparents often worked on vegetable plots after the war, but then when supermarkets became common, the next generation were happy to shop instead, so today’s children are having to turn to grandparents to get an inkling of what growing your own food is all about.
In Glasgow, allotments have been in decline as housebuilders and others have nibbled away at the ground made available. The Glasgow Allotments Forum is trying to reverse this decline. There are now more than 1,000 people on the waiting list for an allotment in Glasgow, with a waiting time of over eight years in the popular west end sites.
Elsewhere, though, there are sites. if folk are willing to travel. “The bigger problem,” says Jan, “is finding the people willing to take office in the management committees that run allotments. It’s the same for all societies these days. People do not have the time
‘‘ That’s the thing about vegetables and encouraging children to eat them. If they grow them they will eat them
or the inclination to become involved in organising things.”
You might think that pottering around an allotment is a great way to relieve stress, but Jan says you have to make it your main hobby and devote time to it regularly, otherwise it will become overgrown, the management committee will want to know why you are not looking after it, and you’ll end up with more stress than you were trying to alleviate.
But it’s worth the effort it seems. Behind one of the stalls is Herald reader John Marshall, from Auchtermuchty, who has been in the seed potato business all his life. So what’s the appeal of growing your own tatties? “It’s fun, it’s easy to do, it’s growing your own food full of flavour, it’s nostalgia, and yes, it’s a bit of showing off when you can put them on the table and tell people you grew them yourself.”
John is enthusiastic, and reassures me you don’t need much more than lots of water and a bit of sunshine. Well, we’ve certainly got lots of the former here in Scotland.
There are “First early” potatoes that are ready in only 100 days, then a “Second early” that will come through in 120 days, then a main crop in September and October.
There are red potatoes, blue potatoes, even ones with a black spiral in them. It’s tempting. I wonder if my daughter would mind me packing up the trampoline so that I can grow potatoes.. Well, perhaps not.