Victoria Moore has grown to love the joys of plant-swapping
It’s been a quiet year for all of us but the most unexpected highlight of what passes for my social calendar in 2020 has been the plant-swapping. Who knew, back in the days when we talked about tennis and ballet, went to restaurants and gathered at muddy touchlines, that an amateur horticultural network was about to spring up to replace all that.
Over the past few weeks, I haven’t just been trading Ailsa Craig tomato plants for loaves of freshly baked bread here, or receiving a pot of San Marzano seedlings for a box of highnitrogen fertiliser there.
I’ve also tapped up my work contacts book for emergency gardening tips. In the world of wine and vines, there are plenty of people who know how to grow stuff so, from the very beginning, when I couldn’t get hold of large pots, there were many ready to offer ingenious solutions and fixes. It’s all been surprisingly rewarding.
In the spring, when the world began closing down, many of us responded in the same way – by buying seeds. We sowed sweet peas, sunflowers and hollyhocks to bring a dash of colour and fragrance to the summer.
But, in those dark foodshortage days in March, thoughts turned to victory gardening and the biggest demand was for “vegetable seeds and vegetable plants”, according to Mr Fothergill’s Seeds in Suffolk. One afternoon, sales of tomato seeds on Amazon surged by
1,237 per cent, while online
Sales of tomato seeds increased by 1,237 per cent one afternoon gardening stores were overwhelmed by the rush to buy compost as well as seeds for strawberries, courgettes, salad leaves and cress.
And then we planted them. All of them.
“You’ve got more than I have,” said my dad, sounding piqued, when I FaceTimed to show him all those lovely green tomato seedlings coming through in their tiny pots. “You didn’t plant the whole packet, did you?”
Well of course I did. A novice gardener, I had no confidence anything would grow at all. So I planted every seed in every packet and they all grew and before long, after a few prickingout sessions, my kitchen looked like a greenhouse in a market garden, every surface covered with biodegradable pots.
Dad is a veteran tomatogrower and allotmenteer who, for many years, caused family ructions by refusing to go on holiday during tomato-growing season (ie, all summer) because none of the neighbours could be trusted to look after the plants. But this year his first seeds failed – he’s blaming a duff bag of compost – so he went as big as I had with the second lot. He gave his (many) spare plants away through the local community Facebook page and before long a trail of villagers were coming to pick them up from the bottom of the drive. Some of them left thank-you gifts; a jar of homemade onion marmalade won particular favour.
It’s not just us suffering from the Sorcerer’s Apprentice effect. Kristin Scott Thomas told a
interviewer she had planted “gazillions [of seeds]… And then they all worked! So I’ve been busy handing them out: ‘Would you like some spinach? How about 10 broad bean plants?’ It got completely out of control. I had to leave a pile of them by the gate.”
I wonder if Scott Thomas also receives photographs of her plants, as I do, installed in their new habitats? And, if she does, whether she has to stop herself from interfering with their care? “Do you think that one might need a bigger pot?” Plantrearing has already taken on a slightly competitive edge as I scrutinise the development and quality of plants that have passed out of my care.
I think I know what the next stage of this gardening mania might be. Thanks to a friend who cycled round, at the height of lockdown, with a small plant in her rucksack, plant-swap has already introduced me to a much tastier variety of courgette than the one I had planted for myself. We are both enjoying the courgettes ribboned in raw salads (yes, I’ve WhatsApped her pictures to say thank you). But, as production steps up, I’m already beginning to dig around in my recipe books for new ways to cook them. I feel a round of recipe-swapping coming on. Because we’re all growing our own courgettes and tomatoes, who are we going to give them away to when we end up with an inevitable glut of produce?