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We've never had so good

• Message 1. 

  Posted by punpun (U14553477) on Tuesday, 30th November 2010

  Hi all,
  I was talking to a chap today and the topic of gardening came around and this chap being a new gardener asked me how i felt about gardening today .
  
  I thought about the question and couldnt help but reply i feel we've never had it so good,
  
  ie the P.C. has made life so easy if you want to find something out about such and such a plant,
  
  the ordering by mail order, and the "E" mail system's.
  
  When i first started gardening it was a bit like the early snooker days on the T.V
  it was classed as an older persons hobby and the cooking side of garden growing was'nt really talked about unles you we're into gardening.
  
  No it was a bit of a darker world then, But these days what with the P.C and the eat healthy brigade "gardening really is excepted as a very worth while hobby.
  
  You can get all the information you'll ever need ref buying tools /plants even greenhouses from people you've never met via the internet and a good cross section of views,
  
  When i first started you had the allotment folk in your neighbourhood and that was about as far as you went,
  Even the books you can buy today are a very vast range and at prices for every pocket.
  
  I feel myself that we gardeners have never had it so good,
  how do you feel about todays gardening ?
  

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by mummyduckegg (U8437139) on Tuesday, 30th November 2010

  Hi Punpun, yes you're absolutely right. But that is true of any hobby really, it's where internet forums really come into their own I think. It's so much easier to "meet" people with the same interests. My OH is into making his own biodiesel, and is in a wonderful forum on the subject. They have a meet-up weekend once a year, to show off each others contraptions, and have a great time (apparently!) We also had a car treasure-hunt with them - one way of using up your spare bio!

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• Message 3

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  Posted by Palaisglide (U3102587) on Wednesday, 1st December 2010

  Hello Punpun,
  I do read your posts although they never seem to need an answer this one does need some comment.
  Being brought up at a time most people had no choice but to eat from their gardens I learned from an early age that gardening was hard work which had to be put in for a return of fresh vegetables and fruit year round but in season.
  That has not changed, if you want good results you still need to put the hard work into the gardening plus of course the time.
  Gardening is still a year round job and no matter what so called labour saving tools are in the glossy magazines it still comes down to basics, spade fork rake hoe.
  That goes for the ornamental or the cottage garden with Vegetable plots.
  Into the late fifties things were as I always knew them to be but then with the advent of supermarkets and food coming in out of season, more money to spend people backed away from the garden, a lawn for football and swing, some bedding-plants they did not need to grow themselves and the rise of garden centres, decking paving and patio's did away with mainstream gardening for a lot of people but there were still folk out there doing the traditional things.
  Now it is belt tightening time and will be for a while, allotments around here have waiting lists once more and lawns are being ripped up to grow things.
  People are finding out it is as it always was, jolly hard work with the odd disaster and at times through the weather not a full crop.
  I remember The Earl of Stockton uttering those fatal words "you never had it so good" it was not true then and is not true now.
  Fruitfulness comes from your own sweat and tears, and nothing changes in that department.
  Frank.

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• Message 4

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  Posted by Gianttrowel2 (U14260213) on Wednesday, 1st December 2010

  I agree Frank gardening will always be hard work if it's done properly. (Pound on the soil penny on the plant) however much easier to source plants now if you want somthing more unusual.
  
  GT

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• Message 5

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by zoomer44 (U14019069) on Wednesday, 1st December 2010

  Hi,
  
  Just a point about gardening being hard work. It can be depending on what you have to start with but once you've achieved your grand design it becomes so much more enjoyable and easier.
  
  I needed a lump hammer and pick axe to break up my stony ground and at least two skips to dig out the rubble, old bed steads and broken up tiles. Where there is now a GH and two veg plots was a garage base which I first lawned When the idea of a GH and veg beds dawned, I needed to flag the area and dig up the truf
  
  Putting down compost, searching for seeds, sowing, planting and harvesting, weeding, trips to the garden centre, even painting the fence and cutting hedge just doesn't compare because the pleasure comes when you can sit in your garden at the end of a day surveying the estate whether that be an acre looking over fields or a small enclosed town garden and know you've acheived your little piece of Eden.
  
  As regards gardening being an older persons hobby me thinks that's an urban ledgend, it's enjoyed by every age. When my grandmother utilised her back garden for growing veg during the war she wasn't old and gray, she may have been when she told me the tale. Many of my neighbours are younger than me yet move to the area because of the size of the back garden We're lucky and seem to have escaped the 'lets put down crazy paving and decking phase' .

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• Message 6

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  Posted by punpun (U14553477) on Wednesday, 1st December 2010

  Hi All,
  Some really good remarks ref this topic and as always said from the hearts of those who have replied,
  
  I myself as a lad didnt live in an area that had grass or gardens, it was the old back yard with the old mangle sitting there and the "yes you've heard it all before"
  the out side loo (or as it became known as the thunder box) I'll let you work it out why it got the name?
  
  The nearest i ever remember to any allotment was the old railway signal box (man operated) and the signal men had their own bit of growing ground but all i can ever remember them growing was rhubarb, but as a kid i had no interest in gardening and as this was the only place that had grass it was'nt unusual to hear mothers telling their kids to go and play on the railway,
  
  Could you imagin what would happen today if it was heard via the social service people??
  
  But i do remember my dad coming home (he worked as a docker on the liverpool docks) And saying about this new machine that did the work of 10 men and only needed one man to drive it "The fork lift"
  
  He said it will never catch on and will end up learning to swim,
  He was right as the first fork lifts ended up in the docks very offten.
  
  But this was'nt the end of machines for both the work place and the gardening place,
  
  But as the years went on and i got into gardening and got my first allotment i dont remember ever seeing any member with or using a rotovator! chain saw's or electric hedge strimmers.
  
  it was all spade and fork work, but towards the last 2 or 3 years of my allotment days it was'nt unusual to see rotovators being used on a regular basis,
  
  The same thing went for ladies having allotments, they never seemed interested for many years and then out of the blue we had one or two ladies taking over their sick husbands plots and the net curtains appeared on the shed windows,
  and the shed could be seen all neat and tidy inside, (put a lot of men members sheds to shame)
  
  Rubber gloves would be seen to be used,
  
  Now frank you cant tell me that years ago "Men" would be seen wearing pink or yellow rubber gloves??
  
  I remember tipping the dregs out of a cup of coffee onto the ground and one of our very dear old ladies telling me to tip the dregs into the grid!
  
  "Much to a roar of laughter from the men members"
  
  But as i said i do really feel we've never had it so good in so many ways ref the way gardening is today, and the help given by the gardeners who have learned over the years the way to do things,
  It was'nt that many years ago a lot of ( How to grow veg to a good size was a guarded secrete and not to be shared at any cost)
  
  I mean "Frank" we have soft loo paper now No more of that izel stuff that we had in the infant school, goverment issue please use both sides stuff!
  
  We have come a long way and if each of us gives it a bit of thought i think you'll see for yourself that we really have.
  
  Nice talking to you all ref this matter.

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• Message 7

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  Posted by Palaisglide (U3102587) on Thursday, 2nd December 2010

  I mean "Frank" we have soft loo paper now No more of that izel stuff that we had in the infant school, goverment issue please use both sides stuff! 
  Punpun,
  Imagine night time under the clear sky full of the most wondrous stars in the Desert and Franky boy reading from the Bible his mother had given him because she had heard that someone had been saved when a bullet struck the bible in the pocket next to his heart.
  Why was I reading the bible to the rest of the crew and strays who had wandered over? well every other bit of reading material had been used up for the usual toilet activities which included carrying a spade and walking twenty paces out from the laager turning 190 degrees after digging a hole. My bible was too small plus the fact I knew where all the racy bits were and embroidered them to pass the time.
  So Punpun when you were using your thunder-box and yes we did know what they were and dicing with death on the railway I was learning to Double dig.
  My Father the gentlest man you could meet, he only ever hit me once I had to admit I deserved it, turned into a tyrant when it came to digging.
  Our soil had been a garden for nearly two hundred years and everything from the midden had gone on that garden, we had three foot of top soil on sand so it was easy to dig but to do it properly was hard.
  You set up a large square riddle on a prop then every spadeful went through the riddle which left any weed on one side and clean soil the other. The soil was then dug back and the result was virtually a weed free garden. He gave me a tool that looked like a gimlet and my job was to take out any weed such as dandelion with it by pushing and screwing it down over the weed getting every last bit of the root tail.
  Had you brought a Rotavator into his garden you would have got a pitchfork in the nether regions. As we saw on GW when Joe brought on a rotavator he caused himself more work than he saved having to re-dig and weed large parts because he chopped up the weeds which grew tenfold.
  Proper gardening is and always will be hard work, I have a garage full of labour saving tools many of which are more bother than they are worth, a bit like those lettuce dryers that take a lot of cleaning, I wash my lettuce and shake it over the sink then drop it in the wire sieve.
  The tools that are clean and well used are the fork spade hoe rake secateurs and shears. this will be the same in most gardens, little and often is the watchword.
  Frank.

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• Message 8

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  Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Thursday, 2nd December 2010

  Heh! Heh! Palaisglide's "Middens". I have still got some of those and I have been exporting my 19thC rubbish dump since 1998. I was mainly responsible for a building a local motorway foundations.
  
  "dont remember ever seeing any member with or using a rotovator! chain saw's or electric hedge strimmers." 
  
  I invested in a £24 strimmer for the first time this year after seeing how much better a finish they achieve compared with a pair of hand clippers. Marvellous!
  
  My spade has moved 80 tons in the last few months. The garden is a wasteland but soon it will suddenly be finished! Fences and turf make a huge difference to the "finish" of the garden, don't they?!
  
  I have now got another 100 m2 of vegetable space too, and wonderful soil with it. All dug out by my own fair hand. Hard to believe that the top soil was 6' deep and needed to be redistributed!
  
  

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• Message 9

  , in reply to message 7.

  Posted by punpun (U14553477) on Thursday, 2nd December 2010

  Hi frank,
  Many thanks for your reply, and very interesting it was,
  
  I have now a 2acre garden around our home and the complete boundry area's is edged by laurel, photinia, and hawthorn, All in different sections of the boundry.
  
  i keep these hedges 4 feet high and if i didnt have a good hedge strimmer to keep these hedges really crisp and neat and the fact that im clipping these hedges during the summer about every 6 weeks and this takes me the best part of 2 days to do the work and remove the clippings I think i'd be pushed to do this work using the hand shears,
  
  I use both a ride on mower and the push mower (for the tighter area's) and again this garden if i took out the 5 large borders and the orchard section that has fruit trees and the swimming pool "I feel ive the best part of an acre of lawn to cut and trim all the edges, (every fruit tree has it's own circle cut out around the base and this needs edging)
  
  Again just the lawn mower work takes me approx 5 hours including the cutting of the edge's of the lawn plus cutting the edges of verious tree circles and flower borders that are in the middle of the lawn,
  
  Without the modern day ride-on mower this work would take a lot longer and you must understand all gardening is via the mercy of the weather and so many times the speed of doing the jobs ive mentioned gives the gardener a better chance to do other jobs that again via modern day tools would allow the keen gardener to enjoy a wider scope of gardening.
  
  I myself dont have a garage full of unused tools and the likes of rotovators for the allotment in my case is a real must,( ive a howard gem rotovator )and one section of the allotment will be for root crops and this is we're the depth of dig of this rotovator and the weight of it comes into it's own and again it saves me so much time so i can do other things in the garden (the green house being one such thing)
  
  I still feel we gardeners have never had it so good and i myself wouldnt be without the modern day tools and machine's
  
  I live for my gardening and spend every day going something to do with the garden be it in the workshop "like today making bird nest box's etc"
  
  or in the garden doing what some people call work, (I call it enjoyable pass time)
  regards punpun.

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