I am looking at Sarah Raven's Spring 2008 catalogue, except it is probably called something far posher than that. A choice list perhaps. Now I started doing this blog to get some work with the good people at the BBC, but as I live outside the M25 and have never been called Davina or Kate even at the weekend, I figure my chances are limited (chip on northern shoulder weighing me down again) so I want to make a few comments about this. The fact that I think that a large percentage of BBC programming is worse than poor and the too often self-satisfied corporation (please see any programme featuring a Dimble) needs reminding of this may not help me hugely either. The catalogue is from her own business, but she is a BBC person. And then we can have a quick visit to Carol Klein land.
Sarah Raven produced an excellent book about kitchen gardening - The Great Vegetable Plot I think it is, lost in my library somewhere. I agree with everything she says about growing for flavour, growing stuff you can't get in the shops, and growing for freshness. Statements of the bleedin' obvious perhaps for some, but not all. But what world is her catalogue aimed at? 10 lettuce seedlings for £9.50 plus post and packing. If the slugs get 2 and one is unlucky, with postage that would be well over £1.35 a lettuce. I'd want them to be bloody gold plated for that price. For heaven's sake buy a packet of seeds and have dozens for £1.65 at most. Sarah Raven's ultimate veg seeds: 12 packets of seeds in a tin for £27.95, plus of course p&p. But they are in a tin so that makes it alright.
I'll take a wild guess and say the buyers will be ladies who lunch, and occasionally garden in white gloves when the weather is simply gorgeous darling - or who watch their gardener while wearing white gloves. There is the argument that she has pointed the buyer at good varieties, but then most vegetable books will do the same. She provides growing instructions, but then so does just about every packet of seeds on the market. I'll take another wild guess, that at least half of the seed packets she sells will never get opened, but will make a nice talking point when Bunty and Jessica come over on Thursday. And trying different varieties yourself is part of the fun of gardening for food.
Sarah Raven writes well (but her catalogue/choice list has been put together by someone with an occasionally eccentric grasp of syntax, and the plural of Jiffy is not Jiffy's), but does that justify the price levels here? It's a market economy, so good luck to you Sarah.
Another of the Gardeners' World presenters who has contributed to the recent upsurge of interest in vegetable growing is Carol Klein. Or at least she made a programme about it. Before I gave up watching I gathered a couple of facts. 1: Vegetables grow in the ground, and 2: they do especially well when they are grown by friends of the presenter who live in a big house in the country. Best stick to the wonderful Bob Flowerdew for more detailed advice then.
Growing my own vegetables for me is not just about freshness and variety. It is to a certain extent also a statement about the waste of the supermarket system - the stupid journeys produce makes up and down the land between farm and grading station and shop; the whole get it off the shelf and chuck it away thoughtlessly deal. Then I see stuff like 10 large oak labels for marking plants, only £12.95 plus p&p, and copper match holder (with matches) £9.95 plus p&p - still wondering about the idea that you can re-use the long matches to light the fire btw??? and see that a lot of new throwaway stuff is being produced for the green market, which makes me despair rather.
The guy on the allotment next to mine has turned a jungle of weeds into a fabulously fruitful plot in a couple of years. He cadges junk and turns it into productive tools. He thinks deeply about how to get the best from his land, and works hard to achieve his success. He comes up with some really creative ideas and turns them into reality - his greenhouse is heated at times by a variant on the old fashioned hot-box, for example. He doesn't screech like Carol Klein, and didn't train as a doctor like Sarah Raven (play the game count-the-mentions), but I learn more that is new from him than I ever will from either of them.
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