UK Garden Supply Companies Report Big Fall In Flower Seed Orders In Favor Of Vegetables - Guardian

[hatrack]

Call it the new dig for victory. Rising food prices and television lifestyle shows are turning Britons into some of Europe's leading home vegetable growers, with increasing numbers of gardeners digging up their flowering borders to replace them with veggie patches.

Leading seed companies yesterday said that UK buyers were shunning their traditional summer orders for flowers such as sweet peas and cosmos in favour of tomatoes, lettuce and other crops to grow at home. "Five years ago the split between vegetables and flower seeds was 60:40," said Tom Sharples, the technical manager of Suttons, which distributes nearly a third of seeds in the UK. "This had switched by last year to 60:40 in favour of vegetables and now in some places it is at 70:30 vegetables.

"There has been a pattern building for a few years now. The growth in vegetable seeds used to be related to health concerns, especially about chemicals. It's shifting. Now it's care for the environment generally, and people wanting to take control back of what they eat and food miles."

Thompson & Morgan, another major seed merchant in the UK, said there was "a definite shift" towards vegetables. "We are selling more vegetables than flowers now and there is a real boom in the grow-your-own effect. Sales of seed potatoes are already up 10% on the year and sales of other vegetable seeds continue to grow year on year," said Clare Dixey. The burgeoning slow-food movement and growing interest in local, seasonal produce are factors in the rise of the vegetable patch. But the seed supply firms also say that food and fuel price inflation is helping to drive the shift to vegetable growing. Following last year's poor summer crops and a doubling of many commodity prices, food prices have risen 10%-20%.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/22/food.gardens

[kestrel91316]

1. I wish more Americans would wake the hell up and start growing more of

their own vegetables. With all those McMansions and their nice big yards and nice big kitchens, people are nicely set up to produce and process their produce.

But they'd rather watch Dancing With The Stars still.

This will soon change, I am thinking.......

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. I don't have any space to garden, so I'm doing it at my Grandma's

Unfortunately, a huge new deck was built a few years ago over 70% of the sunniest spots. :eyes: I'm going to do a 3x8 square-foot patch in the one yard spot that gets enough sun, and the deck will have 10-15 large containers with assorted growing things.

I'm hoping we get enough to feed her house-hold and mine with some left over to donate or give away.

[kestrel91316]

3. Put a Cherry Grande tomato plant in one of those planter boxes on the deck -

you'll get all the salad tomatoes you need. And eggplant and peppers, if you like them - they need lots of sun. Then put your canning tomatoes (Romas) and slicers (Brandywine) in the ground.

Put your spinach plants (Bloomsdale Longstanding) and lettuce and delicate greens in a partly shady place - they'll do fine.

[hatrack]

4. There are also a couple of great substitutes for greens when they get bitter in hot weather

You can try either New Zealand Spinach, which produces all season, or Malabar Spinach.

We've had mixed luck with NZS, but where malabar is concerned, plant it and stand back. Yowza - I've never planted anything that seemed so determined to take over the whole freakin' garden!