Chairman’s Chit Chat May 2024
Some gardening activities are more pleasurable than others.
Even though, over the years, allotment gardening has become an obsession, there are still jobs that I am not keen to get cracking with. If I had to compile a list of my least favourite tasks, then hand weeding would take the top slot.
This is ironic because this is by far the most time-consuming activity of all, which means I spend the greatest number of man hours doing the job I dislike most!
I guess that practically every allotmenteer grows potatoes, a kitchen staple.
Growing them would appear in my top five least favourite jobs because they are such a demanding crop. There is the extensive ground preparation, planting the tubers, seemingly endless “earthing up” and finally the break breaking harvesting.
Growing them may be irksome, but the first meal of new potatoes is gastronomic heaven and all the hard work is forgotten.
Let’s be a bit more positive – what would be in my list of favourite jobs? This would be a very extensive list.
Sowing seeds and watching them germinate successfully would certainly be right up there vying for pole position.
Pricking out seedlings would give sowing seeds a run for its money.
I can cheerfully spend a whole day pricking out; I never get tired of it. Harvesting all my crops as they come into season gives me immense pleasure.
I could go on and on describing my favourite jobs, but all I will say is, there are many, many more pleasurable elements to gardening than there are chores.
As I am blissfully addicted to my allotment all these tasks, and numerous others, still get done, no matter whether they are a pain or a joy.
