Posts Tagged ‘plants’

Gardening is not the most glamorous of topics. For many, it belongs in the same category as golf, filed under things you should only do when you retire, or at very least become a middle-aged adult.

But gardening has some great benefits.

It happens outside

You can garden inside, but you probably won’t want to. Apart from the soil that will end up on your carpet, there will not be enough daylight for your plants. Therefore it is a great motivation to get yourself outside and enjoying the fresh air.

You can watch things grow

It is satisfying to see plants spring to life out of nowhere. You can do the same thing with children of course, but that is massively time-consuming. Plants just require some sunlight and some water, and you’re done.

You can eat some of them

Week after week I could get a bag parsley from the supermarket and end up having to throw some away because I could not use all of it. Having a herb garden is much more cost effective.

You can do it anywhere

Any outside space will do. I started gardening on my fourth-floor balcony. You can have window baskets, flower pots, or even a pop-up greenhouse. No space is too small to grow something.

It’s low maintenance

You need to water your plants every few days if they are undercover. If not, you can often get away with doing literally nothing. You can go away on holiday without putting them into kennels, and you can away with just not bothering for a week if you are ill. Or you can spend time lavishing them with love, the choice is yours. Plants are resilient organisms and either will probably keep them alive.

It may only be February (March by the time you read this), but my mint plant has already re-grown it’s leaves. I’m impressed. My chilli plants still look half dead and probably will do for months. Everything else looks totally dead. However, the mint plant is battling back, even against the still-present overnight frosts.

I am also surprised that my parsley plant, which lives in a plastic greenhouse on my balcony, has survived the winter and continued to provide parsley leaves throughout it.

Food For Free is a book by Richard Mabey on foraging. I got the pocket-sized edition which is great for travelling around with.

It contains descriptions of loads of different plants you will find it Britain and each one comes with an illustration and a photo. It describes what it looks like and what you can do with it. All good stuff.

On the negative side, it is very insistent that you use a real identification guide, which it claims this is not. I felt that distracted a lot from the purpose of the book. Why make it pocket-sized for example if you’re not taking it into the field?

It is also arranged alphabetically whereas I felt grouping similar plants together would be more useful. If I see a plant I want to be able to find that section and work out which one it is. That way also has difficulties – how do you find the section you want if you already know what it is, and how do you judge what is similar? However, on balance I think the trade off would have been worth it.

It does however address any concerns you might have that you could accidentally pick something poisonous by telling you it will probably be fine. I feel much better after that…