The stringiness of the short distance runner

MY interest started behind the shining panels and space-age sheeting of the Ecolab.

A rare bright spot in the scary first weeks of secondary school was being assigned to the college's futuristic-sounding greenhouse.

Now admittedly this was a school which rather revelled in buzz words - it didn't have a reception it had a "foyer", it gave computer rooms pretentious sounding names like "C cubed" and even the library was given the grandiose title of Information Centre.

But at least the Ecolab almost lived up to the billing. If it wasn't quite the sort of facility that could have sustained Matt Damon through his unexpected exile on Mars it was a step up from your standard potting shed.

Rows of lettuce were nurtured in hydroponic systems, nutrients solutions were stirred up in a great green water but and banana trees grew in pots filled not with earth but clay pellets. Even pesticides were prohibited, with "biological control" the key to seeing off any unwanted visitors.

It was all a distant cry from my Grampy's allotment plot or my Nan's immaculately weeded council house garden, which were other early introductions to gardening.

These also differed greatly; the garden was somewhere I'd spend most Saturday afternoons. As I walked among the lovingly tended rose and azalea bushes my Nan would often counsel me on the importance of ensuring plants were never left to "choke" each other. This was the task she dedicated herself to above all others, even as her increasingly arthritic knees made it harder. "It nearly killed me," she'd often say of her latest rearrangement. A similar near-death experience in the shadow of the camellia would inevitably follow the next week.

The allotment, in contrast, was a sort of estoric refuge for my grandfather; the secret place he'd escape to on weekday mornings. A man of habit it was the prelude to the lunchtime drink at The Griffin and an afternoon snoozing in front of the snooker. Although I'd only ever see what was to be taken there - pink and black splashed seeds the size of jellybeans - and what eventually came back (freezer bags full of greens). Now and then we'd be given a share to take home. Last year's crop of course!

But despite gardening always being in the background of my life, it's taken me a long time to give it a proper go. Maybe it's partly because pairing it with a love of Radio 4 discussion programmes felt like an explicit admission that I am at heart a 68-year-old waiting for his body to catch-up.

But I've started to come to it through vegetable growing. It's a passion perhaps started by adopting a solitary tomato plant in an Isle of Wight village several summers ago. An invite for people to help themselves to the straggly looking specimens on a table outside someone's front gate caught my eye and a couple of months later I was eating its fruits as part of a salad.

The delight of making a soup from something you've grown from seed or earthing up parsnips for Christmas dinner is hard to beat. Even if the triumphs are tempered by the frustration of discovering that wherever there are carrots there will - in time - be carrot fly. Or a plant that grows to the proportions of Jack's own beanstalk produces precisely one marrow. One. 

In an age when Thunberg and her fellow travellers thunder about food miles and carbon footprint it's inevitably disappointing to learn the limits of what might be cultivated on a patio. Indeed it swiftly killed any contingency I might have had to ride out the Covid crisis purely on produce pulled from the soil of my own micro-sized smallholding. When the going got tough, the tough got a Tesco delivery booked.

Of course the growing can be as satisfying as the harvest. In fact I've found, in what's been a tough couple of years for everyone, a lot of comfort from just going outside to water and compost and contemplate. And even if you can't exactly live off the land, you perhaps feel closer to it. The seasonality of vegetables and the importance of not wasting fresh produce are useful lessons.

Obviously I've also got an awful lot more to learn. I tend to plant impulsively, growing what looks good on the packet or the variety with the most poetic name. It turns out, for instance, that a Thai Dragon chilli pepper may be a foolhardy choice for someone whose taste for spicy food reaches its threshold at vegetable korma.

In time I need to learn the iron discipline of crop rotation and complimentary planting and picking things which are a good fit for our soil. I recently picked up a book at my favourite second-hand bookshop which might give a bit of structure to my scatter gun - or at least scatter seed - approach.

Admittedly some of the grander projects may have to wait until I have an allotment plot or garden space of my own. As usual I will perhaps come to adulthood through a slightly circuitous route. My desire to become a property owner will I expect ultimately be driven not by the need to own a tangible asset but because I want somewhere sunny to erect a wigwam of beans*.

Until then I plod on with potting and planting as I please. I don't yet have enough of a crop to freeze or a greenhouse on a scale of the Ecolab, but great things can grow from small seeds (just not, it appears, marrows).

* - See also a car will give me somewhere convenient to store a road atlas and a long-term relationship would make Bonfire displays more fulfilling.