General Chat

Fred's mate works vey,very hard in our garden. He used to work on smallholdings so he knows all about growing and harvesting tomatoes and lettuce.

His runner beans are always prolific and, as I used to have to pick the beans for tea, I know how tight to pick them but, while he is good and getting even better at growing all sorts of things, I think we are missing out on a lot of crop because we don't know how to harvest.

Probably we are not alone in this. Growing instructions are easily accessed and are, of course, printed on the seed packet.

To both myself and Fred's mate, the garden was a secret place frequented by your dad and forbidden to anybody else. I think I grew up thinking that maybe I or it were called 'Get off the garden. Harvesting is a practical skill that needs to be shown.

Never having seen bread made, I needed to consult several people, all old ladies, before I could produce a reasonable loaf and some required several telephone calls. It was the same with jam, I have never come to terms with setting point but have needed to adapt since my friend on the common died. I was in the habit of putting the jam on the sauce and driving it up for her to poke.

It is just such a shame to see Fred's mate putting his heart and soul into growing without having huge quantities of goodies to show.

Surely that's what You tube is for ;-)

It is not the same as an old lady or a dad though is it?

No but it saves wasting stuff

My neighbours save a huge amount of their produce or they share it with friends including me and I share my surplus with them.
There must be some others in your village with whom you communicate.

Fred's mate has huge confidence problems. He feels that I am criticizing him, in fact he has just stormed off home because I mentioned it.

Have you thought of joining a horticultural society so many elderly people to help and give advise

That is a thought, Sue.

I doubt he would entertain it though because he would think they were judging him.

People at the HS 's don't judge just help if asked

Sharon does he like showing the veg and flowers,he may like the societies if he does

We had 2 acres of organic veg (far too much for the 5 of us). We would pick as soon as possible and allow the remaining nutrients to produce more for harvesting. We sold all our surplus because it was organic - slugs included at no extra cost (if you were lucky).

It was time consuming but we used the kids (aged 5, 6 and 7) as slaves :-D

I always want to learn more but he thinks that he is being judged as incompetent if he doesn't know something.

As I mentioned, he had a job on one of the local smallholdings which suited him well for years but it did mean he didn't get to mix with all the ghastly people the rest of us had to so he has not had to deal with posers.

After his employer retired he was sent on a back to work course and was particularly wound up about one other student who covered his own fear of inadequacy with a lot of big-headed pose. It took me a long time to get him to understand that this man was feeling just as overwhelmed as he was.

It is such a shame because he is so kind and hardworking and thorough in the extreme. The only person who thinks he is not up to scratch is him.