Container Growing Vegetables Lecture

Back in the olden days, before the internet, before television, before radio people were a little more restricted in what to do with their spare time. They could go and see a play or visit a music hall but one popular form of entertainment was also educational, the lecture.

Well lectures are a rare beast indeed nowadays, I mean how can a person standing talking compete with a TV documentory that was made over months by a whole team of dedicated professionals? or a multi-media interactive experience?

Surprisingly they can. There is a certain intimacy about a small room full of people listening to a person with a slide show explaining a subject. The ability to interact, change the direction of the talk to meet the audience’s wants and answer questions makes a lecture something valuable and different.

Container Growing Vegetables

Tonight I went over to Middlewich with Larry & Gaynor from the allotment to attend a lecture on growing vegetables in containers by Graham Wagstaffe, FNVS.  I’ve grown vegetables in containers myself in the past when we lived on the Isle of Man. Although we had a fair sized garden, it was on a slope and terraced with concrete.

Val filled the terraces with flowers in pots and I grew a few vegetables of course. It used to take nearly and hour to water everything in the summer, but it was worth it. I’d managed tomatoes in growbags, salad leaves in pots, carrots in pots and runner beans in a great big tub but Graham has grown some things you might never think of growing in a pot. Sweetcorn, cabbages, leeks and broad beans to name a few.

Well if I ever find myself with a concrete garden again, I know I’ll be able to grow far more than last time using what I’ve learned tonight.

I’ve managed to dig out a picture of our concrete garden from September 2001. Val’s sitting on the bench in the late afternoon sunshine looking at the tomatoes growing on the garage wall. You can see the marigolds doing double duty at the base of the tomatoes, adding beauty and warding off whiteflies.