New Year Thoughts & Past Influences

First of all, Happy New Year to all my readers. Let’s hope 2025 brings fair weather and large crops.

New Year Thoughts & Past Influences

Traditionally the New Year is a time to take stock, review the year past and plan the year to come taking account of lessons learned.

Weather

The old year was a tough one for gardeners and growers. It just seemed to rain and rain and rain. The summer was mediocre at best, although we did have a few decent periods. The slugs and snails found it well-nigh perfect, though. Wet and warm enough for them to thrive.

We ended the old year and began the new with powerful storms. Hopefully I won’t be repairing the greenhouse after this current storm calms.

Mea Culpa

I have to admit, I was to blame for some of the failings last year. My health wasn’t great and I just never seemed to catch up with everything that needed to be done when it needed doing.

Positives

It wasn’t all doom and gloom last year, far from it. We’ve a freezer full to the gunnels of our own veg and the potatoes in store that will last until the new crop starts. That’s assuming the rat-proofed store succeeds in keeping the vermin out, which it seems to be doing.

I’m so glad I tried growing Bulgarian Giant Leeks – they’re on my ‘must grow’ list now. Not perfect, but I think I’ll be able to greatly improve yield now I’ve a better idea of the best way to cultivate them. Most important advice, don’t let stray sheep eat them!

Plan

We’ve a cold snap coming, so I’ll be sitting in the warm, planning what I’m growing this year. I’m determined to avoid the big mistake of last year and not set myself more to do than I can. The spirit is willing…

Past Influences

John Seymour

I had an email in response to the site’s 20th anniversary asking me who had influenced me, the writer mentioned the late John Seymour.

Seymour certainly was a major influence on me. I was 21 in 1976 when his The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency was published. Whilst it was great on ideas, it wasn’t really a detailed, practical ‘how to’ but it did succeed in creating a lot of enthusiasm and pointing the way to less consumerist lifestyle. It basically made the dreams seem possible and not beyond me.

What made the biggest impression on me was Seymour’s general philosophy and vision of what agriculture and food production could be. Accessible, relatively small scale but leveraging cooperation and sharing to give the benefits of large farms to small.

This translated down in scale from small farms and smallholdings to allotments. A group of people on a site with a similar aim, growing food, but not exactly the same crops or methods. However, some sharing of knowledge, resources and recycling excess between plot holders benefits all. In example: excess plants and plant pots. Or sharing the use of expensive items like shredders, strimmers and rotavators.

There’s a rather good, comprehensive biography of John Seymour on Wikipedia and I’d recommend this article about John Seymour on Pantry Fields

Lawrence D Hills

Another big influence on me was gardening author Lawrence D Hills. He was the founder and driving force behind the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA) which researched and developed Russian Comfrey at the trial grounds in Bocking, Essex, following in the footsteps of Henry Doubleday

Bocking was where he developed the famous Bocking 14 comfrey clone.

The HDRA was also a loose association of gardeners and produced a newsletter where members shared information and results of experiments. Hills’ 1971 book Grow your own fruit and vegetables became my first port of call for information.

Hills was an organic grower but a practical one who suggested the limited use of herbicides under some circumstances.

I was a member of the HDRA for many years, having met Hills at Bocking in 1976. We were living in Leamington Spa when the HDRA relocated to nearby Ryton on Dunsmore, which made visiting very easy for us. Following the transition of the HDRA to Garden Organic, the organisation grew and Hills stepped back from running things.

Geoff Hamilton

For 16 years, Geoff Hamilton made Gardener’s World a favourite TV programme. An honest, practical gardener who never failed to teach, but never lectured. Happy days! There’s a good obituary of Geoff Hamilton that says it better than I can.

Arthur J Simons

Amongst the first gardening books I read was The New Vegetable Grower’s Handbook by Arthur J Simons. This was a 1975 revision of his original Vegetable Grower’s Handbook published in 1945. I hadn’t realised until I researched the Dig for Victory campaign just how they were related.

Simons collated kitchen garden notes during the war, which ended up as the book that was my main guide until I came upon Lawrence D Hills’s Grow Your Own Fruit and Vegetables.

So those are my main gardening influences, although there are many more, of course.