It is, at present, almost impossible to open a garden magazine, or the gardening pages of a national newspaper, without coming across an article on how we are all now kitchen gardeners and allotmenteers; the theme is that the uncertain economic conditions have turned us back to our gardens, to grow comestibles and thereby ensure that we eat well, now that lack of the readies has reconnected us with our cookers. So far, so unexceptional, even trite. I have written such pieces myself. However, the difficulty for me comes when the writer gets over-excited and starts claiming that we can save enough money to make a difference to our circumstances by ‘growing our own’. Really?
This proposition might well have had some truth 50 years ago, when food and non-alcoholic drink made up a third of the household budget.
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