GoGrow: Barbados

One of my regular commentators has started a blog and it fits right in with PM Arthur's encouragement to grow your own. GoGrow Barbados (http://greenbb.wordpress.com/) is fresh and new, and planted only recently. I am sure the blog and the garden will both grow in strength. It has pictures that are good enough to eat! I have added it to my blogroll and plan to see how it matures.

This new blog reminds me of when I owned my first home in London, and started an urban garden. It was planted with potatoes, corn, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, rhubarb, peas, flowers and fruit shrubs (blackberries) and trees (apples and pears). Everything tasted wonderful, though the insects often got the first taste. My first daughter wont remember but she and I spent much time there and she learnt at the age of two how to sow seeds and dig; she will find a picture in the albums of her first dog carrying a bucket of potatoes!

My father has always had a garden and in Jamaica he retired to spend hours planting yam, sweet potato, corn, cassava, green ("Congo") peas, and raising chickens. He trained in psychology and believes firmly that connection with the land is essential for good physical and mental health. I agree, if only to have somewhere to go when times get rough inside the house: married men should know what I mean.

In England, this idea of connection to the land has become a national pastime and even extends to the government granting land for people to plant, in the form of "allotments".

Growing your own will not mean that you become self sufficient in food to eat, but it will bring pleasure and relaxation. It can be back-breaking work to dig a lot of soil, but what's wrong with that? It can help work against some of our bug bears like the high price of some fresh produce. It can also be one of the best envirnmental moves one makes. Having land planted is better than having it put to grass in terms of maintenance that requires machines: less mowing, or none at all, and that can mean less petrol consumption (though I always had a push or electric mower). Better to have a garden full of plants than a ard covered in concrete: the rain loves plants and vice versa.

So, wishing the new blogger good luck, and hoping that the new blog inspires a growing audience, I'll leave you to check out the site.