Looking backwards to go forwards ..

Growth isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing better.

Our society has been hypnotised into believing something our forebears knew to be unbelievable. We have learned to expect ever more, faster, bigger, cheaper, more blemish-free from our farms and gardens.

Broad (Fava) beans

‘Aquaduldce’ beans harvested in the spring.

The plants’ origin is said to be Spain, bred in the late nineteenth century.

Seed collected is dried and saved for sowing in the autumn.

Gardening has many advantages but it is literally as well as figuratively grounding. Let’s look at what our experience on the ground has taught us..

During my lifetime, gardeners moved from natural sources of fertility to applying synthetics. I remember my dad’s tin of ‘Growmore’, promoted by the government, which contained a range of synthetic fertilisers.

I recall too his application of pesticides like DDT to kill black fly and other ‘pests’.

Seed companies bewitched gardeners with the latest varieties that promised to increase yield or flowering period or offer greater disease resistance.

Machinery manufacturers successfully promoted the idea of rotavating the soil.

We, as gardeners, are always looking to optimise these very things. However, we now understand that much that became prevailing wisdom was actually wrong.

It is now clear that instead of being the linchpin in feeding the world, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has enabled the overproduction of nutrient-poor grains within an agricultural system that requires ever more fertilizer to remain productive.

The essential mineral concentration in wheat, for instance, has dropped by 57%.

At the same time, toxic elements like aluminum have increased by as much as 78%.

There is suspicion too that the constant genetic-narrowing of our food through plant science may be contributing to health disorders.

Herbicides, pesticides and fungicides used in food production are now up to 10,000 times more toxic than DDT.

Our ploughing or digging of the soil reduces invertebrate and mycelial activity making it less fertile and more likely to be eroded.

Naked beanpoles waiting to be clothed in twining stems, leaves, flowers … and beans.

No-till, no-dig or regenerative methods of production consistently show higher yields and greater nutritional value in the harvested crops.

And new varieties may not always be what they seem. A common criticism of modern food is its lack of flavour. This is because modern methods and varieties contain fewer flavinoids.

Many gardeners are now looking back to the ‘heritage’ varieties of old to produce more-diverse,  nutrient-dense, healthy crops that have a longer cropping period than the modern cultivars. Adam Alexander (The Seed Detective) has been a leading proponent of old varieties, recently enthusing us at a Notts Organic Gardeners meeting about the fragile heritage of old varieties at home and abroad. These varieties often have a considerable lineage due to their exceptional qualities but are not promoted by the big seed companies as there is less profit for them.

The Garden Organic charity is one of a number of specialist heritage seed suppliers. Their Heritage Seed library offers varieties to its members each year.

This year we have chosen

• Climbing French bean ‘Caseknife’

• Climbing French bean ‘Cherokee Trail of Tears’

• Dwarf French bean ‘Black Canterbury’

• Pea ‘Cooper’s Beak Pea’

• Tomato ‘Belhomme’s Fortuna Potato Leaf’

• Carrot Afghan Purple

Heritage seeds ready for the 2025 growing season..

Also from Adam Alexander

• Dwarf French bean ‘Hawkesbury Wonder’

• Dwarf French bean ‘King of the Early’
  

  It’s our hope that by using a wider range of heritage varieties that we ‘spread our risk’ across the variables we seem to be facing as growers.

Will the frost be late?

Will the spring be dry or wet? Sunny or overcast?

Will the nights be mild or cold?

Will we face damaging winds?

Will the growing season be long or short?

How will pests and their predators fare?

Additionally, will some varieties thrive (or fail to) in our organically-mulched but sandy soil?

Commercial growers don’t have the lightness of foot that we gardeners can have. We can deploy half a dozen dwarf bean varieties cropping over a long period and hopefully some, if not all, will thrive giving us the chance of a better harvest. Mechanical harvesting does not have this advantage where all the crop is harvested at the same time and small plots of different varieties are less-easily catered for.

All of which contributes to making vegetable gardening endlessly fascinating…

We await the growing season with great anticipation.