IT'S A KIND OF MAGIC

There's something enchanting about growing veg, says Emma Bailey, and even more so when you involve your children

- Emma Bailey

‘Why do the carrots have green leaves coming out of them, mummy?’ asked my six-year-old son, Tommy. I had purchased some beautifully fresh carrots from a local farm food shop earlier that day and they still had their little green foliage hats on. The thought that carrots were once living happily in the soil somewhere was a complete shock to my son, and it was in that moment that I realised my children didn’t really know where their fruit and vegetables come from.

Our small garden had played host to an array of beautiful flowers and a couple of carefully pruned trees, but I had never really given much thought to the idea of growing anything edible. In early 2020, as we descended into the first national lockdown, I decided now was as good a time as any to give growing our own food a go.

SHEER JOY

As my son and I began to grow these new, alien plants in our once flower exclusive garden, we both began to find a new passion for gardening. Any experienced allotment gardener will tell of the sheer joy of being able to grow and then eat your own produce; it’s an enormously satisfying experience and quickly becomes addictive. It also made me very aware of the fact that even I wasn’t sure of exactly how all our vegetables were grown. That quickly became apparent when I found myself muddling up the parsnip and spinach seedlings and wondering why the spinach leaves tasted so grainy and bitter!