The Great Allotment Challenge

[KG Steve]

Hi All
Did you see the Great Allotment Challenge last night? If so, what did you think? It was billed as gardening's answer to The Bake Off. I thought it was fun, but maybe a bit light on gardening tips. Early days I guess and I expect given a few weeks it will get into its stride. I've put a poll on the website so it will be interesting to see what gardeners in general made of it.

[Geoff]

Bit light on gardening is an under statement! Seeing how they got to where the programme started might have been informative. Glad I'm not judged on those criteria.

[oldherbaceous]

I struggled to keep any enthusiasm while watching it, because of the lack of actual gardening, but i will watch the next one, just to see if it is more to my liking. I was hoping there would be some stronger characters in there as well!

[Westi]

I thought it was OK & I was well prepared to be cynical. I might be able to get some nice radishes & a few straight stems of sweet peas, but couldn't arrange or have that variety of flowers, have never made curd & I'm sure couldn't make both jam & curd that quickly, so hat's off to them even if some were disasters. (Some of them could have been nicked from me!)

More importantly none of the gardeners irritated me too much! True none inspired me either. I'm kinda hoping as it goes on they will stop being quite so nice but as show from the same vein as Great British Bake Off I expect lots of 'niceness'! (Hidden microphones in the green houses could be good!)

Westi

PS - maybe we could have own KG challenge - set a challenge each week & we post photo's of our efforts! I'm sure we're all pretty honest & not embarrassed to show our disasters as well!

[peter]

I lasted less than five minutes, the female all dolled up in a posh frock lost a lot of the gardening interest for me, chap sowing radishes in a barrel brought it back, but it will be like all these "competitions", contrived, lightweight and irritating, all about personalities instead of the gardening techniques.

I'd rather see a diary type programme with a successful chef/hotelier's vegetable gardener, with a seasonal dish done at the end.

[Ricard with an H]

I was determined to make the effort not to watch it, or rather, not make the effort to watch it because TV for me is often an effort. Also, I figured by reading the mail on this forum I would get a good idea if it's worth making an effort.

However, I did read a very interesting article in 'the independent, on the history of allotments.

From what little I know of allotments in recent years it seems more effort from local authorities in most cases would go long way to improving this historical access to land for feeding ourselves and the associate leasure for those who enjoy gardening but don't have the land at home.

It often brings a lump to my throat when I read about the pilfering you lotty people have to cope with after so much hard work.

If this TV series shines enough light onto allotment owning to improve things for you then maybe it will have been worth the efforts of the producer no matter how insipid.

[Beryl]

Not enough gardening for me too much of tasting and judging but then I suppose it was a competition. I would like to know though how did they manage to grow black currants, blueberries, strawberries in 15 months to have enough to make jam? Most fruit bushes and apart possibly from strawberries will take a couple of years to come into fruit.

I won't watch again, I had to force myself to keep awake for the last half hour.

Beryl.

[Westi]

Peter - I always wear my posh frocks on the lottie! Surely you also have your best suit dry cleaned especially as well!

Actually all of them looked better kitted out than me - I now have a mirror in the shed after the embarrassing moment I got the bus home with a big mud spludge under my nose! God Bless that driver for gestating madly when I got my ticket!

Westi

[robo]

I mist it , sounds like it was not worth watching

[Sandyback]

Maybe this would have made better viewing
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... paign=1490

[Ricard with an H]

Peter - I always wear my posh frocks on the lottie!

.

Of-course you do Westi.

Surely being suitably clothed for an allotment program would mean not being particularly concerned about your image. My gardening clothes are nearly-always clean-on at the start of a day and ending up looking mucky or scruffy/disheveled towards the end of it and compared to some I'm a slave to fashion in-that I wear baggy work pants or dungarees together with a suitably chosen shirt that will mostly be one I had for years though always carefully chosen just in case you decide to pay a visit.

My shoes will be scruffy garden clogs or wellies that are equally scruffy, smiley-face braces hold my pants up and are worn to give a message to the occasion of a visitor and I have a range of daft headwear to cover my slap-head. Yesterday I wore one that was embroidered with, "Dickies Farms" because I did have visitors.

My visitors were neighbours driving a proper Land Rover and towing a massive twin roller to tow around my paddock and give the moles a head-ache.

They were suitable impressed. (I hope)

[Geoff]

Best to visit me at the start of the week - I wear the same gardening clothes all week unless they get particularly bad. Son of a friend of my wife with Downs that we used to look after sometimes used to call me Compo. (Not after our fine West Country contributor I think)

But back to the programme, I don't have an allotment but I would have thought the key points are:

- manage and prepare the soil
- create a plan
- raise plants
- set them out
- harvest a steady stream of useful produce right through the season

It covered none of these so to me a miserable failure.

[retropants]

i thought it quite bland, but then we here do know more than your average viewer about growing veg (I hope!!) so maybe that's why. I think it is aimed at the proverbial couch potatoes (pun intended)
I gave it a go, I was not going to bother, then relented and gave it a chance. how they managed to get rhubarb in year one is a puzzle, but then I suppose they don't mind picking year one, as they won't be around for next year etc. when the plant will be all knackered as it was harvested too early.

[Primrose]

I was disappointed and thought it was totally out touch with reality. It will do nothing to convey to any potential allotment enthusiasts the reality of having an allotment and I was amazed to see those pristinely dug plots they were given to work The reality would have been to see how they coped with couch grass, mares tails and nettles!
If the whole project had been run by somebody like Monty Don rather than Media Studies graduates like the ones we saw on the W1A comedy recently, we might have had a more realistic programme.
Having said all that, I will no doubt watch next week to see what on earth they can come up with next. The actually gardening content was so minimal it was truly disappointing in my view.

[peter]

Perhaps each plot was professionally prepared with a selection of stuff the previous year?