Kitchen Garden Forum

There is certainly a knack to growing vegetables but would you go so far as to call it an art?
JB.

I would say a skill or an accomplishment.

I would say it is an art and a hobby (and a skil and accomplishment)

I wouldn't call it an art like painting or music, more like martial arts or sports.

But thats just my opinion

Maybe growing the mega huge veg is a sort of an art, translates into lots of preparation (sketching), selecting (light, composition/ hmmm compost) , dismissing & starting again - & the results can be a very different from the normal (abstract/modern art maybe)?

But if they count pickled sharks as art & some coins on the floor, then maybe everything can be called art, thankfully your choice what you put on the wall!

Personally I think veg growing is a hobby or business even, where we get Mother Nature's art as the result. (Edible Art)

Westi

Some definitions of ART

1. The products of human creativity; works of art collectively
"an art exhibition"; "a fine collection of art"
2. The creation of beautiful or significant things
"I was never any good at art"; "he said that architecture is the art of wasting space beautifully"; "art does not need to be innovative to be good"
3. A superior skill that you can learn by study and practice and observation
"the art of conversation"; "it's quite an art"
4. Photographs or other visual representations in a printed publication
"the publisher was responsible for all the art in the book"

Vegetable growing pretty well fits into 2 and 3

Hi,

For me, it's my hobby, exercise and a way to relax.... Successes are mostly down to nature and luck!

But, for many it's experience and skill which I hope to gain!

I helped at the harvest for my in laws vineyard at the weekend (which I've been doing for 10 years). It was Timed perfectly in terms of suger (and weather). I can only hope that one day I reach Their level of knowledge And experience.

Pawty

It's not art to me, just a way of life and a very enjoyable way of life too...

It's also an addiction. Come the end of February, despite two or three months of winter abstinence, it's s very difficult to ignore the call of the seed packets and the bags of compost !

I think that Alan's answer hits it on the head. There is an art to pricking out successfully to obtain the maximum but that is through skill. It is for sure an accomplishment and when you bring in a crop successfully there is a great feeling of achievement.
In the past I had seven mouths to feed and we were self reliant in vegetables and to a great deal self sufficient in meat.
We had two house cows, Half a dozen Bullocks, half a dozen Tamwworth sows and a Boar, twentyfive Maran hens with two cockerels and used to breed chickens for sale and another flock for the pot using another twentyfive nondescript hens and a Polish cockerel and just to vary things half a dozen Aylesbury ducks and a Drake.
I now live alone and have such wonderful thoughts of back to those days. Now no livestock and have to employ somebody to do my digging and half the time my planting out.
If I could not continue to grow things then I would not last much longer. I still propogate dozens and dozens of shubs for sale and
I have enjoyed every single minute of it.
JB.

I think gardening involves such a wide range of things that it suits so many people.

You need skills in planting and growing that you can learn from others but mainly from trying it yourself. I learned a lot by watching and helping my father but learned a lot more when I got my own garden by reading up on things and doing it myself.

You use science in observing and optimising the growing crops by soil management, weather observation , encouraging beneficial insects, whether pollinators or predators and controlling the pests and diseases. You can indulge your environmental side by recycling and composting or go into the realms of fantasy by burying beneficial herbs in stags bladders and burying them if the fancy takes you

You can satisfy your artistic side by mixing colour and form. Curly and plain leaves and contrasting colours look lovely. I like to alternate rows of Bleu de Solaise and Jaune de Poitou leeks and purple and green kale and cabbages, and intersperse rows of phacelia, marigolds or nastirtiums. It's fun to grow things in squares or circles instead of straight lines too.

And you get the exercise and the social side of gardening, whether it is a chat to other gardeners or with friends and neighbours when you distribute your excess produce.

It also teaches you patience and to go along with whatever comes along, that you have successes and failures, and if something fails completely one year it may be fantastic the following year or you will have a great crop from something else.

Dear Plumpudding, i have to say, that was very nicely put.

Thanks OH, and I forgot to say you also get to eat vitamin rich, fresh fruit and veg. untainted by unknown chemicals.

Ooh ahh there be an artform to what be written in these here replies.
There certainly be an art in what be written in a specialist magazine each month.

There may be an art to producing them there hearty cabbages
Done properly the art is growing an edible result whilst using forms of science in keeping the muscles of the body, and the mind, active

To me growing vegetables is a hobby that seems to have helped keep me on this mortal plain (Still !! )

For me it's also an incentive to get out of bed every morning. I cannot envisage a time when I couldn't get outdoors to grow a few things. I love just popping out i to the garden every morning, especially in checking to see what new has happened. The uniformed would not recognise the difference in growth of a tray of seedlings overnight but I reckon most of us can, and it's the small things like this, as well as the greater successes that makes growing anything so fascinating. As the old saying goes, "while there's life, there's hope!.

Glad to see you back with us Pa Snip. Hopefully your absence recently has been to something nice like an absence on holiday rather something more negative.

Primrose wrote:
Glad to see you back with us Pa Snip. Hopefully your absence recently has been to something nice like an absence on holiday rather something more negative.

Thanks Primrose.
A combination of both, the latter of which had nothing to do with health issues.
To go into it here may cause deviation from this thread which it is not my wish to cause.