Monday, 31 May 2010  lessons from the vegetable patch  Time to
face the truth: I'm not nearly ruthless enough to grow salad.
Reading this has given me the courage to confess my own similar
dilemma with the vegetable patch - like its author, I just can't
bring myself to do thinning out. I know you have to pull out the
weedy/surplus seedlings so the rest have space to grow. But a
combination of stinginess - I hate throwing away perfectly good
(embryonic) rocket - and soppiness makes me wimp out every time.
Surely if the spindly, yellowing ones were lavished with a few
weeks of top quality fertiliser/sunshine/twice-daily
watering/private education, they too could grow up to be
spinach! All that potential gone to waste is so sad. Even if it
was only ever destined to be lettuce. This deep feebleness has,
of course, resulted in a salad jungle: vast thickets of red
mustard, great tangles of rocket - none of which will mature
properly because they don't actually have any room. My fellow
garden wimp, Douglas Carswell,