Self-sufficiency is a bit of a buzz word, these days. Since the economy fell to pieces, vegetables grown in foreign climes have become the luxury they probably should have been all along – with prices for them going through the roof, or hugely inferior batches being sold for the old “affordable” rate. People are more aware of the potentially harmful chemicals used to keep shop-bought vegetables colourful and “ripe” – chemicals that deaden taste and probably don’t do very much for the environment. Even British grown veg is still pretty suspect, meaning the only way a person can be sure that what they are eating is actually any good is to do it themselves. Suddenly, the humble plastic planter has become a key piece of kit for the modern gardener.
The plastic planter allows even the smallest of gardens to yield a crop of edible food. Gardens are notoriously difficult to start vegetable growing in: their soil, though fine for the adult plant, is often not good enough to get seedlings going; and they are so beset with pests and creepy crawlies that even areas with decent soil are likely to find their vegetables eaten by caterpillars before they can be harvested. A plastic planter sidesteps both of these problems with ease: first, because the soil in a plastic planter can be controlled – bought in from a garden centre, if necessary – ; and second, because a plastic planter can be sheltered from pests until such time as the plants they contain are able to thrive on their own.
It’s these two facts that make a plastic planter such a great investment for any gardener who wants to try his or her hand at a little self sufficiency. Traditionally, growing your own vegetables has taken too much time for not enough result, with the net effect that we’ve all capitulated and gone to the supermarket. A plastic planter or two puts the ball right back in the little person’s court – the big guns at the nationwide supermarkets might be able to buy in huge quantities of edible veg at cut rate prices, but the gardener with a plastic planter can grow the stuff him or herself for even less. With a plastic planter, good vegetables cost little and taste a hundred times better.
There’s a satisfaction value associated with plastic planter gardening that no supermarket vegetable can ever hope to match. What would you rather – some half-baked exotic veg that’s eaten tons of carbon being picked, packed and flown around the world (presumably from a country whose natives would have quite liked it to feed themselves): or perfect tasting home grown produce that you’ve raised from seed in a plastic planter? The ethics of food consumption are big news, these days – and a plastic planter allows the concerned gardener to do something about it, for the first time in a long time.
