A gourmet is a connoisseur of delicacies and a judge of good food. Therefore a ‘gardening gourmet’ is a connoisseur of the garden and its impact on all your senses.

A gourmand is more like a gluttonous and greedy feeder who is hard to satiate. A ‘gardening gourmand ‘ acquires more plants,  grows more seedlings, takes more cuttings than needed and crams everything into a tight garden space.

I am a repenting garden gourmand at least until next spring.

Avoid the worst of Gardening Gourmandishness.

• I will allow weak and frail plants to die peacefully on the compost heap
• Quality not quantity will become my new watch word
• Specimen plants will be cultivated and cared for in preference to excessive annuals and self sown seedlings that I previously lavished time and effort upon.
• Adequate space will be allotted to plants and vegetables will be spaced according to their needs. I will not cram everything together reducing the overall crop but increasing my gourmand factor.
• Cuttings will be selected with care and excess plants given away.
• Fewer seeds will be bought or collected and sowing & growing on will be restricted.
• I won’t be as parsimonious trying to extract extra results from the garden for nothing.
• The number of pot plants will be halved, particularly the smaller poor performing ones that need more care and watering.
• Diseased and infected plants will be destroyed promptly not allowing them to linger
• I  collect varieties of one plant but will stop trying to do that for every species that catches my eye.
• I must stop being a plonker.

The Plonking Factor

• Every plant and seedling is squeezed into the ground somewhere. Agh! I know it is daft.
• Colour schemes are impossible because a plant will be popped into a vacant space for the sake of getting yet another plant off to some sort of start.
• Height and spread are not accounted for when a plant is ‘plonked in’ and invariably it becomes the wrong place.

So I have to resolve not to be a plonker as well as dropping my gourmand habits