Aspragus Transplant

This year marks the 40th anniversary of when on the 3rd December 1967 Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant on patient Louis Washkansky using the heart of Denise Darvall who was killed in a car accident. Washkansky survived the operation for eighteen days before dying of pneumonia.

Further heart transplants by Barnard followed. An operation was conducted on the 2nd January 1968, and the patient, Philip Blaiberg, survived for 18 months. Dorothy Fisher was given a new heart in 1969 and became the longest surviving patient when she lived for 24 years after the transplant.

So what has this got to do with allotmenting? Well quite a lot albeit quite tenuously. Plant transplanting is very much part of the allotmentor's lot. In my case I have recently moved to a new site just around the corner from my house and I decided to take my perennials with me and replant them in the new allotment.

I knew that the rhubarb would be unperturbed by the move as it is almost impossible to kill a rhubarb plant no matter how hard some of us may try. It is a similar story with gooseberry bushes. These fruit bushes have seen it all before and a midnight flit won't put them on a downward spiral of depression.

The asparagus were a different story. Like a parent fretting about whether their child will settle in a new school, I became concerned about them. It is common practice to split asparagus plants to create new plants but this has to be balanced with the fact that they need a good three years to get their root system established before you can feel confident about picking their spears. I've also moved mine whilst they are 'mid spear'. From previous experience from moving planted cabbages I feared the new ground would cause the spears to wilt. Tip: don't move planted cabbages!

This was all two weeks ago, and I can report that the rhubarb has shown a slight wilt, I've yet to transplant the gooseberry bush, and that the asparagus plants are positively thriving. It is as if the new ground, the extra helpings of home made compost, along with the thorough drenching from my neighbour Ted have reinvigorated them. In truth, Ted is claiming all the plaudits for the growth surge - it is his hose pipe after all.

This mixed success is somewhat akin to that enjoyed by Christiaan Barnard 40 years ago but his procedures mercifully went from strength to strength.

Much less significantly, but important to me, I hope that my asparagus and rhubarb transplants also grow stronger and more life enhancing in the years to come.

An Inconvenient Fruit

2007, yesterday

"Pomegranate!"

"What?"

"Pomegranate. An inconvenient fruit."

"What are you talking about?"

"You've just said something about an inconvenient fruit, and I think it's a pomegranate."

"Hang on. Hang on. I said I've just finished watching Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' DVD. You know, Mr Gore's extremely serious appraisal of how we are all producing far too much CO2 which is leading to global warming."

"I must have misheard you."

"Right."

Something deep in my psyche was awakened. Flash back to...to...

1967

An eight year old working class boy sits in his council house home in front of a blazing coal fire. This is the heart of a thriving mining community. In the boy's left hand sits half a pomegranate, in his right hand a dress pin borrowed from his mother's needlework drawer. Meticulously the boy uses the pin to extract individual pomegranate seeds one by one and places them in his mouth. The boy has been allowed to stay up to watch Steptoe and Son, and the delicate and tedious task of eating the pomegranate is punctuated by his glances at the TV. As the muted trumpet plays out the closing credits and Harold Steptoe is yet again frustrated by his Father's emotional grip on him, the pomegranate is all but consumed.

Back to reality

It's not really surprising that the pomegranate never really took off is it? They are just too difficult to eat. Even if you decide to sink your teeth into the matrix of seeds, the membrane in which they are held is just so bitter. Even though Jamie Oliver has included them in one of his recipes they still haven't found their way into the nation's shopping basket. Although according to research they should have. Apparently pomegranate juice contains the highest antioxidant capacity compared to other juices, red wine and green tea. We all need a good daily dose of antioxidants as they protect the body from free radicals, or "bad" chemicals in the blood.

So can you grow pomegranates on your allotment? Well, yes if you are reading this in Spain or California - you could be! As for the UK, very unlikely, unless you have a very large greenhouse that will hold a 16ft tree. Having said this, if Al Gore is as convinced about the spread of global warming as he is about dodgy voting practices in Florida which made him the "ex next president of the USA", then we might start to see pomegranate cultivation in Bournemouth.

Grumpy Old Allotmentor

Having an allotment not only provides the family with an endless supply of fresh fruit and veg throughout the Summer (if only), but it also creates a label for your friends and family to hang on you. I'm not sure of the exact wording of my epithet, but if I had to guess then it would be something like "vegetable grower". It may well be simply "vegetable", but that conjures up a far more pathetic image than I wholly deserve.

Being a Dad of a certain age, who still refuses to ruin a good walk by punctuating it by hitting a small white pitted ball as far as possible, presents considerable problems for those who choose to buy me birthday and Christmas presents. Without a hobby you are difficult to buy for. Although in a perverse way you become easier in that there is no excuse to not buy you socks and synthetic jumpers sporting some unfamiliar faux logo.

Once you've been pigeon-holed as a vegetable grower then the world is my present buyers' oyster. I now receive endless supplies of gardening gloves, novelty books on a 100 ways to kill a slug, little plastic shutes that guide your tiny seeds into the waiting furrow, and pH meters to measure the acidy of your soil. OK so I exaggerate, but it does feel that all my presents are gardening related. Even my birthday cards will show a picture of a watering can in an immaculate shed, or a cabbage in a sunset. It reminds me of my childhood when all my birthday cards carried a football theme until I reached 13. They then changed to guitars when my passion moved on.

On a positive note I do get given things that I didn't realise existed which add to my broad knowledge of gardening. I know I should be grateful and should stop being a grumpy old allotmentor.

OK, I'll give it a try.