Just call me The Master..With Knobs on

A Snippet from an article in an online newspaper

"Killer manure

And not in a good way. Contaminated manure in Britain has not only killed the vegetables it was meant to nourish, the owners of the allotment plots where it was used cannot replant in the affected soil for a year.

A U.S. company, Dow, is responsible for putting an herbicide on the market, aminopyralid, whose deadly power is strong enough to persevere after having passed through a cows’s digestive system and sat around on a stable floor and in piles for months. It’s killed, damaged, and deformed vegetable crops across Britain, but scientists are not sure if it would be unsafe to eat the veggies. The cows aren’t affected by it, apparently.

The herbicide is useful because it kills weeds without affecting the grass around them. A ban has been called for, but as far as I could research, has not been instituted, though Dow is issuing warnings about the product."

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I’ve been 'Googling' a number of topics for Blogs and Newspaper articles to read ..Mostly around the Vegetable gardening but gardening in general as well …. What I’m seeing developing now is a status thing… A self proclaiming status thing … There was once a time when you were just a gardener ….Sometimes you may be referred to as an expert gardener. This was usually for the elder statesmen of gardening who had made it to TV … They looked like experts …They looked like they’d been gardening for 40 years and knew their plants intimately …..







Then came the fashionable gardening that arose some 20+ years back …Distinctions had to be made as the 80s gardener was a yuppie who had gained a diploma in this or that and played around with artificial structuring of the gardens, forcing plants to comply or die … Titles then were professional gardener and amateur gardeners … And people would call them selves 'Amateur Gardeners' as a self proclaiming 'reverse snobbery' kind of tense ..."Oh I'm just an Amater Gardener really"... Oh that’s right – and the professional gardeners now started to talk about plants by their latin name …..Which of course was taken up quickly by the overly keen amateur gardeners as a mark of their gardening prowess……







So I guess that it should be of no surprise that I now read articles and blogs of so called gardeners self proclaiming their status as "Master Gardeners" …. My father was a gardener for well over 40 years .. “ spose they must be clever people” he would say when they ranted on to him with their latin names ….







And this seems to be more and more the mode for Vegetable gardening now that we are being told to “Dig for Victory” again and to reduce your “carbon footprint” and reduce the carbon miles in getting a sprout from soil to kitchen ….Theres a $$ to be made now in helping the uninitiated set up their veggie plot and nothing helps the flow of the $$ than having a good status title like “Master”



Guru gardeners get announced occasionally ..Gardeners with great knowledge and wisdom and authority who uses it to guide others …..at a price of course. Even a Guru has to make their $$Million …………..



The latest article of note actually stated themselves as an "Advanced Master Gardener"!!! They must really be clever … . Just how far can this go I wonder ??



So – just for the record I’m self proclaiming myself as a "Super Duper Advanced Master Black Belt Gardening Expert Guru Expert" …With Nobs on …….



Beat that :O)



Right I’m off to plant my Vicia Faba before McD decides to plant yet more Brassica Oleracea Gemmifera Group :O)