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Credit crunch leads to grow-your-own veg boom 2 September 2010
Steven Jackson (about the author)

Fears of a double-dip recession and rising food prices are fuelling a boom in home-grown vegetables.

Vegetable seed sales rose 14% last year and are forecast to go up 6% this year. The industry is now worth about £60million a year.

The number of aspiring kitchen gardeners lining up for an allotment shot up by 20% in the past year, with 100,000 on waiting lists for a plot, according to the National Society for Allotment and Leisure Gardeners.

The surge is being linked to the credit crunch and concerns about the environment, but professional couples and young families are also simply rediscovering the pleasure of producing their own food.

Steven Jackson of beatmydebt.com was not surprised by the news.

"More and more people that I meet are telling me that they have started growing their own vegetables. With the cost of food and groceries on the up and household budgets being squeezed, finding ways of reducing expenses is becoming more and more important. Growing your own is a good way of doing this" he said.

Beatroot is best-seller

Seed producer Suttons said vegetable seeds account for 70% of its sales, compared with 40% five years ago.

Its best-selling seed this year was beetroot, followed by carrot, lettuce, spinach and tomato.

A spokesman said: 'People are going back to basics.'

Another seed firm, Thompson & Morgan, said it enjoyed record vegetable seed sales last year.

Last year, Camden council in North London said 883 people faced up to a 40-year wait for one of the borough's 195 allotments.

Source: This is Money