Old School vs. New Tech: 5 Allotment Lessons Sam and Iris Taught Me (And 3 I Taught Them)

 I've been doing this a long time. Long enough that when I started, "checking the weather" meant sticking your head out the back door and having a look at the sky, not asking a little rectangle in your pocket. So you can imagine how I felt the day I caught Iris photographing our onion bed, not to show me how good it looked, mind, but to feed it into some app that was going to tell her exactly when to lift them.

I stood there with my trowel in one hand and about forty years of "you just know when they're ready, love" dying quietly in the other.

That's when it hit me. Sam and Iris haven't just joined me on the plot, they've quietly been running a full technology upgrade on the whole operation without ever asking my permission. And here's the bit that stings a little: most of it works rather well. So this week I thought I'd own up to it properly. Five things my two have taught this stubborn old guy and three things I'm rather proud to say I've taught them right back.

1. The App That Knows More Than My Notebook Ever Did

For about thirty years I kept sowing dates in a battered little notebook that lived in my coat pocket and occasionally in the wash by accident. Iris now has an app that pings her phone when it's time to sow, prick out, or feed, worked out from our postcode and the weather forecast rather than a rough guess and a gut feeling. I moaned about it for a fortnight. Then it told her the frost was coming three days before I'd have twigged, and my dahlias lived to tell the tale. I've stopped moaning.

2. YouTube, the Best Allotment Neighbour We Never Met

Sam had a problem with blossom end rot on the toms this year and, rather than wait for me to get home from a night shift and diagnose it over breakfast, he'd already watched two videos and sorted the watering routine before I'd got my boots off. I'll admit it, thirty years of experience is a wonderful thing, but so is a bloke in Yorkshire with a camera and a calcium deficiency to explain in eight minutes flat.

3. Iris's Colour-Coded Succession Sowing Chart

This one properly impressed me. Iris has a spreadsheet, colour-coded, that tells us exactly when to sow the next batch of lettuce, beetroot, and salad leaves so we're never drowning in one glut and starving the next. My old system was "chuck another row in when I remember," which, in fairness, is how we ended up wading through beans two buckets deep a few weeks back. Hers actually works.

4. Frugal Finds, the Modern Way

Sara's always been the frugal one of the family, and she'll tell you herself over on her own blog, Frugal in Lincolnshire, that a penny saved on the harvest is a penny you get to spend on something nicer. Iris has taken that same spirit online, hunting down seed swaps, end-of-season sales, and secondhand tool bargains through local growing groups on her phone before I've even finished my tea. I used to think frugal meant walking round three garden centres comparing prices. Turns out it also means never leaving the sofa.

5. Soil Testing Without the Guesswork

I've always gone by feel, colour, and how the weeds are doing. Sam bought a little soil moisture and pH meter that takes about ten seconds to tell him what would've taken me a week of watching and wondering. I was sceptical, obviously, because that's my job as the dad. Then it told him our new bed was more acidic than I'd have guessed, which explained rather a lot about why the brassicas had been sulking. Fine. It's a good gadget. I said it.

Right, that's their five. Now let me redress the balance a bit, because it's not all been one-way traffic up our plot.

1. Reading the Sky Instead of the Screen

For all their apps and forecasts, there's still nothing that beats stepping outside, having a proper look at the clouds, and feeling which way the wind's turned. I've taught both of them to spot the kind of high, thin cloud that means rain's coming within the day, and the still, heavy stillness of an evening that tells you there's a frost on the way regardless of what the app promised. Iris still checks her phone, mind you, but she checks the sky first now too, and more often than not she's the one telling me.

2. Newspaper Pots and Not Buying What You Don't Need

Before you ever spend money on seed trays, roll yourself a pot from an old newspaper round a jam jar, tuck the bottom in, and you've got a perfectly good biodegradable pot for nothing but five minutes and a cup of tea. Sam thought I was having him on the first time I showed him. He's since made about two hundred of them and swears by them for anything that hates root disturbance, squash included. It costs nothing, it's satisfying in a way that scrolling never quite is, and it's one less bit of plastic knocking about the shed.

3. Patience, and the Slightly Lost Art of Saving Your Own Seed

This is the one I care about most, if I'm honest. Both of them grew up wanting results now, which I don't blame them for, that's just how the world moves these days. But an allotment doesn't hurry for anyone, phone or no phone. I've taught them to let a few of the best plants go to seed each year rather than buying fresh packets every spring, to save what nature's already perfected for our own patch of Lincolnshire soil, and to accept that some things simply can't be rushed along by a notification. Iris is already saving sweet pea seed from her favourite colours for next year's cutting patch, which I think might be the proudest I've felt about any of this.

Where Old and New Actually Meet Rather Nicely

The flowers are where I think it all comes together best. Iris's cutting patch is coming into its own now, sweet peas scrambling up the wigwam and the first dahlias starting to show colour, and there's something lovely about watching a sixteen-year-old with a phone full of apps still stop dead in her tracks over a flower she's grown herself, camera out, taking the sort of photo that makes even a scruffy old plot look like something out of a magazine. She's started pressing some of the spares too, sweet peas and cornflowers between the pages of an old book, ready to turn into cards and bookmarks come autumn. Cheap as anything to do, and a proper lovely little craft for a rainy afternoon if you fancy trying it yourself.

And while we're on the subject of not letting anything go to waste, Sara's been busy turning our glut of beans and the last of the courgettes into a quick frugal chutney, nothing fancy, just onions, vinegar, a bit of sugar, and whatever needs using up, simmered down and potted while it's still warm. It's the sort of recipe that doesn't need measuring properly, just tasting as you go, which is exactly the kind of cooking I trust most.

So there it is. Five bits of new-school wisdom that have genuinely made this old plot run better, and three old-school habits I'm rather glad my two have picked up along the way, whether they admit it or not. It's a funny old thing, watching your children teach you as much as you're teaching them, but I wouldn't swap it for anything, notifications and all.

I'd love to know, does your family mix old ways with new gadgets up the plot or in the garden, and which side usually wins the argument in your house?

Happy growing, everyone. See you on the plot.