Growing produce has become fashionable

According to editor of smallholder magazine Liz Wright, the process of nurturing fruit and vegetables is as trendy as it is practical.

She told the Daily Telegraph that the popularity of food festivals across rural parts of the UK is a clear indication of the pastime’s booming reputation.

One of these is the Sissinghurst Smallholding Fair, which attracted 3,000 visitors last year and is expected to be well attended again in 2011.

“There had always been families growing their own in the country, but now people who weren’t born to it want to have a go,” Ms Wright told the publication.

She suggested that the movement started in the 1970s and has recently started to gather pace.

Many homeowners may have attempted to replicate the popular TV show The Good Life, which ran between 1975 and 78 and saw Tom and Barbara (Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal) become self-sufficient