Showing posts with label Kitchen garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kitchen garden. Show all posts

Tuesday 22 March 2016

How to grow your own kitchen garden.

Mark Diacono: How to grow your own kitchen garden - Telegraph
Choose plants that pack a punch
There is something very pleasing about growing your own food, and you can enhance every meal you eat with only five or six potted plants by the back door.
I call plants that are small in volume and large in flavour “transformers” for their ability to boost flavour in cooking.
Herbs, garlic and chillis are good examples.
My favourite transformer plants include Szechuan pepper, which has an amazing, powerful flavour;
Carolina allspice, the bark of which can be ground and dusted over pork or porridge;
and borage, which has a cucumber flavour that is great in cocktails or Pimm’s, but also perks up a salad.
Beat the supermarket
For me, growing foods that taste different from supermarket versions is important.
Asparagus, peas, sweetcorn, berries and baby carrots lose their quality quickly from the moment they are harvested.
If you grow these yourself you’ll find flavour that comes only from being home grown – the difference is remarkable.
The other beauty of growing your own is that you can seek out varieties that are hard to find in shops.
Jerusalem artichokes, Babington’s leeks, boysenberries, golden raspberries, International Kidney potatoes and Sungold tomatoes are all things I want in my garden that you seldom find in shops.
Plant in any place
Even if the only space you have is a balcony or a windowsill you can still grow your own food.
In many cases a plant will do as well in a pot of compost as it would in swaths of land.
The basis of all pots should be good-quality, peat-free compost, in which you should plant a rewarding perennial, such as a chilli plant, that can produce many fruits.
Or mix some grit into the compost and plant a satisfying Mediterranean herb, such as oregano or marjoram.
If you have small space in a sunny spot, buy a dwarf fruit tree; apricot, peach, apple and plum trees are among many possibilities.
A dwarf tree will grow to about 120cm tall, requires little pruning and can produce dozens of tasty fruits, plus great satisfaction.
Think about your harvest
I suspect most people have better things to do than tend a reluctant plant every day in exchange for a tiny harvest.
Choose plants that have a repeated harvest, where the more you pick the more you get.
Lettuce and salad leaves will quickly re-sprout if you cut them off 5cm from the soil.
Other easy foods to grow include courgettes, which are famously overproductive if you have the space, and perennial herbs, such as rosemary, thyme and mint.
Legumes, such as peas and beans, may be the most productive of them all.
Productive plants often need time and precision invested in the early growing stages, but then they will thrive with minimal intervention.
Make small successes
My advice to beginners is start small.
Choose a few plants that have a quick return.
Radishes, pea shoots, chives and micro-leaves are among the fastest to move from seed to plate.
Avoid types that take a long time to harvest, such as cabbages, as they will be in the ground for most of the year.

The rest is relatively simple: read up, talk to other gardeners and buy your seeds and plants from independent nurseries (I rate Pennard Plants) rather than DIY stores.

“The New Kitchen Garden” by Mark Diacono is available now (Saltyard Books, £25)

Thursday 20 March 2014

Sarah Raven's 10 Tips for Growing a Kitchen Garden.

Ask The Expert: Sarah Raven's 10 Tips for Growing a Kitchen Garden: Gardenista:
Following are Sarah's top ten tips for bounty, ease, and good looks in your kitchen garden:
1. Grow as much of what you like as possible. Clear as big a space as you can and think about maximum productivity per square inch.

2. Skip the fancy frills. A vegetable patch divided by mini hedges, potager-style, means more work and less food. Rows of boxwood will encourage slugs and snails, and perennial weeds tangle themselves around the roots. Instead, try edible edging: rows of hardy alpine strawberries and nasturtiums will do the trick.

3. Combine ornamentals and edibles. In an unexpected partnership, Mustard 'Red Giant' mixes with Tulipa 'Compassion'. Bonus tip: green-flowered tulips are more perennial than the standard colored ones.

4. Layer. Sarah planted this area near the drive more than a decade ago, greatly reducing labor while keeping the bed full over a long period.
Perennial artichokes mix with bulbs and tubers in three layers: dahlias in trenches at the lowest level; Allium hollandicum 'Purple Sensation' (£8.50 for three plants) plus earlier and later allium varieties in the middle level; artichokes at the top level. The artichokes shown here are a mixture of 'Green Globe', Artichoke 'Violet de Provence' (£1.95 for 30 seeds), and Artichoke 'Gros Vert de Laon' (£1.95 for 30 seeds).

5. Grow edible flowers all year. The following can all be harvested in the UK in winter and early spring: Pot marigold (Calendula officinalis 'Indian Prince', Above, £1.95 for 125 seeds), viola, polyanthus and primula. Conversely, vegetables such as kale are not just for eating. Green and purple kale look great in flower arrangements and are a good foil for flowers in an ornamental border.
N.B.: For further tips on kale in flower arrangements, see Required Reading: The Surprising Life of Constance Spry.

6. Plant the unusual. Planting heirloom or heritage varieties in unusual colors—including the purpleFrench Bean 'Blauhilde' (£1.95 for 25 seeds) and the yellow 'Rocquencourt'—is proof to the world that you've grown them yourself. As is the size: greengrocers and supermarkets providing mainstream produce often sell vegetables harvested after they have grown too big. Beans taste better when they are younger and smaller and, it goes without saying, fresher.

7. Sow heavy croppers. Tomatoes, zucchini, and beans all produce abundantly. Salad leaves also crop more heavily if you cut and come again. Start cutting non-hearting lettuce such as Mizuna or Oak Leaf lettuce at one end of a row and by the time you get to the other end, you can start again. Harvest by twisting off leaves around the edges: don't bulldoze the whole plant.

8.
Avoid gluts. Too much, then too little, leaves bald patches in the garden. Successional sowing of salad leaves every few weeks, for instance, will ease this pattern of feast or famine. Succession planting can also be applied to beans and peas.

9. Build good bones. Raise your vegetable patch to another level in the middle as well as around the edges. Teepees, arches, and walkways in Sarah's small (and private) kitchen garden at Sissinghurst greatly increase the growing space in a smallish area. They can be covered in sweetpeas followed by the cup and saucer vine (Cobaea scandens) or morning glory. A sturdy arch will support squashes and zucchini.

10. Don't grow everything. Tricky plants such as celery are best bought, as are mainstream vegetables including cabbage, parsnips, and main crop potatoes. This still leaves plenty to choose from as Sarah Raven demonstrates.

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