April 2020
GROWING HERBS
Last week I gave some ideas and tips for growing vegetables. Now I am adding to this some advice and information on how to raise a really good supply of herbs at home.
In my opinion herbs are just as important in the kitchen as vegetables and are much, much easier to grow as part of any garden, especially if you are limited to growing containers.
As well as giving you freshness and choice, having your own herbs growing just near the back door has the great advantage of abundance. For the cost of a packet of seed you can raise hundreds of marvellous herbs.
If you buy herbs they always come in dainty little pots with even daintier little plants growing in them. But I think herbs should be grown and used with generosity. I like to pick large bunches of parsley and a basket full of basil as well as an endless supply of mint for drinks.
Herbs are very forgiving plants to grow. Many of our favourites like rosemary, thyme and sage come from the baking hills of the Mediterranean and do best in poor soil. Others, like parsley, coriander, basil and dill are annuals that grow fast and easily.
You may create a dedicated herb garden which will be beautiful as well as useful or you may grow your herbs on a window sill - but everyone that likes to eat can certainly grow some - and everyone should!
HERBS FROM SEED
Growing your own herbs from seed is ridiculously easy and a packet of seeds will cost about the same as a pathetic little pot of supermarket plants and provide the raw material for about a hundredfold harvest. Add to the recipe a bag of compost and a pot or two and you are away.
They don’t all share the same exact cultivation requirements but, other than garlic, which must be planted as individual cloves between October and February, you will not go far wrong with a sprinkle of seed in a seed tray or pot, using a peat-free seed compost.
Once the seedlings emerge, it is important to thin them so that each one has the space and share of water and nutrients to grow into a healthy plant. Look at a supermarket-bought pot of parsley or basil and it will have dozens of scrawny seedlings but the whole pot will not supply half the parsley as one robust plant growing in the same size of pot.
PARSLEY (Petroselinum crispum) is a biennial and I try and have at least two lots of the herb growing at a different stage of its life cycle throughout the year. I make the first sowing in early Spring to harvest from midsummer to the following Spring and a sowing in July will provide fresh leaves from October through to the following midsummer. It will only germinate if the soil is damp and warm so wait until May for outdoor sowings. I only grow the flat-leafed or French variety because it is more vigorous and has better taste and texture. The key to good parsley is to space each plant at least 6 inches apart and twice that is not excessive. In response it will produce great fronds of leaves that can be cut again and again.
Parsley is delicious in itself and makes almost everything else better - including one’s health. I have no time for the absurd overblown claims of ‘wonder foods’ but there are certain ingredients that I regard as essential for a healthy diet and parsley is very high on that list. It is rich in Vitamin C and iron, folic acids and flavonoids. But more important than that, it tastes fresh and clean and good.
I only grow flat-leafed parsley which I think has a better flavour and texture although the curly-leafed is good and decorative too. They are both cultivars and essentially the same although flat leaf seems to be easier to grow because it is more tolerant of a wider range of temperatures and soils.
BASIL (Ocimum basilicum) is best paired with its natural culinary partner, tomatoes. If a tomato is growing happily then basil will willingly share exactly the same conditions and regime. This means, rich soil, water, sunshine and, above all, heat. Basil will not tolerate the slightest touch of frost and does not thrive when the temperature dips below 10 degrees, becoming leathery and bolting during a cold spell. This is why it is best grown indoors if possible, I broadcast my seed onto a seed tray and transplant it into individual little pots when handleable before planting out nine inches apart when about 4 inches tall.
CHIVES - At this time of year a handful of chopped chives is one of the freshest tastes that the garden can offer and will transform any egg dish, salad or soup. It also happens to be one of the easiest of all herbs to grow.
Allium schoeoprasum can be raised from seed and although the young seedlings seem exceptionally wispy and fragile, each will make a substantial clump in a year or two. These mature plants can then be divided into two or three pieces every year so they very quickly multiply.
Chives are very tolerant of most conditions and will grow in more shade and damp than most herbs, although do best in rich soil with plenty of sunshine. They develop lovely mauve balls of flower – which are very edible - but as soon as the colour fades the whole plant should be cut hard to the ground and taken to the compost heap. This stops the stems becoming woody and encourages fresh, soft growth which will appear with almost miraculous speed. I cut mine back two or three times like this between May and September.
DILL (Anethum graveolens) is best grown outside in the open air and sunshine, but will do well in a deep pot. It is important for the organic gardener as it draws hoverflies, whose larvae eat aphids. Sow a line of seed in the ground and it will grow fast to provide leaves, flowers and seed for cooking and as medicine for easing flatulence.
CORIANDER (Coriandrum sativum) is best grown in open ground, sowing the seeds in shallow drills and thinning to about 3-4 inches apart for leaves and twice that if grown for the seed. In fact if grown for leaves it is best to treat it like lettuce and sow a small amount every few weeks to keep a constant succession of fresh foliage. It does best in hot, well drained soil and will cope with dry conditions.
PERENNIAL HERBS
ROSEMARY - Rosemary is a superb garden plant and is wonderful with potatoes, lamb and any oily Mediterranean dish. Although it will take temperatures down as low as minus 15, Rosemary absolutely hates sitting in cold, wet soil so sharp drainage is the key to success. Like other Mediterranean herbs such as thyme, lavender or sage, it actually prefers poor soil so very chalky, sandy or stony conditions are ideal. The same is true of planting rosemary in a container - mix a peat free compost with the same volume of horticultural grit and the rosemary will be completely at home.
Prostrate rosemary, Rosmarinus officionalis ‘Prostratus’, has a gnarled, slightly twisted habit as it grows horizontally that gives it real character and has exceptionally rich green foliage. These all have lovely pale blue flowers that are at their best in early spring. ‘Beneden Blue’ has darker blue flowers. Rosmarinus officionalis var. albiflorus has white flowers and ‘roseus’ has pink flowers.
Rosemary grows well from seed sown in spring, pricked out into individual pots and planted out the following spring. It is also very easy to take from semi-ripe cuttings any time between mid summer and October which will root quickly and can be planted out the following April.
THYME - Like Rosemary, Thyme is an archetypal Mediterranean herb, happiest in the hottest sunniest spot growing out of rock with almost total drainage. It is actually quite hard to replicate those conditions in this country - and almost impossible in my wet, clay soil - but it grows well in containers and anyway, the thyme you see in the med is a woody, shrubby affair and for cooking you want smaller plants with lots of fresh new growth.
Bees adore the flowers and that is reason enough to grow it but it also smells heavenly when heated by the sun and we use it in most tomato dishes which give them an immediate taste of the sun.
They grow well from seeds and cuttings but expect plants to be short-lived and I like to replace them every two or three years as they invariably become woody and die back in the presence of any shade - even from their own branches.
Cut back hard immediately after flowering to encourage new growth and if you are growing it in pots, make the compost almost pure grit - but still water once a week.
SAGE - Sage has long been used as a medicinal plant, especially valued for its antibacterial qualities and for the treatment of wounds. The first record of it being a culinary plant was not until the middle of the 16th century but I think that any pork dish is better with sage, sage and potatoes is always a great combination as is sage and pumpkin and one of the easiest and best pasta sauces is simply a few leaves stirred in melted butted with plenty of freshly ground pepper. Delicious. I like the narrow-leafed sage, Salvia lavandulifolia best for cooking, but the broader leafed S. officionalis is good and the purple leafed sage, S. officionalis ‘Purpurascens’ is attractive with its grey, smoky purple bruised foliage and looks and tastes good fried crisp and then added to pumpkin dishes. Like all purple-leafed plants it is less vigorous than its green-leafed cousins.
Although it is another Mediterranean herb it is rather more forgiving of our climate than other herbs from the same region and as long as the drainage is reasonable, plants can live a long time. However you do need to cut them back ruthlessly every Spring to stop them getting too woody.
MINT - Mint is absolutely essential as a tea, flavouring for many dishes and an attractive plant but be warned, its rhizomous roots spread voraciously and quickly becoming a weed. This means that the best way to grow it is in a container. It even pays to grow mint in a container in a border. An old bucket with holes in the bottom is ideal as this will allow the roots to grow down as far as they like but to restrict their lateral spread. One of the reasons that mint spreads so easily is that it is a very adaptable plant growing in sun or shade, and dry or wet soil. But the best quality mint is grown in well-drained, rich soil in plenty of sunshine and you should try and mimic those conditions.
LEMON VERBENA - Lemon verbena (Aloysia triphylla although also known as Lippia citriodora) is one of the best plants of all to grow for the fragrance of its leaves. Grasp a leaf and raise your hand to your nose and you are awash with the freshest, cleanest lemon scent possible. It is heady stuff. The leaves are superb fresh and even more fragrant when dried.
It is a tender perennial shrub with lance-shaped bright green leaves and rather small flowers born in delicate panicles in summer. Unless you live in a very sheltered, warm location it is best to grow it in a pot so that it can be bought in under cover to spend the winter in a frost-free place. Let it become almost completely dry over winter and then cut back hard as soon as you see signs of new growth and water well.
If given suitable protection it will reach 10ft and grows very well as a standard. As well as smelling delicious as part of a pot pourri it also makes a deliciously lemony herbal tea.
HERBS IN A CONTAINER
All the Mediterranean herbs will grow very well in a container if they have a very gritty compost mix. However, do not fall into the trap of forgetting to water them regularly or letting them get pot-bound. Any plant that has evolved to live in drought will have roots that want to range freely to seek out moisture.
If the water does not flow almost immediately through the pot that they are in then the drainage is not good enough.
If you are planting herbs in a container mix general purpose peat-free compost with at least an equal measure of grit or sharpsand.
APRIL 2020
Over the last month all our worlds have been turned upside down and inside out. But there has never been a time when a garden has been more important to our physical or mental well-being. A garden or allotment is a privilege and a luxury but a balcony, window box or a window sill that we can grow some plants on can all enrich our lives and bring a perspective to these troubled days.
And it is Spring! Thank heavens for that. Relish every hour of it and perhaps being confined to home has this as a silver lining - you will be able to observe and live through and with Spring in a way that many of us busily confined to offices and commutes pass by without noticing. Drink deep of Spring - nothing will empower your well being more than that.
No other month is so utterly transformed between April Fool’s Day and the eve of May day. At the beginning Spring is tentative and almost diffident but by the end it is romping free, unrestrained and uncontainable.
This is the best month of the year for blossom and tulips are at their peak. Almost all the leaves on trees, shrubs and hedges unfurl and open with an incredible freshness and energy and the new growth on herbaceous plants is almost visible as you watch them.
Most birds will be nesting and laying eggs and hatching young over the course of the month. Keep putting out food if you have any - flakes of cheese and breadcrumbs are good if you do not have access to conventional birdfood.
GROW YOUR OWN
There has never been a time, since the end of the last war, when it is so relevant and important to grow some vegetables, fruit and herbs in your garden. Whilst our flower borders are essential for beauty I am devoting the whole of this month’s content to growing vegetables, fruit and herbs.
I shall start with Salad Crops and update this with a different range of vegetables, fruit and herbs each week for the rest of Spring until I have covered all the edible crops that I grow here in my own garden.
We have all become dependent upon an endless supply of foods available from all around the world, every day of the year and practically every hour of every day. More and more people have grown up completely unaware that vegetables and fruits have seasons and meaning that is connected to the rhythm of life. But now is the time to start.
This ensures you have some fresh vegetables on your doorstep, it is cheap, healthy both as food and the exercise outside in the sun growing them and raising vegetables is one of the best ways of throwing off the troubles and cares of these times and getting back to the essence of what matters in life.
GETTING STARTED
At this time of year there is a temptation to rush out into the garden and sow masses of seeds. First feel the soil. If it is cold to your touch then few seeds will germinate. Whilst there is no point in delaying things if the conditions are right, there is little to be lost in trying to cheat the seasons or the weather. One of the real skills of growing good vegetables at home is in paying attention to and working with the particular conditions on your plot.
Accept the rhythms of the vegetable garden. Plan ahead. Forget the instant gratification of buying glossy veg wrapped in plastic having been shipped from the other side of the world. The quickest items - radish or rocket leaves - still take at least 4 weeks to produce anything edible and some crops like purple sprouting broccoli are sown 10-12 months before harvest. It is a game played by Nature’s rules and the greatest satisfaction comes from working with this rather than trying to get round it.
Choose your site carefully. Make the most of whatever you have, even if it is only a tiny yard. Vegetables all need as much sun as possible so do what you can to avoid shade. This may not be entirely possible and some vegetables like lettuce, runner beans and root vegetables will cope with some shade, especially in the full glare of a hot summer, but an open, sunny site is ideal.
As soon as your soil is dry enough to rake and does not feel cold to touch you can sow carrots, parsnips, broad beans, rocket and spinach and place onion and shallot sets, burying them so that the tops are clear of the ground.
SALADS
I love the huge variety of vegetables that my garden can provide but nothing tops a simple salad of fresh leaves eaten minutes from gathering it from the garden. There is a crisp freshness to it that is the perfect combination of culinary pleasure and health. Add an omelette and good bread and butter and you have a meal fit for a king.
Those leaves can come from a wide range of plants - baby kale, spinach, rocket, mizuna, mibuna, young chard leaves, chicory, pea tips, raw broad beans - and that is before you start on all the other vegetables that are usually cooked but also delicious eaten raw as part of a salad. You can make a salad from all kinds of things but if you only have lettuce then you always have a salad.
This is the ideal time to sow lettuce seed direct into the soil outside as the soil is now warm and they will grow fast - which is one of the secrets of really good lettuce.
Lettuce needs cool temperatures to germinate, and may become dormant if the soil is above 20 degrees. They like a rich soil with good drainage.
There are many different kinds of lettuce and scores of varieties within each of those types but the secret - as with edible plants of any kind - is to find out what you like to eat and what can easily grow in your plot and then make the most of these. The line of least resistance always makes most sense.
LETTUCE
It is also one of the easiest of all plants to grow and freshly harvested, home grown lettuce always tastes wonderful.
Most lettuce takes about 6 to 8 weeks to grow sufficiently large to eat and will be good for another month or so if kept watered and cool. Lettuces grow best in mild, moist conditions so a hot, dry summer is as big a problem as a cold winter. However many lettuces are happy in some shade as this will keep them cooler. To avoid a glut or, worse, your lettuce all running to seed at once in very hot weather, the secret is to have good succession - which essentially means maintaining a small but constant supply of plants rather than one big harvest. To do this sow some new seed every 3 or 4 weeks and as one batch goes over another will be ready to eat with a third growing on as young seedlings.
A few seeds sown thinly will provide healthier, leafier lettuces than a mass of thick seedlings. As they appear, weed and thin carefully to a final spacing of at least 4 inches. If you have a greenhouse it is best to sow into plugs and plant out the seedlings when they are growing strongly as this means you cannot protect the delicate seedlings from slug attack.
You can broadcast cut-and-come-again varieties like Oak Leaf or Salad Bowl that are harvested by cutting or picking the leaves of a number of plants that then regrow for another harvest, but Cos or Butterhead varieties should be grown well spaced in rows so that they can be kept weed free and harvested individually.
OTHER SALAD LEAVES
Rocket, Mizuna, Mibuna and Spinach are my favourite leaves to grow for eating raw along with lettuce. All prefer cooler conditions and can be sown throughout the season to give a year-round harvest if they have winter protection. All are ‘cut-and-come-again’ crops that will regrow fresh leaves when cut.
Grow as lettuce but Mizuna and Mibuna in particular must have plenty of space to develop strong plants. I grow all four with 9 inches between each plant. If any of these leaves become too big and coarse to eat raw they can all be cooked, just as you would spinach, to make a good hot vegetable or sauce for pasta.
ROCKET
Rocket, Eruca sativa, is an essential leaf to grow. Unlike lettuce it is only really viable in Spring and Autumn as it quickly bolts in warm weather and is not fully hardy but extremely easy and quick to grow in its season.
After radish - to which it is related, both being members of the brassica family - it is the easiest of all seeds to germinate. Rocket seeds are biggish and reasonably easy to handle so I now sprinkle two or three per plug, wait until at least two germinate successfully and then ruthlessly thin down to one healthy seedling. These can then be grown on and hardened off until they are about two or three inches tall before planting out at 6 inch spacing. You can easily sow them direct but they will still need fierce thinning as widely spaced plants are much healthier, give a bigger harvest and last longer.
Rocket does not like very hot weather and needs rich soil with plenty of water to be at its best. A damp Spring and cool Autumn suit it admirably. By the middle of May the plants are starting to bolt and flower, growing a thick hairy stem with fewer and much hotter leaves. The flowers are perfectly edible and the summer seeds provide all of next year’s crop.
Sow more seeds in early August for harvest from early September and right through Autumn.
RADISH
Radishes have been a mainstay of salads for thousands of years and are probably the easiest of all vegetables to grow. Just sprinkle the seed thinly in a shallow drill 1cm deep and they will appear within a week or so and be ready to start harvesting three to four weeks later.
It is important to thin them so that they are at least an inch apart to allow each root to become juicy and swollen before they get woody. They will bolt - run to seed - in warm weather so sow as soon as the soil is warm enough in Spring and repeat a sowing every 2 weeks thereafter. By June they will need almost constant shade. Water regularly but do not overwater as this will only result in extra foliage.
I sow radish in the same drill as my parsnips as the later are slow to germinate and the radish mark the drills and are harvested before they compete with the emerging parsnips.
Favourite varieties: ‘Cherry Belle’, ‘Saxa’, ‘Scarlet Globe’, ‘Flamboyant ‘ (Long) and ‘French Breakfast’.
LETTUCE VARIETIES
I would recommend that every gardener experiments with different varieties until they find the ones that they like but also to grow three or four different types and varieties at any one time throughout the year.
The most old fashioned and familiar variety to many people is the Butterhead which are the one with rosettes of soft , cabbage-like leaves. They grow well in cold weather so can provide fresh leaves in winter, and butterheads like a good ‘Tom Thumb’, Is my favourite butterhead variety. It is very small and you need one per person but they are easy to grow and have excellent taste and texture. ‘All the Year Round’ is, as the name implies, hardy and adaptable enough to crop most of the year. Butterheads store badly so should be cut and eaten on the same day.
I think a good Cos lettuce is best of all. ‘Little Gem’ will do well from an early sowing and certainly is always worth finding room for in the garden. ‘Paris Island’ is bigger but rather slower to develop but a superb summer lettuce. However all Cos bolt quickly in hot dry weather.
Iceberg lettuce have a watery crispness and ‘Webb’s Wonderful’ is the best known crisphead, and like all icebergs, has the great virtue of being slow to bolt.
I grow red and green Oak-leaf or salad bowl varieties (they come with various proprietary names). ‘Red Salad Bowl’ tastes great and looks fantastic. Red lettuce grow slower than green ones and tend to be a little bitter - which I like. They are also less likely to be eaten by slugs than green leaves.
SEED SOWING
We should do everything we can to reduce the amount of plastic in our gardens. The first stage in that process is to reuse any plastic seed trays and pots that you have - and to look after them so I can continue to use them for as long as possible and not replace them.
The easiest way to do this is to return to a method that our parents and grandparents always used for any hardy seeds, which is to make a seed bed.
This is a dedicated piece of ground that can be just a couple of metres square or less in which seeds can be sown in short, closely spaced rows before transplanting the seedlings to their proper and final positions.
It requires no materials, no bought in compost, less watering and minimal preparation. It also is likely to produce healthier plants because from the word go the emerging seedlings form a relationship with the microbes in the soil on which almost all their health depends.
When they are large enough to handle and move you simply lift a clump with a trowel and transplant them with plenty of soil attached to their roots, water them in well and they will scarcely notice the relocation.
Cultivate it until you have a fine tilth and can pick up a handful and run it through your fingers. Then rake it smooth and sow in short rows, labelling them clearly.
TIP - SLUGS & SNAILS
Slugs and snails are superb at recycling waste vegetative matter but do not discriminate between a fallen leaf and a delicious young seedling.
Slugs live largely under ground in the soil and like damp conditions. Snails live above ground and love dark nooks and crannies such as old brickwork or a nice dry yew hedge, as well as clustering around the base of containers.
Although there are over 30 species of slug in the UK, there are 4 main garden ones and the biggest do not necessarily do the most damage. What you see is actually a tiny percentage of the population and slug activity and densities of over 250,000 per acre are common.
So what can the gardener do? Avoid slug pellets and any chemicals that can harm other wildlife. Instead have a small slug-free cold frame or table where you can raise tender young plants and check for slugs daily.
Do not feed plants any more than is absolutely necessary and always feed the soil not the plant. This will avoid a spurt of soft, sappy growth that slugs love. Without stressing them with sudden temperature or cultivation changes, grow your plants as ‘hard’ as possible which means do not mollycoddle them.
Finally, encourage a wide range of predators. I have masses of thrushes, frogs, toads, beetles, centipedes, shrews, and a few hedgehogs - all of which love eating slugs and snails. This needs plenty of cover, an avoidance of toxic chemicals - such as slug pellets - and a degree of tolerance for collateral damage.
GROWING IN CONTAINERS
I realise that if you live in a flat or have no garden then the prospect of rows of potatoes or raised beds filled with carrots, lettuce and peas has to remain a dream. But you can grow some vegetables in containers on a balcony, roof or small back yard as long as it has sun for half the day.
Some crops are better suited to containers than others. Salad crops of all kinds, including lettuce, radish and rocket are ideal. Containers are best suited to cut-and-come-again crops like saladesi and saladini, of using crops like rocket, oak-leaf lettuces, spinach and corn salad which can all be harvested by the leaf and which will all regrow to provide second or even third cuttings. Accept that you have limited space and concentrate on growing healthy, strong plants even though it can seem very harsh to thin out perfectly good seedlings as they emerge. A few healthy plants will always give a better harvest than masses of small, weedy ones.
You can be more adventurous and grow some peas and beans as well as root crops like carrot, beetroot and turnip. Remember that many varieties of carrot have a long root so choose a variety like ‘Early Nantes’ that is very tasty but quite short.
Chillies, tomatoes, and cucumbers can all be grown in a generous container although they will not survive the first frost.
Even potatoes can be grown in a container and they do very well in a binbag with holes added for drainage. Put 2 1st or 2nd early seed potatoes (I like ‘Red Duke of York’ and ‘Charlotte’) on a foot of peat-free potting compost in the bottom and cover them with more compost. As the shoots appear keep adding more compost until the bag is half full. Water well and after flowering - about 3 months from planting - your bag should be full of delicious potatoes.
Whatever you use must have good drainage. If you have your pots on a roof or balcony they will have to be stood on a tray of sorts, to collect the drips, but make sure that the pot itself is not standing in the water as this will negate the effects of the drainage. Raise it up on chocks of some kind.