HOMES & GARDENS
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TASTY: Several types of courgettes make dinner plates interesting. herbs in pots in the semi shade of the area close to the kitchen door. And if you grow your own, an amazing number of perhaps unknown varieties can be grown way beyond what are for sale in garden centres and supermarkets. For instance basil comes in dozens of varieties. Some large leaved, others small. Some mild and some with a spicy kick. The leaves can add real interest to summer and autumn salads. Unfortunately, local displays of seeds rarely include the unusual varieties so we suggest you obtain the 2012 or
2013 catalogue from Chilterns Seeds catalogue info@chilternseeds.co.uk. You will find seeds for 23 varieties of this one herb and many other enticing seeds. How about caraway, coriander (slow bolting), cumin and lemon mint for starters? Fourthly we have fun discovering what can be grown successfully in the large plastic pots in which large trees are delivered from garden centres. As well as in window boxes, large paint containers, a growing table, small raised beds and an old bath. Yes, if you see an old bath around
10 - 16 October 2013 / Costa Blanca South
or remove one when doing up an old finca, it makes a very convenient raised bed that can be hidden behind a tall shrub or orange tree. Ours is painted green to make is less conspicuous! We first used it to grow some rice. Two and a half kilos were harvested from its golden heads at the end of summer. Part was used as wild rice and the other dehusked in a miniature mill at a rice museum to prepare a paella. The next crops were carrots surrounded by onions to ward off the carrot fly and we have just harvested a plump lettuce for a breakfast salad from its current crops. But if you don’t like the idea of the bath, small raised beds, even if only one or two square metres, can produce an amazing amount of fresh healthy autumn, over wintered and summer vegetables in any garden and along a sunny wall of a small town house patio. Fifthly it gives us some fun as well as serious things to write about in this column. Serious because; • all too many mass produced vegetables are forced with a combination of plastic greenhouses, over watering and feeding and constant spraying with questionable chemicals if not grown biologically or organically. Turn to Page 68
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