Kitchen Garden May 2013 (ad sample)

YOUR NEW LOOK FRUIT & VEG GROWING MAGAZINE

Kitchen

SAMPLE ISSUE

DOWN-TO-EARTH ADVICE FROM BRITAIN’S BEST GROWERS | KITCHENGARDEN.CO.UK | MAY 2013

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PAGES OF GARDEN TASKS

JOBS TO CARRY OUT ON YOUR PATCH, PATIO AND UNDERCOVER IN MAY

10 MINUTE JOBS FOR MAY SOW RADISH SEEDS

For a quick harvest, fill a large pot to within 2.5cm (1in) of the top with multi-purpose compost, tap it on the bench to level before scattering seeds thinly over the surface. Cover lightly with compost, water and stand the pot on a warm windowsill.

TIE IN CANE FRUIT

Raspberries, blackberries and hybrid berries put on lots of long growth at this time of year and need to be tied in regularly before the canes become woody and brittle. Use some soft string or similar and tie loosely thus avoiding damage to the young stems.

WATCH FOR EARLY PESTS

Improving conditions mean that pests such as greenfly, whitefly, slugs and snails will start to become a problem this month. Be vigilant and squash them with a finger and thumb or apply your favourite form of pest control as soon as a problem is seen.

KEEP ON TOP OF WEEDS

Weeds are easier to control if you keep on top of them from the start and newly prepared seed beds don’t stay clean for long.

Keep your hoe busy between the rows of newly germinating seedlings. Hand weed close to and between wanted plants.

2 | MAY 2013

GET GROWING Photo: Courtesy of Dobies Seeds

A

lthough sweet potatoes are considered by many to be a tropical vegetable, I know many UK gardeners who have produced some very good roots in their own gardens either under cover in tunnels or outdoors in the garden and in patio containers.

It is certainly a crop worth growing because it has so many uses in the kitchen. The sweet inner flesh can be eaten raw, but is more commonly eaten boiled, steamed, baked, fried, mashed or even batter fried. You can even eat the leaves and tips of the young shoots as a substitute for spinach. In fact this is probably one of the most versatile vegetables you can grow.

GETTING STARTED

Back to basics:

GREAT CROP GROWING ADVICE

SWEET POTATOES Although a relative newcomer to the UK diet, sweet potatoes are becoming increasingly popular and the good news is that they are now much easier to grow in the UK, as Andrew Tokely explains www.kitchengarden.co.uk

Although this vegetable produces a tuberous root like a potato, that’s where the similarity ends. Potatoes are grown from tubers and are members of the Solanum tuberosum family.

The sweet potato is from the Ipomoea batatas family, which is the same as the popular garden flower – morning glory – and convolvulus (bindweed) but of a non-invasive form that is killed off by winter frosts.

Versatile sweet potatoes can be used to make chips and crisps as well as being boiled, baked or fried.

OUT & ABOUT

Organic odyssey

Nick Hamilton has been growing organic veg, fruit and much more besides for nearly 30 years in the same garden his father Geoff Hamilton first created for the popular BBC Gardeners’ World programmes. Liz Dobbs reveals which practical tips and ideas have stood the test of time

READERS’ GARDENS TO INSPIRE YOU

N

ick Hamilton didn’t actually set up in business with his father until the autumn of 1989 when they opened a plant nursery on the Barnsdale Garden site in Rutland but he had been ‘on call’ for Geoff many years before and recalls at least 29 years worth of digging the clay soil and planting the original fruit bushes and trees.

After all this spadework it is heartening to hear how positive Nick is about clay soils, a feature that some gardeners dread. “A clay soil is well worth the initial effort as repeated digging and applications of organic matter over the years do bring their rewards. When developing some of the newer gardens at Barnsdale, it’s staggering how plants struggle to get away at first. You then realise how much difference all that soil improvement makes to plants in the existing cultivated areas. Nothing in gardening is easy, you get out of it what you put in,” concludes Nick.

COMMON SENSE ORGANIC

Geoff Hamilton was ahead of his time with his belief in organic gardening methods, the need to garden sustainably and his love of wildlife. He converted mainstream gardeners, not by hectoring them or making them feel guilty about their gardens, but by showing practical ways that they could make their own compost, find alternatives to rockery stone and attract beneficial wildlife. Nick continues with that down-to-earth, practical approach.

He applies some key principles for cultivating the gardens and he shows visitors simple and economical ways they can garden naturally: making a bean trench, having a compost bin either screened or as a focal point and making space for some flowers or a small wildlife pond. But there is a need to be pragmatic too, the designed-for-TV layout with all the dividing hedges and plant-clothed fences, arches and arbours makes the gardens labour intensive and so Nick is prepared to fall back on tubs of chicken manure pellets for extra nutrients or to use organically-approved slug pellets (based on ferric phosphate) so he can get the standard of produce he wants.

ABOVE RIGHT: The renovated Parterre garden with the veg growing in the centre beds with flowers and fruit around the edges.

PREVIOUS PAGE: An overview of the allotment plot in high summer with the potato harvest under way and the brassicas netted to protect against visits from cabbage white butterflies.

PHOTO CREDITS: LDI (David Murray, David Thrower) www.kitchengarden.co.uk

A bean trench full of veg debris and torn newspaper will help cut down on watering plants next summer.

Nick plants a blackcurrant among spring bulbs and emerging perennials in the ornamental kitchen garden.

MAY 2013 | 5

SAVING IDE AS

MONEY

WEEKEND PROJECT

Make a frame for your

growing bags This month keen gardener and DIY enthusiast, Joyce Russell, makes a handsome frame to hold and hide unsightly growing bags

Pictures: Ben Russell

G

rowing bags are really useful aids in the vegetable garden. They are self-contained growing media that can be positioned anywhere. Of course you need to keep them watered and to add feed when the original supply runs short, but these tasks aren’t great compared to what you can grow. They are ideal for growing strawberries, tomatoes, peas, beans, salad and herbs and they can create an instant garden in any back garden. The main problems, that I can see, are that they really can’t be called attractive

and they are difficult to move without disturbing the contents once they are planted.

There’s also the issue of how to support tall growing crops if the growing bag sits on a solid surface (canes can be pushed into the ground if the bag sits on loose earth).

An attractive container is the answer to these problems, but containers designed for growing bags aren’t easy to find or cheap to buy. The simplest thing is to make one yourself: or why not make a few to create an attractive growing bag garden?

MATERIALS AND TOOLS FOR A 90CM X 30CM GROWING BAG TIMBER:

SCREWS:

TOOLS:

■ Frame sides.. 2 @ 924mm x 100mm x 22mm ■ Frame ends.. 2 @ 320mm x 145mm x 22mm ■ Support rails.. 2 @ 924mm x 33mm x 33mm ■ Slats............. 13 @ 318mm x 43mm x 16mm ■ Legs............... 4 @ 530mm x 33mm x 33mm

■ 22 @ 5mm x 60mm, 4 @ 5mm x 80mm, 8 @ 4mm x 50mm, 24 @ 3.5mm x 16mm ■ Galvanised oval nails: 26 @ 50mm ■ 24 brackets (sold for holding water pipe) to support canes ■ A piece of porous groundcover fabric, or hessian, if you want to cover the growing bag

■ Jigsaw, handsaw, drill with screwdriver and countersink bit.

■ Drill bits: 5mm for clearance holes for 5mm screws, 3mm for pilot holes for 5mm screws, 2.5mm for pilot holes for 4mm screws and for nails, 2mm for pilot holes for 3.5mm screws, 25mm bit for handle cutouts.

■ Mallet, chisel, hammer, sandpaper and block, pencil, tape measure, square, bevel square.

NOTE: You can just make the top frame and rest this on the ground, or on bricks, if you prefer not to make the legs. Of course if you can find recycled timber for all or part of this project then so much the better.

6 | MAY 2013

NOTE: Stainless steel screws are better for outdoor use and self-piloting screws, such as Spax, will pull themselves into timber and so don’t need pilot holes.

Clearance holes are still used with these screws.

www.kitchengarden.co.uk

SEASONAL RECIPES

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Spring delights

PAGES OF TASTY RECIPES

This month we look at some delicious ways to use seasonal harvests of asparagus, rhubarb and spring greens.

A

fter a long winter and chilly spring, what a delight it is to be harvesting the first of the season’s fare.

Asparagus, second only to rhubarb in the early harvesting stakes, is a rare treat. It is testament to how highly regarded it is among kitchen gardeners that they are prepared to wait three years for their first harvest and the opportunity to savour the taste of tender spears.

Rhubarb is so easy to grow and another great example of why perennial veg is so

popular; yes it appreciates a little TLC, but even if neglected it will produce a small crop no matter what the weather throws at it.

Finally if you ever needed a reason for growing your own, the crunchy, fresh taste of spring greens, properly cooked, after months of stored or imported crops is surely it.

Whether shredded and lightly steamed or used in more sophisticated ways (see p106-107) it is a delight to the tastebuds and a wondeful precursor to summer brassicas.

YOUR VIEWS

LAST WORD

Richard Mulcahy of Co Antrim, Northern Ireland has discovered that gardening teaches appreciation of the little things in our ‘must have it now’ culture.

I

think I would be a little below the average age for a plot holder. I have grown up with computers, mobile phones, internet access and satellite TV. I have grown up in a time when everything gets quicker and quicker and quicker. Today, it is all about ‘I want it, if I can’t have it right now I must have it as quickly as possible’.

The other day while using my most frequently employed gardening tool – my wallet – I almost rejected a packet of mallow seeds when I noticed germination could take between 21 and 30 days.

Imagine – a whole month. A whole month of waiting and waiting. But then I stopped and thought. I realised that it is probably the waiting and the patience that makes gardening as relaxing as it is. It is a bit like reading a really good book – slowly, but surely, you reach the climax of the tale. Exciting stuff.

Exciting like seeing the first peas swell in that pod.

Exciting like biting into that first tomato or strawberry straight off the plant.

Even gardening has met with this ‘I want everything quickly’ approach. There are numerous packets of seeds now that boast ‘ready in just six weeks’. And of course there were the gardening makeover programmes.

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This led me back to my own plot. I’ve had it for three growing seasons now. When I got my allotment following a five-year wait – it was overrun with all kind of weeds.

As much as I was tempted, I have never used any kind of weedkiller on it. The first year was difficult. Everywhere, literally everywhere, couch grass, creeping buttercups and docks just kept reappearing. I persevered. People suggested that I should use the option of weedkiller. I was tempted. I even read up on how safe they can be these days, but in the end I decided to persevere with hand weeding. The following season I noticed a big reduction in the docks, but still plenty of couch grass. By the third season I was actually amazed at how this constant tending and weeding had left hardly any perennial nasties. It is now a source of pride to me that I did not take the quick, easy option!

It is even more amazing still, that the slow patient skill that is gardening always throws up sudden surprises of its own – the first daffodil, unashamedly showy, the spear of rhubarb bursting from the soil, or those days in late spring when the plants seem to almost grow before your eyes! Gardening – slow, patient and suddenly surprising! ■

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