WHY GROW YOUR OWN?

‘Growing your own’ has never been more popular, more possible, more fashionable or more fun than it is today. All sorts of people are jumping on the bandwagon, and there are lots of good reasons why.

Some are embracing growing their own for the health benefits. Fresh fruit and vegetables provide fibre, antioxidants and also vitamins and minerals which, it’s thought, do you more good when they come from fresh ingredients than from a jar of pills. We are all encouraged to eat at least five portions of fruit and veg every day, and a real health-buff would try to incorporate all the various colours – red, green, purple and orange or yellow – to be sure of topping-up on the full range of natural plant phytochemicals that are nature’s disease-busters.

If you grow your crops organically – which you really should, because they’ll taste better – you’ll be avoiding having pesticides in your food, too. Don’t overlook the benefits of the good all-round physical work out that fruit-and-veg gardening gives either; it’s great for toning and tightening nature’s baggy bits, and the fruits of your labours are low calorie. Who needs the gym when you’ve got a productive kitchen garden?

Some people grow their own to save money, and certainly if you go in for cultivating crops which are expensive to buy in the shops, such as asparagus, artichokes and soft fruit, you can make some very worthwhile savings. But think of the convenience too; for anyone who works late or lives miles from the shops it’s handy to have a well-stocked, living larder in the garden. Managed carefully, you can have something tasty and fresh available all year round, without needing to fall back on the freezer or phone for a pizza.

For some people, growing their own food is a quality-of-life thing; it’s an activity that the whole family can do together on summer evenings or at weekends. Allotment gardening has really taken off in recent years, and in many cases it’s young families and professional people who’ve swelled the ranks of folk who are found pottering away on their plots. These same people to whom quality of life is important are also often those who are concerned about the environment and want to do their bit for the cause. They appreciate that growing your own is good for the planet and global warming; since it cuts down food miles, reduces the use of fossil fuels and lets you recycle rubbish that might otherwise end up in landfill sites.

Then, of course, there are the food fanciers. Anyone who’s serious about good food very often falls into growing their own so that they can enjoy fresh produce while it’s really fresh – not fresh from a plastic bag full of gas, or pre-prepared so that half the flavour has leaked out or dried up. And it’s a great way of sourcing ‘special’ ingredients that you can’t easily find in the shops – such as fresh kaffir lime leaves or exotic species of Thai basil. For foodies the big buzz is currently for ‘fresh local produce’, and it doesn’t come any more fresh or local than from your own plot with the dirt still on.

Although this isn’t a cookery book, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to pass on a few of my favourite ways of using garden crops. When you grow your own fruit and veg it’s almost impossible not to be interested in the way that you cook and eat them and, however well you plan, you’ll usually end up with a surplus of certain crops at plentiful times of year. To my mind it’s far better to have a few recipes that really make the most of this glut instead of just shoving it all in the freezer, which I reckon should be a last resort.

So take up the spade and put aside your worries; you’re unlikely to regret it.

‘Growing your own’ has never been more popular, more possible, more fashionable or more fun than it is today.

The Ground Rules

Now, I don’t mean to tub-thump, but when your time and space are valuable – which they are for everyone these days – there’s no point in taking a ‘leave it to nature’ approach to kitchen gardening. It’s not like digging a hole and bunging a shrub in. No, you need to be much more hands-on with fruit and veg – it demands regular, on-going commitment and attention to detail. But that doesn’t mean you have to slave away all hours on your plot; it pays to get right some ‘key points’, then you only need spend time and effort where it counts most in order to produce real results.

So that’s what I’m going to emphasize in this book. Where people usually go wrong is that they take on far more than they can manage then can’t keep up with the work. The result is that their crops are ruined and their time has been wasted. If you were to ask me for my top kitchen-gardening tip, I’d say that you’d do far better to grow half the amount, but grow it twice as well.

SITE AND SITUATION

To produce a good, healthy crop, fruit, vegetables and herbs need to grow fast and steadily, without any setbacks. Good growing conditions are vital for a kitchen garden, so choose a reasonably sunny but sheltered situation with well-drained ground that’s ‘in good heart’. (This is gardener-speak for healthy, fertile soil that’s chock full of well-rotted organic matter and which is brimming with worms, beneficial bacteria and natural nutrients.) Chill winds, heavy shade or soil that becomes waterlogged periodically or dries right out, all spell disaster for your harvest.

Some fruit, veg or herbs also have their own personal peculiarities and requirements which need to be observed in order to keep them happy and healthy. If you want to grow ‘exotics’ such as peaches, nectarines, almonds, posh pears and Mediterranean herbs, a particularly warm, sunny, sheltered and well-drained spot is essential. These sun-worshippers do best against a south-facing wall or on a sun-trap patio where a lot of other crops would ‘fry’. In the same vein, root veg such as carrots aren’t worth growing on ground that’s stony or that has recently been heavily manured, because such conditions will cause their roots fork, making them impossible to peel and also inedible.

So, as a general rule, give edible crops the best part of your garden or else improve the conditions where you would like them to grow. You can do this simply by planting a natural windbreak, such as blackberries grown on a wire-netting fence, by improving the soil with lots of organic matter or, better still, by making a few intensive veg or salad beds with seriously well-enriched soil. (See here for how to improve soil.)

DESIGN

Traditionally, fruit and veg were always grown down the end of the garden, out of sight, along with the shed, the compost heap, the bonfire and other messy working areas. Nowadays it’s far more fashionable to grow your own in an attractive way, particularly in a small garden where a plot can be seen from the house. To my way of thinking this is a big step forward – a spot of designer flair is no bad thing, even with edible crops.

Planning a fruit and veg patch isn’t so very far removed from designing an ornamental border; the big difference is that fruit and veg are traditionally grown in rows. This is done for a practical rather an aesthetic reason: it is simply because it is more convenient to look after them that way as it’s a lot easier to run a hoe between plants that are growing in straight lines than those scattered all over the place.

Treat this task like any other garden design job: be practical and ask yourself a few basic questions about what you and your family really want from the plot, what you’ll eat lots of, or just what you might fancy occasionally. Think about what’s involved with the various ways of growing veg, how much time you want to spend doing it, and what will happen when you take your summer holidays – it’s no good planting masses of fruit that ripens in August if you’re always away then.

Most importantly, assess the site; see how much space you can spare and if the soil or situation will suit some crops more than others and – I know I keep banging on about it – don’t forget that all fruit and vegetables need good growing conditions.

As for looks, there are many ways in which you can include edible crops in a garden. You might want a conventional plot with fruit and veg laid out in rows, or, if you have a fair-sized space and a garden that is already rather compartmentalized, you might create a separate kitchen garden-within-a-garden. On the other hand, if space is short and the area is always ‘on show’ you could create a decorative potager – a ‘flower bed’ filled with edible plants instead of bedding (see here) – or you could incorporate edible crops into your family garden; with a good-looking and productive salad bed conveniently close to the house, a few ‘special’ crops in pots on the patio and trained fruit trees round the walls.

Whichever approach you choose, and just as with any design changes you want to make to your garden, it pays to start with a plan. Begin by making a sketch of the space available to you to use as a vegetable bed, drawn roughly to scale, and start pencilling in roughly what you want to grow, how much space it occupies and where it could go.

If possible, try to do your planning in autumn or winter so you have plenty of time to undertake any construction, soil preparation and fruit planting before the ‘busy season’ starts.

Potagers

A potager is basically a decorative vegetable bed. The idea started in the gardens of grand chateaux in France, and the best example still to be seen today is probably the one at Villandry.

But despite its grand origins, the idea does adapt very well to a small scale, and you can be as practical or as inventive with it as you like. The shape doesn’t have to be the standard rectangle; some enthusiasts make circular beds divided into segments like the spokes of a wheel, or you could go modernist and octagonal, or even multi-storey.

A potager can be planted along the lines of traditional geometric herb beds so that crops grow in blocks rather than long rows, (though the plants in the blocks are still planted in straight lines, for easy hoeing). If you go for the traditional style of planting at ground level only, you can add height to the display by growing runner and climbing French beans up symmetrically-placed obelisks of bamboo, timber or metalwork.

The big difference between a potager and a flower bed is that while ornamental plants will still flower if they have a bit of competition from weeds or close neighbours, edible crops must be grown without a check or any setback, otherwise you won’t have much of a harvest.

You can also make a potager in an informal flower bed shape with veg and salad plants dotted about in drifts just like flowers – but be warned, if you take this route you’ll have your work cut out keeping on top of the weeding, and you might not like the look of the gaps that are left behind when you harvest.