The Kitchen Garden
This is not a gardening book, but food must be grown before we can cook it and
there are some flavours you can’t buy. Even a small garden can produce a useful
amount of quality vegetables. To combine utility and beauty, what about a trellis
with climbing roses, espalier apples or a loganberry 2 thirds of the way down the
garden with a vegetable patch beyond? This adds an air of mystery and surprise to
a garden, and what a place for your man’s hideaway shed for contemplation and
hobbies?
The best book I ever read on food growing was John and Sally Seymour’s
'Complete guide to practical self sufficiency', the 'good lifer's bible'. This is
worth buying just for the drawings of the vegetable plot in winter, spring, summer
and autumn and detailed growing advice which really works. There are plenty of
books in the library, and useful information on seed packets, so I’ll be brief.
The garden year begins after Christmas with planning, seed catalogues and
digging. The best vegetables to grow are new potatoes, carrots, French and runner
beans, leeks, onion sets (over wintering and main crop) salads, garlic and a few
perennial herbs like rosemary, sage, lavender and chives. No English garden is
complete without an apple tree, but don't plant Cox (too sickly) or Bramley (too big).
Study and think before you choose an apple tree, it will be there a long time. Free
advice on growing apples, notes on varieties and links to nurseries can be found on
my website www.fruitwise.net. A blackcurrant, redcurrant, Loganberry etc will fruit
within 2 years; berry fruits freeze and jam well.
Fruit bushes such as blackcurrants, loganberries and gooseberries grow easily
from cuttings, scrounge some and save money, but get your apple pear and plum
trees from a nursery, and it should be on a dwarf rootstock, MM106 for a medium
sized tree or M27 for a small tree. (PS since writing this, I have posted numerous
videos about planting and managing fruit trees, including espaliers, on YouTube,
see from the main site's menu page)
Fruit trees, of which surely the apple is king, can be grown usefully in a fairly small
space using dwarf rootstocks and appropriate training and pruning techniques.
Espaliers are a very good idea in a small space, I have dealt with these on my
YouTube channel. I won't repeat everything here I've said there, but an espalier
apple or pear, or several of them, can make a really useful fruit producing visual
screen dividing the kitchen garden from the 'recreational' part of a garden.
So, read some books, make a plan, and become a kitchen gardener! This will
enhance your life and cooking. If you happily live in Botley, you could join the local
gardening society, or go really mad and rent an allotment! (sorry, there is currently
a long waiting list)
Onion sets are easy. Plant over wintering onion sets in November, they will start
growing before winter and ripen next summer a month before the main onion crop.
Main crop onion sets go in during March and are harvested in August, dry in the
sun and twist the stalks in and out of a loop of string hanging from a hook or chair
back.
Garlic is described in detail because of its importance and as it took us a lot of trial
and error to get it right. Buy some good English garlic in late summer from a
farmer's market and split the bulbs into individual cloves. Plant in October or
November (alternatively March, but late autumn is best) pointy end up 1 inch deep
in well dug and hopefully manured soil 8 inches apart in rows 14 inches apart. Wide
spacing gives bigger bulbs and makes weeding easier. Harvest in midsummer when
the leaves turn yellow, lift one bulb a week from early June to check, then lift the lot
carefully with a garden fork before the stalks rot away.
Having lifted your garlic, clean it immediately like this:
1) Crumble any loose earth from the roots
2) Grasp the lowest leaf and peel it off, down to the root
3) Do this progressively until the white skin is exposed
4) Cut the roots off with cheap secateurs or a knife.
5) Dry in the sun, or hang up in the shed if it’s wet.
6) When the stalks have wilted, plait them together. Start with 3, and add a new one
with each plait. When you have plaited up a dozen bulbs, tie the top off firmly with
jute string, and make a loop. If you can't plait, tie the garlic up by the stalks in
bunches of 5.
If hung up somewhere cool and dry this should keep 6 months. We use garlic 2 or 3
times a week and haven’t bought any for 10 years. We always keep back the
biggest and best bulbs to plant for next year, it’s worth it.
New potatoes are grown from seed potatoes which are sprouted (chitted) indoors
in the light before planting in trenches in late March and earthed up as they grow.
They benefit from manure or compost dug in before planting and are harvestable
from midsummer. Main crop potatoes are less exciting, but if you have space,
Desiree and King Edward are tasty varieties. It’s satisfying to have a sack of your
very own potatoes in the shed. There are always new potato varieties being
developed and old ones re-discovered so check it out. Warwick’s of Wickham is a
good place for seed potatoes and much else.
Leeks are sown in a finely raked nursery bed in March. If you get the timing right,
you can lift a crop of new potatoes and ‘hot bed’ leeks into the same bit of earth for
2 crops in a year. Leeks stand through the winter. Plant 8 inches apart in shallow
trenches 14 inches apart, water them in. For long white stalks you must earth them
up or tie cardboard bands round to exclude light. Growing leeks is a major
competitive pursuit in Lancashire, I'm told (remember Wallace and Gromit in ‘Curse
of the Were Rabbit’?) Eat steamed or in stews.
Dwarf French beans taste wonderful and don’t need much space. Tendergreen is
an old favourite, but see the Thompson and Morgan® seed catalogue (now online)
to check out other varieties. Sow the seed 2 inches apart in rows 18 inches apart
anytime from Easter depending on the temperature (or use cloches to start a few
weeks earlier). Control weeds by hoeing and hand weeding or they will compete
with the plants for light, water and nutrient and you won't get a good crop. Water as
required, watch for flowers and a week later you will find your first beans. Pick
regularly and don't let them get too big. If you have space, sow a few every 2 weeks
for continuous cropping from July to October. They freeze well-cut the tips off and
blanch for a minute in boiling water before freezing in 250g bags. Climbing French
beans can be grown up bamboo or hazel wigwams.
Runner beans are popular, the orange flowers and upright growth make a typical
English garden scene and produce a lot of vegetables in a small space. Prepare
the site by burying old newspapers for moisture retention, plus compost (which can
be quite rough) and make a wigwam arrangement with bamboo or hazel rods and
string. It's better to start the seeds off indoors and plant out in a circle around the
canes. Runner beans MUST be picked over regularly or they will grow too big and
become tough. There are stringless and dwarf varieties. Frequent watering helps.
Broad beans can be over wintered and successionally sown. Picked young, they
have a delicate flavour, especially the 'green' varieties. Check the catalogues.
Dwarf broad or French beans can be ‘hot bedded’ after lifting a crop of new
potatoes or lettuce, like leeks. Productive!
Carrots from the garden are better than what you can buy. Sow successionally
from March to August and eat some when they are small. Thin them out by lifting
every third carrot in the row, leaving the others room to grow bigger.
Courgettes are baby marrows of selected varieties. You want 2 or 3 plants or you
will seldom have enough for a feed, but if you have too many they can take over
the garden. Go over the plants daily when they are cropping and cut the courgettes
small (use a sharp knife, watch out for the plant's spines) or they will get too big too
be any good. The perfect courgette is about 2cm thick and 10-12cm long. They can
be sliced thin and dried (air first, finish off in low oven, then store in airtight jars) for
winter minestrone. Large marrows are not in my view worth eating.
Pumpkins are usually grown for size, not flavour, but varieties like Sweet Dumpling,
Crown Prince and Butternut have denser flesh and great flavour. They don't grow
so big, though they can make 3 kilos or so, but are easy to grow, taste great, and
store through the winter. Sow direct in early May.
Salad leaves grow quickly; some can be cut more than once as they grow back.
Radishes and spring onions can also be grown in the salad patch, see the
catalogues. They need watering and slugs can be a problem.
Herbs such as rosemary, sage and thyme are attractive flowering and enhance
stews and roasts. Many herbs are perennial, others need sowing each year, see a
catalogue. A well drained, sunny site is best.
Peas are incredibly sweet and tasty fresh from the garden. Dwarf varieties are
best, sow successionally.
The above vegetables are I think the most useful. There are others, read the
Thompson and Morgan catalogue (there are others of course, go Google)and
books from the library.
A compost heap or bin is essential to recycle kitchen and garden waste as soil
nutrient. Much has been written on compost making elsewhere which I won’t
repeat; basically you pile up plant and animal material in a moist confined space
with newspapers, grass, autumn leaves, shredded newspapers etc so it breaks
down into compost which is then dug in to nourish the soil.
Pests regrettably, various birds, insects and microbes want to eat your fruit and
vegetables. If you select resistant varieties where possible, keep the soil in good
heart by compost and manure, trap slugs, control weeds by hoeing, encourage
beneficial predators (beyond the scope of this essay) water appropriately, and
rotate your crops, your plants are unlikely to suffer too badly and your successes
will most likely outweigh any disappointments. Don’t be discouraged, if you attempt
nothing, you can be sure to achieve it. I think and hope better of the men who have
read this far.
Return to Botley Men's Cook Book main menu
page