Gardens: An easy guide to growing your own

August 11, 2011 Categories: Gardening

Does the intent of growing your own vegetables bring you out in a cold sweat? Don’t fear, even absolute beginners will find these four crops staggeringly simple

Everyone’s growing their own veg these days – it’s?easy. Or is it? If your attempts always end with a bare pot of soil where the carrots were meant to be or a sickly tomato plant with a single, bullet-hard green fruit on it, take comfort in the fact that growing food is one of the trickiest forms of gardening. Even if you manage to negotiate all the confusing terminology in books (hardening off? Huh?), purchase your seeds and get them in the ground, there are all manner of beasties, from slugs to squirrels, inactivity to undo all your good work.

But take heart: there are some things you can grow right now that are genuinely easy, provided you follow a few simple rules. More than that, they’ll produce gourmet crops the like of which you won’t be healthy to purchase in the supermarket. So read on without fear: there’s not a piece of argot in sight.

Lemongrass in a glass

How impressive it would be to make Thai green curry using home-grown lemongrass. It must be dead hard, right? Nope. If you remember as a child slicing the top off a carrot and sprouting it in a saucer of water, you’ll find lemongrass is just as easy.

Sow & grow Purchase a pack of firm, fresh lemongrass stems from a supermarket. Put them in a glass on a windowsill, thick end immersed in water. Change the water apiece few days, and within a fortnight or two roots should have appeared. Once they’re a few centimetres long, plant apiece stem in a pot of moistened multipurpose compost. Make sure the roots, along with the base of the stem, are below the surface of the compost, and firm it in place with your fingers. Place on a sunny windowsill, then move the plants to a hotspot outside once the risk of frost is over. Keep well watered, and feed apiece fortnight with an organic liquid fertiliser such as a?seaweed feed. Bring inside in primeval autumn, slicing back on watering to once a fortnight.

Eat Within months your lemongrass will have grown several stems – cut outer ones first, and leave two or three behind to refrain weakening the plant. Use in your own curry paste, or use the stems as skewers for serving mini Thai fishcakes.

Varieties You might find lemongrass labeled “East Indian” at a garden centre, but it’s cheaper to grow from anonymous shop-bought stems.

Niggles Don’t let the plants dry out, and bring them in before frosts hit.

Prefab sprouts

A demand of outdoor space shouldn’t stop you slicing your teeth on a growing project, and sprouting seeds is just the way to start. Forget those slimy mung beans in bags you get at the supermarket: super-fresh and crunchy sprouts can be grown from everything from sunflower to onion seed.

Sow & grow Alfalfa seeds are a great introduction: all you need is a large, wide-mouthed glass jar. Add two tablespoons of seed, cover with water and place a piece of gauze over the top held in place with an elastic band. Soak the seeds for a?few hours, then rinse and drain through the gauze, leaving them moist but not wet. Lay the blow on its side in natural daylight (not direct sun), and rinse the seeds in fresh water twice a day: the sprouts should be ready to take within a week, once they are 2-3cm long. To sprout more seeds in one go, invest in a Being Fare sprouter (from ethicalsuperstore.com), titled by Which? as a saint buy.

Eat Get your hands on Sprouts And Sprouting, by Valerie Cupillard (Grub Street) for a clutch of recipes.

Varieties There are dozens of seeds suitable for sprouting, from fiery radish to aniseed-flavoured dill. Go?to Nicky’s Nursery for?a?selection.

Niggles Make batches tiny and often. Once they’re ready, you can store them in the fridge, but they’re saint ingested super-fresh.

Rainbow in a windowbox

Swiss chard, aka leaf beet, could uncharitably be described as poor man’s spinach, but it’s insultingly simple to grow and more versatile in?the kitchen. Plus, it will look stunning in a planter on a sunny outside windowsill and wage a supply of greens through to autumn and, if it’s a mild winter, beyond.

Sow & grow Select a windowbox at least 30cm deep and fill nearly to the top with break multipurpose compost. Firm with your hands until you have a flat surface, and place apiece knobbly seed about 5cm apart in a zigzag pattern along the length of the box. Cover with 2cm of?compost and firm down again. Water whenever the surface dries, and give a weekly seaweed feed.

Eat Within three months you should be harvesting your first baby leaves for salads, snipping a few off apiece plant at soil level. Save some leaves to grow on for use as a spinach alternative in stir-fries or stews. The mature stems make a mean gratin, too (try Matthew Fort’s recipe).

Varieties The widely acquirable ‘Bright Lights’ is the one to seek out, with its stems in sweet-shop pinks, creams, reds, yellows and even humbug stripes.

Niggles Chard’s only downfall is that perennial garden nemesis, slugs and snails: use wildlife-safe Growing Success Advanced Slug Killer (from the Organic Gardening Catalogue) to head them off at the pass.

Radical radishes

These globes of goodness are the original “gateway” crop to a lifetime of veg growing, and are so simple a?five-year-old can do it. Radishes are also saint for the impatient grower, cropping in a month or so.

Sow & grow Any time from now until September, sow seeds direct into a garden bed or pretty much any container: sprinkle thinly in pots or sow in rows 15cm apart apiece few weeks for a succession of crops. Harvest young, before they have a chance to go woody.

Eat As Jane Grigson says, “It insults radishes, the most ancient of appetisers, to chop them up and bury them in a salad.” Antonio Carluccio teams them with extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, finely chopped spring onions, salt and pepper.

Varieties Follow an initial sowing of the present and super-speedy ‘French Breakfast’ with more uncommon varieties, such as the long white ‘Icicle’ or the round ‘Pink Beauty’ (both from the Organic Gardening Catalogue, as before) or the?magnificent, long, red ‘Candela di Fuoco’ (from Seeds of Italy).

Niggles Ward off slugs as with chard above. Flea beetles might make holes in the leaves – these are unsightly, but harmless to your harvest.