Corny

Corn, also known as maize (from the Spanish maíz) is one of the oldest food crops, cultivated as far back as 1250BC in the region of Oaxaca* in Southwestern Mexico. Here in the UK we're most familiar with sweetcorn (though when I was a cub, the local sweetcorn crops were referred to as maize, to distinguish it from the fields of corn, which will be confusing to any people from the USA reading this. Corn is what we call wheat. And language is supposed to make communication easier!) though there are several varieties, such as Field corn & Flint corn, which is grown for making hominy & masa (a lime treated dough that is the base of many delicious Mexican foods, from corn tortillas to tamales. Yum!)

Sweetcorn is a surprisingly easy crop to grow here in the UK. Unless you live in the south, you probably won't get the huge uniform cobs that you find in the supermarkets (that have been shipped over from Morocco), but they will have a flavour & tenderness that supermarket corn can't match (as the natural sugars in those tender little kernels start turning to starch the moment you pick them). We always grew sweetcorn when I was a cub, though there was not much variety in seeds. These days you can find a breathtaking range of sweetcorn, from the supersweet F1 hybrids to heirloom varieties in every colour from red to blue!

Sweetcorn is a tender crop, so leave off planting it until the danger of late frosts have passed. You can sow seed under cover as early as April, planting them out in June, but can sow directly into the soil as late as June, so you have just enough time to get some planted out. Or you can buy young plants from garden centres & online.
If you decide to go for supersweet varieties, don't grow any older varieties nearby, as they could cross pollinate & turn starchy.
If you want a reliable, unfussy & delicious sweetcorn, you can't go wrong with 'Double Standard', an open pollinated, non-hybridised two tone (yellow & white, pretty as anything) variety that does well in colder areas & difficult soils. Real Seed offer good quality seeds that germinate beautifully, and something I grow every year. This year I'm also growing some unusual ones - the beautifully autumnal Earth Tones & the intense Black Aztec.

You'll need a sheltered, sunny spot for planting. They're gracious plants, and not fussy about soil. I've grown delicious (but fugly looking) corn on heavy clay soil, and MaFox always managed well with her thin veneer of soil over solid chalk. Corn needs to be grown in blocks, as they are wind pollinated, (unless you're growing them for baby corn, which is basically unpollinated sweetcorn, then they need to be planted in rows) at least 4 plants deep and wide, generally between 35-45cm apart (depending on the variety). Cultivation couldn't be easier, just keep the area clear of weeds & give them a bit of water in dry weather when the cobs start to form. If you live in a breezy area like me, earth up around the base of each plant to encourage stabilising roots to form. They don't really have any pests or problems. You can also grow squashes & pumpkins between the plants, which will scramble happily around them, keeping the roots cool & suppressing the weeds.

It's ready to harvest between July & October, depending on the variety & when you planted it. They're ready to be eaten when the tassels on the end of the cobs turn brown. The simplest check is to peel back the husk & pop a corn kernel with your fingernail. If a clear liquid comes out, it's not ready, so cover it back up & wait a little longer. If a milky liquid comes out (fnarr!) it's ready to eat. If what comes out resembles toothpaste, it's gone too far. But don't worry, leave to mature & dry out on the plant, then bring in before the first frosts & store somewhere airy & dry for a few weeks and use it for making popcorn (or sowing next year if it's not a hybrid variety). When you do harvest it, eat it straight away. They can be grilled, barbequed, boiled, roasted or eaten raw. And every bite will be worth it.

*Yes, Thomasina Miers, that's Oaxaca, not Wahaca. If they've been cultivating corn & making pottery for 12,000 years, you could at least spell the bloody name right.

Squashed

And when I say squash, I don't mean the fluorescent orange drink, or what happens to any aphids I find on the apple trees, I'm talking curcubits. Ahh, curcubits, how I love thee. Seriously. It's unhealthy. Curcubita pepo is the big name when it comes to this family of easily grown edibles, consisting of summer squashes such as Courgettes, Crookneck, the amusingly named Dhudi (a summer squash used in South Asian cooking) & Pattypan squash, as well as a few pumpkins & winter squash like Spaghetti squash, Delicata & Acorn. C. moscata is the Butternut squash family, and C. maxima is, as the name suggests, the big 'uns. Kabocha, Hubbard, Uchiki Kuri & all those other large, long season pumpkins & squashes that store well over winter.


Squashes are really easy to grow, and produce fantastic yields for very little work. If you don't have much room for growing veg, setting aside a patch of land for a courgette or summer squash is something that you won't regret. They're greedy little blighters, so you'll need to give them a good sized space. If planting straight into the ground, space them 75-90cm apart, or in as large a large pot as you can find (nothing less than a 30cm pot or bucket, but something a bit bigger if possible). You can also plant 2 or 3 to a grow bag. Be sure to water them regularly, whether they're in soil or in pots. If space is limited, try bush varieties such as Verde di Milano (a dark green & very reliable little number), Di Nizzi (a round green courgette), Striato d'Italia (stripey green) & Atena Polka (a sunny yellow, high yielding variety that I grow every year). They are happy to be planted 60cm apart, and will do better in pots than the trailing varieties. If you would love to grow Pumpkins as well, but don't have the space, try Summer Ball, a delicious round yellow courgette that, when left on the plant, matures into beautiful orange 1kg pumpkins. Whatever variety you go for, put it in the sunniest spot available. If you can dig compost or manure into the soil beforehand, even better.
All the grow your own books will tell you that 1 or 2 plants will be enough for a family. However, being a greedy little fox, I'm growing 11 varieties (green, yellow, stripey, long & round. In pretty much every combination) of courgette & summer squash.
If you haven't already sown some courgette seeds, you've still got time to get some in the ground. Once the risk of frost has passed, you can sow them directly, but I like to start them off in pots under cover. Once they have 3 or 4 true leaves (the big, fuzzy round ones, not the little oval ones that first pop out of the soil), they're ready to face the world. Harden them off for a week or two, then plant out (if you sow directly into the soil, you don't have to faff about with hardening them off). Once in the ground, watch out for slugs & snails which will chomp their way right through the main stem. Bastards.
Cultivation is mostly throwing water at them in dry spells (though they're prone to powdery mildew, so don't splash water on the leaves), and feeding every week or two once fruit starts to form. Trailing varieties cane be coaxed into a circle with a few pegs, or up sturdy bean canes.
If you're not as greedy as me, you may end up with an excess of fruit (though I've yet to experience such a thing). Courgettes are a great addition to chutneys, mixed sweet pickles & piccalilli, and can also be chopped up, roasted & slung in the freezer to be used over winter when courgettes are eye-wateringly expensive (and taste like crap)

Pumpkins & Winter squashes are grown in more or less the same way, though they need a lot more space to grow, as they trail & meander around like they own the place. I dot them around the sweetcorn patch & at the base of my climbing beans, where they suppress weeds & keep the roots shaded. Thy need a much longer growing season than courgettes or summer squash, but they mostly take care of themselves. People into giant pumpkins will pinch out the growing tip once 3 fruits have set (and go unspeakable things with string & pots of water to really bulk out the fruits). Each vine should give you 4 or 5 fruits, and you can pinch out the growing tip if you like (though my pumpkins seem to take that as a challenge!). As the fruits form, place them on a brick or lump of wood, to stop them rotting. The first hard frost will turn your beautiful fruits into mush, so keep a close eye on them in September & October, and be ready for some speedy harvesting.

Right, off to plant out some Squashes. I'm growing 18 varieties this year. And one slightly confused marrow.

Bean & Gone

After last years experiments with growing French beans for the ripe seeds as well as than the immature green pods, and spending the cold winter reading "Beans: A History" by Ken Albala*, this year in the garden has become a little bit bean-fixated (though with the 3 varieties of sweetcorn & the several billion squashes, perhaps milpa-fixated is a more appropriate term). Tall, dwarf, yellow, purple, green, spotted & speckled, from the highly ornamental but still very edible 'Dolichos Lablab' (also known as the Hyacinth bean) to the basic green bean 'Blue Lake', they're all growing here.
And with good reason, beans were one of the first plants to be cultivated, and due to their ability to crop well on even the most impoverished soil, meant the difference between life & slow & horrible starvation for nearly every culture at some point in history. They also dry & store easily. Unfortunately, their very reliability has them dismissed as "poor man's meat".

Well nuts to that, beans are awesome! There are few other veggies out there that offer such variety - they can be slender 'filet' pods, or large & flattened like small runner beans, or even curled up like shrimps. They come in green, yellow & purple coloured pods, and then there are the beans themselves! Creamy white haricot, green tinged flageolets, shiny black turtle beans, smooth brown seeds & an almost infinite variety of cream or white seeds speckled with red, brown or black.

There are roughly two categories that French beans fall in to. Climbing beans reach a height of 2-2.5 meters, and need supports to climb up (bamboo canes in wigwams or 'toblerones' are the most common methods, but they are very pretty growing up a trellis or against a warm sunny wall or side of a shed). Dwarf beans grow into small, bushy plants around 45cm tall, and shouldn't need much support (though you can give them a supporting layer of twigs & brush if you're growing them for dried beans, to keep them from flopping over under the weight). Dwarf beans take up less space & are easier to maintain, but climbing beans will give a bigger crop. The seeds are sown from April to July, and will give you a crop of succulent pods from June to October. Seeds are best sown in pots or trays before planting out after the last frosts. For some reason they seem to do better started off in pots than with direct sowing. You can also speed up germination by soaking the seeds overnight, though it's not essential.

After that, there's not much they need, aside from the odd bit of string to encourage them to go up the pole, rather than whatever crackerarsed direction they're actually headed in (or maybe I'm just blessed with particularly dumb beans) & water in dry weather. Squashes & pumpkins can be planted at the base, to suppress weeds & scramble up the canes. I found the winter squashes Marina di Chioggia & Uchiki Kuri worked really well, roving around the beans without getting in their way (and giving me the occasional shock when harvesting beans and brushing against a knobbly, ripening squash!).

The young pods freeze well, and the ripe beans can be frozen or dried too.

Okay, off to finish planting out Tomato Mile.

*A lot more interesting than it sounds. Did you know that St Jerome forbade Nuns from eating beans as they partibus genitalibus titillationes - "Tickled the genitals". Aww, poor nuns!

Scorzonera - I Never Met Her!

Ooft, that was a bad one, even for me.
Yes, it's another slow-growing, space-occupying weird vegetable. Sorry those of you with small gardens!

Scorzenera (Scorzonera hispanica) is also known as Spanish Salsify or False Salsify (and occasionally appears on Masterchef as just 'Salsify', making me wobbly with suppressed fury at inaccurately named veg, and in danger of spilling my second-cheapest-in-the-supermarket rioja*), and is another member of the ever-reliable Asteraceae family. It's mostly grow for its cylindrical root (that can grow up to 1 meter long, though never more than 2cm in diameter. Good luck pulling that out in one piece), though like Salsify the spring shoots & flowerbuds are also edible. The name comes from the Italian scorza - bark & negra - root, referring to the black skinned roots.
It's not a common sight in vegetable gardens, which is a shame. It's a low maintenance crop, with no pest or disease problems. It also repels carrot root fly, and thus is Awesome.

Like Parsnip & Salsify, it's prone to forking on recently manured soil. Or stony soil. Or clay soil. Or when Mars is in retrograde. Digging helps. When I had heavy clay soil I found digging a narrow trench a spade deep & filling it with compost produced good results (but better results came from not bothering with digging a trench & planting Jerusalem Artichokes instead).
Sow the seeds in drills 1cm or so deep in rows 15cm apart, thinning out the seedlings to 15cm apart (or sowing the seeds 15cm apart if, like me, you find pulling up seedlings a little bit heartbreaking).
After that, they can pretty much be left to their own devices, but for the occasional weeding (by hand - they are delicate), and a splash of water in dry spells. They can be harvested in the autumn, or left in the ground to produce 'chards' in the spring. Treat them the same way as Salsify really.

The black skin is not exactly inedible (Mikeyfox eats it, but then he also eats mushy pea sandwiches), but is corky & a bitter. You can peel the roots before cooking (they'll need immersing in water with a splash of lemon juice to stop them discolouring), but they slip off easily after they've been boiled or roasted. The roots can be baked, boiled, fried, sauteed, battered & deep fried, made into fritters, croquettes or gratins. Here's a simple one to get you started.

Scorzonera & Mushrooms
300g Scorzonera
150g chestnut mushrooms, sliced
20g butter
1 tbs olive oil
1 lemon
2 cloves garlic, chopped.
salt & pepper
1 tbs fresh parsley, chopped

Peel & chop the scorzonera, and place in a bowl of water with a squeeze of lemon juice. Put the butter & oil in a pan over a medium heat & add the scorzenera. Cook for 4 or 5 minutes, until golden. Add the mushrooms & garlic, and cook another minute or so. Reduce the heat & add the juice of the lemon. Cover & leave to simmer for 10 minutes. Season & add parsley.
Serve with crusty bread & a salad.

The same recipe works with all the ingredients thrown into a dish & baked in the oven for 30 minutes (including the lemon rind) & finished with parsley.

Next time, vegetables - in cake!

*I know how to party.

Salsify

Salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius, from the Latin tragos - goat & pogon - beard. Those kooky botanists) is another slow-growing vegetable. I know, I'm torturing you folks with small gardens! The name comes from the old Latin name solsequium, from the way the flowers follow the course of the sun each day (likes daisies, which isn't that surprising as they are part of the same family, Asteraceae*). It's also known as Goat's Beard or Vegetable Oyster, as the root is said to have a delicate, oyster-like flavour (having never eaten oysters, I can't say if this is true). It was a wild harvested food in France & Germany in the 13th century, and wasn't cultivated until later. Today it's still an unusual crop, which is a shame as it's a low maintenance veg, with no real pests or diseases and can be grown near carrots & parsnips to discourage carrot root fly (being related to tagetes and all).

Like parsnips, it's prone to forking on recently manured, heavy or stony soils. Digging over in the autumn & adding some organic matter or sharp sand will help. The seed looks like chopped up pieces of straw (and will blow away in the wind!), but you've not been conned, they are seeds!
Sow 10cm (4") apart with 30cm (12") between rows (get used to those spacings, pretty much everything I grow is in 30cm rows - onions, beetroot, carrots, parsnips, turnips...). Keep weed free (by hand, as the roots are easily damaged) & water in dry spells. They can be harvested from August onwards, or left in the ground overwinter to produce edible shoots (known as 'chards') in the spring. I tend to dig up a few in the autumn, and if the roots are small, leave them in the ground with a covering of mulch to protect them from frost, then in the spring when new growth appears, a covering of straw or an upturned bucket can be used for 'blanching' the stems to make them sweeter & tender (much like when forcing rhubarb) & harvest when 10-15cm long.

Salsify roots have a mild, sweet flavour, with a hint of the seaweed to it. They discolour when cut, so need a splash of lemon juice (which is lucky, as they go really well together). They are delicious sauteed in butter with garlic, in a gratin, roasted with lemon wedges or grated raw into salads. The chards can be eaten raw or lightly cooked.
The flowerbuds are also edible, and can be picked just before they open with a fingers length of stem & treated like asparagus (steam & serve with a squeeze of lemon juice & a scrape of butter, or bake into a quiche).
Here's a favourite recipe of mine, it's a simple fritter that really gives the salsify flavour a chance to shine (rather than get smothered in cheese)

Salsify Fritters
250g-300g Salsify roots, scrubbed (you can peel them if you prefer)
1 clove garlic, minced (I use a fine grater)
1 egg, beaten
1-2tbs flour
juice of 1/2 a lemon
salt & pepper
a little butter or oil

Coarsely grate the salsify into a bowl & add the lemon juice. Give it a shake around. Add the remaining ingredients & mix well. Heat the oil or butter in a large frying pan on a medium heat, and spoon out the batter to make 6 or 7 fritters. Flip when golden & firm, and cook the other side until done too. Serve with a salad or hot straight from the pan while no ones looking.

*the Aster family, which includes sunflowers, chamomile, artichokes, marigold, echinacea, chrysanthemums & dahlias. And the sight of one never fails to make me smile.

Parsnips

Before sweetcorn, before mushrooms, before even my beloved squashes, my favourite veg as a cub was parsnips. It was the first vegetable I learned the name of, and what I would always ask for if I had a say in what would be for dinner (until my 6th birthday, when my Nan took me to a fancy restaurant, and I was presented with a china plate of roasted parsnips. My first attempt to cut into one with the unwieldy silverware made a deafeningly loud squeeeek, and I was convinced it was the parsnips shrieking out as I sliced into them, and didn't touch another one until I was much, much older*).

Seed packets & gardening books will tell you that February is the time to start sowing parsnip seeds, but I like to sow them in March. It improves your chances with the famously slow & erratic germination, the soil is a little less likely to be freezing cold & sodden, and you don't have to hare about the place getting the soil turned & raked into a fine tilth a month before anything else gets sown. To be honest, you can sow as late as April & still get good results.

Parsnips like a sunny spot with fertile, well-drained soil, preferably light & sandy, but do well in my soil (which is on the clay side of loam). It will grow in heavier soils, but will come out as vegetable Cthulhu's (very forked - but once scrubbed, chopped up & roasted or made into soup, no one will know the difference!). Recently manured soil will also produce vegetable Cthulhu. Stony soil will produce vegetable Cthulhu. Looking at them in a funny way will produce vegetable Cthulhu.

Parsnips grown in the heavy clay of Sheffield - certainly not showbench material, and prone to canker, but they were delicious!

Parsnips grown in Lincolnshires glorious loam. Ridiculously long roots & no forking.

Like most delicious things, they are prone to pests & diseases. Carrot root fly (aka The Little Bastards) can be avoided by sowing parsnips between rows of onion, garlic or chives, or growing in 1' high raised beds, or covering the plants with fleece (I sow carrot & parsnip seeds between rows of shallot & garlic, which seems to work well). Canker (a vague term that basically means fungal disease) is a rusty, brown or black areas around the crown of the parsnip where roots have been damaged by carrot root fly, slugs or being a bit heavy handed when wielding the hoe, and infection sets in. If it's a small patch, you can just cut it off when preparing your parsnips for cooking. If it's more serious, you can try growing resistant varieties (Gladiator & White Gem are pretty good) or improve the drainage of your soil (which is a roundabout way of saying 'Dig').

As vegetables go, parsnips are not really suitable for a small garden. They take the best part of the year to grow, and need very particular soil if you want long, straight roots. But if you can, I really recommend them. Their sweet, nutty flavour is a real pleasure in the depths of winter.

*You know how people say the sound of fingernails on chalkboards cuts right through them? Knives on china plates. Gets me every time.

G(uit)ar Lic(k)s (worst pun title ever!)

There has been a brief (and very pleasant) few days of dry weather here in North Lincolnshire - a perfect opportunity to plant garlic! Yes, you can plant garlic in early spring, but the results can be a bit disappointing. It really needs a bit of cold weather to inspire it to produce fat, heavy bulbs.
You're best off buying your garlic for planting from a garden centre or an online supplier (I can't recommend The Garlic Farm enough! A good range of huge bulbs in excellent condition that are trouble free to grow) rather than stuff from the supermarket. Or you can scrounge some from anyone you know who grows their own*.

Garlic is fairly undemanding, though they do best in well drained, fertile soil. Last year MikeyFox treated me to the Garlic Farm's Garlic Lovers Seed Collection (9 varieties of garlic - on nom nom!), which were planted out in our raised beds. Whatever wasn't scarfed down green in June I harvested at the end of July & stored. So I'm using the most successful varieties of these stored bulbs for seed. Garlic is asexual (meaning it doesn't need pollinating, not that it's indifferent to rumpy-pumpy), so each clove will grow into a clone of the parent plant (and you don't have to fret about cross-pollination). There is something mildly disheartening about harvesting a large, perfectly formed head of garlic & instantly thinking 'I can't eat it', but on the plus side, saving your own seed encourages biodiversity, avoids the juggernaut of F1 hybrids & monocultures & allows you to dabble in a less crazy-haired form of mad science (like seed selecting & plant breeding). Also, it'll save you a few quid!
This year I'm planting Chesnok Wight (hardneck), Albigensian Wight (softneck), Lautrec Wight (hardneck), Iberian Wight (softneck) & Elephant garlic (I like to try & have an equal balance of hardneck & softneck varieties of garlic. Softnecks store better, but hardnecks produce a flowering spike called a 'scape', that you can chop off & use in stir fries, pesto & lots of other delicious, summery dishes).

Before planting, break the bulbs (carefully) into individual cloves. Any that are damaged or bruised are best used in cooking, as they'll rot or succumb to infection (which would be a terrible end, when they could end up being eaten instead!). The cloves are planted 15cm (6") apart in rows 45cm (18") apart (actually, they're planted further apart than that, so in spring I can sow carrots between the rows of garlic & onion to deter the dreaded carrot root fly). The smaller cloves from the middle of the bulb can also be planted out, but you can put them a little closer, about 10cm (4") apart (though a smaller clove will give you a smaller bulb. A big, delicious clove will give you, with luck & good weather, a big, delicious bulb).

I'm also planting Elephant garlic, which is actually a leek, rather than a garlic. It's rather aptly named! It also has a milder flavour that people who usually balk at raw garlic find a lot easier to handle.


They are best off planted September - October, about 30cm apart (they are big, after all). You can plant them later, but the closer you get to spring, the more likely it is that the bulb will not separate into cloves, and you'll pull up one solid bulb of garlic. A nice idea, but in practice it's a little intimidating. The bulb will also have little hard shelled bulblets (they're actually corms) clinging to the outside. These can be planted out right away, and will produce a small round - a solid ball that hasn't divided into cloves. Leave them another year & you'll get a full sized Elephant garlic. Woo!

*So that's a sentence that won't get me into trouble...

King of the Crops

So today I'm blogging about a mighty king of crops, a vegetable that was so highly prized by the Ancient Greeks that likenesses were made of it in gold. A vegetable so venerable that the Ancient Egyptians were chomping it. Something that Erich Von Däniken missed a trick on - there is no record of their early history or domestication (so must have been left behind by those Mayan astronauts). It's also rich in antioxidants, vitamin B6 and lots of other lovely vitamins and minerals. And in Germany its served with beer.But alas, this kingly crop has fallen from favour. Where once it was a subject of Greek bling, it now sits sadly on the side of salads and rattles about forlornly at the bottom of the veg drawer in the fridge.
Have you worked out what it is?

It is, of course, the Radish!
There are roughly three varieties of radish: Spring/Summer, Autumn/Winter & Seedpod (though opinions on how the bajillion kinds of radish should be categorised vary. And there's also oilseed radish to make things more complicated).

Spring/Summer radishes are the ones we associate with salads. Cherry Belle, French Breakfast, Sparkler & Amethyst are all good varieties (you can get packs of radish seed in all kinds of colours - yellow, white, pink, purple. All taste like radish, but look very pretty!). They are fast growing (3-4 weeks), crisp, juicy & early in spring they are mild flavoured, but hot up as the summer progresses.But don't just dump them on the side of a few lettuce leaves and call it a salad! Do something special with these shiny little gems! They can be grated & mixed with cream cheese or quark for a delicious dip/sandwich filling (depending on how roughly they are grated). Roasted whole in a hot oven they mellow & sweeten into something turnipy & toothsome. Halve & toss around in a frying pan with a little olive oil until tender, then add a splash of Apple Balsamic vinegar. Add to stir fries for a bit of crunch, or slice & top quiche or tarts before baking.

Autumn/Winter radishes are slower growing. Spanish Black Round & Daikon (or Mooli) are the most well known varieties. They are much larger, at least carrot sized and often bigger, and are used much like turnips in cooking or used to make pickles. The Dim Sum classic Turnip cake is actually made from Winter radish. The taste of cooked winter radish is very turnip-like, and it is used in soups, Oden (a Japanese winter stew of daikon, fish cakes & boiled eggs in a seaweed broth) & stir fries
There is also the German beer radish, a faster-growing winter variety (about 6-8 weeks to go from seed to very-big-carrot sized). It is traditionally sliced, rubbed with salt & served with beer (okay, so this picture has Polish beer, but they were still a very happy combination!). There are a few fun varieties out there, but I really recommend the tongue twisting Hilds roter Neckarruhm (pictured). It's spicy, crisp & grows up to 30cm long!

Lastly, there are the seed pod varieties. Any radish that bolts will produce pods, but it's worth getting varieties bred for pod production (Rat-tail radish is very good, though make sure you have enough space for it, it gets up to 1 meter in height!). The pods also go well with beer, and are delicious raw or thinly sliced in salads. They are also tasty stir fried (I do a version of Bhindhi Bhaji using them. Yum!)

Luckily there is still somewhere that appreciates the mighty radish - Mexico! Every year on December 23rd Noche de Rábanos (Night of the Radish) is celebrated in Oaxaca city, where an exhibition of sculptures made from radishes is held. The themes are usually nativity scenes, model buildings and Awesome Things That Saints Have Done.

Seriously, I'm not making this up. Google it.

'Grass

There seems to be a million names for Asparagus: sperage, Sparrow-grass, Asper-grass... In Thailand it's called No mai farang (meaning 'Western Bamboo shoot'). In Hereford & Worcestershire where I did fruit & flower picking as a cub, it was just known as 'Grass'. The name Asparagus originates from the Persian Asparag, meaning 'sprout' or 'shoot'. Fancy that.
Whatever you call it, it's been around for a long time, and even featured in the Apicius de re coquinaria ("On the Subject of Cooking") a collection of recipes from the late 4th century. The recipe is pretty revolting, actually, poached warbler (a type of small tweety bird) & asparagus in a fish & egg sauce. Ick. Asparagus doesn't need much cooking, just lightly grilling, steaming or stir frying will do the job. It goes well with eggs and/or cheese too.
Growing asparagus is quite a commitment, too. Nothing says 'I'm sticking with you*, garden' quite like planting a crop that takes up a load of space for a small yield and takes 2 or 3 years to produce anything you can eat. So I have pledged my troth to my patch of Lincolnshire by making an asparagus bed.

You can get asparagus in a few different ways, either buying seed (the cheapest way, though you have to wait an extra year before you can start eating) or one year old 'crowns' (a Cthulhu-like mass of fleshy, brittle roots with a few teeny little spears poking out of the centre). Two year old crowns are available, but they are painfully expensive, and slower to establish in your patch. You can get asparagus crowns from garden centers, or buy them online. I bought half online & half from a few different garden centres, and I have to say, order online! The garden centre ones were sad, dried out little twigs that have shown no signs of life so far, whereas the online ordered ones are growing well. I'll keep an eye on them, and maybe think about replacing them with autumn-planted varieties if there's no growth by then.
They're all planted in a raised bed, in trenches 15cm (6") deep, spaced 30cm (12") apart each way, placing each little rooty cephalopod carefully on a mound of soil & spreading out it's roots. Then cover with 7cm (3") of soil & water well. In the autumn the trench can be topped up to the surrounding soil level. No matter how tempting they look, you can't have any of the emerging spears. Why? Because harvesting any in the first year will weaken the plant, and you won't get much from them in later years. When established, an asparagus will provide plentiful spears for up to 20 years, so patience now will mean rewards later. Delicious rewards. And probably beetles, knowing my luck.

*'Cos I'm made out of glue
Anything that you might do
I'm gonna do too

Jerusalem Artichokes - They're Not From Jerusalem, And They're Not Artichokes

Jerusalem Artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus) are possibly the easiest vegetable you can grow. You bung them in the ground in March/April, then dig them up again in October-February.

They are no relation to the Globe Artichoke, and they're from North America, so where does the name come from? One theory is that it's a corruption of the word Girasole, the Italian word for Sunflower (Jerusalem artichokes are a member of the sunflower family), or a corruption of Ter Neuzen, the Dutch town that introduced the plant to England way back in 1617. The artichoke part of the name is due to Samuel de Champlain, an explorer who first came across the tuber growing in a Native American vegetable garden in 1605. he thought they tasted like Artichokes, and took some home to France, where they were named topinambours and sold by Parisian street vendors. When the potato gained popularity in Europe, the Jerusalem artichoke fell out of favour (and also got blamed for causing leprosy, as the irregular shape & brown mottling resembled the deformed fingers of sufferers of leprosy). They are also known as Sunchoke or Sunroot.

So why aren't they more popular? Well, they are rich in inulin, a starch which the body can't digest. So they're low in calories, but can cause. Uh. Wind. John Goodyer, a 17th century botanist & herbalist wrote "They stir up and cause a filthie loathesome stinking winde with the bodie, thereby causing the belly to bee much pained and tormented." Aww, poor 'chokes. Don't worry, I still love you.

Still, even with the occasional, um, windypops, they are well worth giving a go. They have a sweet, nutty flavour and can be eaten cooked or raw.

They're also not fussy about where they're grown. Ideally they'd like somewhere sunny with well drained soil, but they will also grow in shady spots & dry places, they even flourish in my damp, cold, clay soil. They'll grow where no other crop will (such as under trees or in hedges), they're excellent on new sites as the roots break up the soil & also make an effective summer windbreak, as they grow from 1.5 to 3 meters tall.

March is the perfect time to get them planted. You can plant tubers bought from the grocers, or named varieties bought from where ever you get your seed potatoes (Organic Gardening Catalogue have a good variety - Fuseau - which produce long, smooth tubers that are easy to peel). Plant each tuber 15cm (6") deep & 60cm (24") apart in rows around 90cm (3ft) apart.

Now you just leave them be. You might need to pile a bit of earth around the stems when they get to 30cm (12") tall to stabilise them, or stake them if you're on a windy site. If they get a bit too tall for comfort, you can cut any stems over 2 meters tall back by about one-third, but no more than that. When the leaves die back after the first frost, cut the plants down to 15cm (6") above the soil & dig up as & when necessary. the tubers will be perfectly happy in the ground (they can be stored in the fridge for a week or two, but are happier in the ground). The 'chokes I sowed last year were slowly dug up & eaten over 5 cold wintery months (the last ones were made into soup at the end of February, and were just as fresh & crunchy as the ones dug up in October). They will also grow in large pots too (this year I'm growing some in empty casks).

Talking Chit

Despite the snow* & it being the Coldest-February-Since-Records-Began, here at the House At The Top Of The Bloody Great Hill thoughts have turned to growing veg.

Yes, the house is up for sale, but considering the currant economic climate, we'll probably be here until the summer anyway, so we may as well grow some veg.

So I've been thinking about planting quick-cropping vegetables, interesting salads, baby root veg & dwarf beans (which mature faster than the taller varieties). The sort of things that go from seed packet to plate in 1 or 2 months. That way it's a Challenge rather than an Inconvenience.

But we still want to grow potatoes.

Luckily, previous experiments in growing stuff have shown us that it's pretty easy to grow spuds in containers & pots. So the plan is to grow as many potatoes as possible in as many containers as possible. We'll be growing spuds in trugs, patio planters (a fancy name for reinforced woven polyethylene sacks), buckets, pots, troughs and malt sacks.

Potatoes grow surprisingly well in containers. You don't need an allotment or a big garden to grow your own tasty spuds, just space for a few pots.

You'll need to get your seed potatoes (small potatoes, usually around the size of an egg that are specially grown & disease & virus free. You can use shop bought potatoes, but they may have blight or some other nasties in them, and may not produce as many spuds as a certified seed potato) from a good supplier. The Organic Gardening Catalogue has a good range of potatoes. There are many tasty, unusual & interesting varieties of potato out there, so it's worth having a look around. This year I'm trying out a variety of potatoes from Thomson & Morgan, as they have a wide range of unusual spuds, such as the Highland Burgundy Red, Salad Blue & the Shetland Black.

Potatoes come in 4 types, which mature at different times. You'll need to keep remember this when choosing potatoes. When do you want to be eating your spuds?

First Earlies mature very quickly, so are usually ready to eat late May to June.

Second Earlies mature a little later and are ready to harvest late June to July.

Maincrops do not do as well in pots as First & Second Earlies, they do grow but produce smaller yields than if they were in the ground. They are ready for harvest between September to November.

Salad Potatoes are firm, waxy varieties that mature around June & July. A few varieties, such as Pink Fir Apple are not ready for harvest until August or September.

Before you plant your potatoes, they'll need to be chitted. Chitting basically means sprouting the potatoes. Chitting gets the tubers started & shortens the growing time needed to get a good crop from them, and February is the best time to do it. Potatoes can be chitted in old egg boxes or trays, make sure that you arrange them with the ends with the most eyes facing up (don't worry if you can't see the eyes, after a few days (or weeks, depending on the variety), the potatoes will start to chit & they'll become more visible, and any facing the wrong way can be repositioned) and place in an unheated room out of direct sunlight. When the sprouts are 4 or 5cm long (they'll have teeny tiny leaves on them - Eee!) they're ready to plant out.

You'll be needing a container, then. You can use pots, plastic crates, those polystyrene boxes that watercress comes in. Even a heavy duty bin bag will work. Essentially anything that's around 30cm across & deep. I've found that those black buckets that you can buy for around £1 from DIY centres with a couple of holes drilled in the bottom work beautifully.

Fill your container about a 1/4 full of soil (compost works well, garden soil is also good. I've heard that potatoes grow well in leaf mould too, though I've never tried it. Just make sure it's soil that hasn't had potatoes or tomatoes growing in it the previous year, so won't have any soil borne pests or diseases lurking in it). Place 2 or 3 potatoes in your pot, sprouty parts facing upwards, and cover with more compost. Don't fill the container, just use enough compost to just cover the tubers.

After a few weeks (or longer, depending on the potato variety) you'll have pretty little green plants. When they get to around 15cm tall, you'll need to do some Earthing Up. This just means adding another few handfuls of compost to the container to cover up the stem of your plants (don't worry about covering any of the lower leaves, they'll be fine). This prevents light from reaching the tubers and turning them green. Keep earthing up the potatoes as they grow until the container is full.

Other than that, they don't need much in the way of maintenance. Give them a soaking of water if the weather is dry and look out for any signs of pests or disease. You can wait for them to flower (the flowers are really pretty, similar to borage flowers) & die back, or you can pull them out as the flowerbuds start to appear, and get delicious little new potatoes. Yum!

*By snow I mean The-Stuff-That-Was-Snow-9-Days-Ago-But-Below-Freezing-Nighttime-Temperatures-And-Not-Much-Warmer-In-The-Day-Means-It-Has-Become-The-Hardest-Slipperiest-Substance-On-This-Earth. Just looking at it will sprain your ankles.