I often feel that gardening is presented as a difficult, complicated chore – almost a dark art! Gardening shouldn’t be difficult – if anything it should be a wonderful adventure! Not everything will always go right but the moments when it does are really treasured.
Featured Plants
Fruit and vegetable gardening especially seems to fall foul of this spin. I am no vegetable grower, I don’t have an allotment and whatever I grow has to fit in with my busy world. It must not be too tricky to grow, it must be a genuinely tasty treat, and it should not produce a glut – rather a steady supply.
I live in a twenties semi and the garden is pretty average in size. I use a lot of pots for growing. I love the fact that I can fill my pots with compost and then grow any crop, no matter what its needs to perfection. For annual veg I use Organic Vegetable Compost, for perennial vegetables or fruit I use John Innes Number 3 and for acid loving perennials I use John Innes Ericaceous – simple! Big pots make life much easier as they need less watering and these days they are so reasonable. I move them round the garden each year so I get a different feel. Experience has taught me that I will get better pollination if I choose a spot that has stiller air so runner beans always get popped in a quiet corner.
So what would I include on my essentials list?
Rhubarb One staple that I find a spot for in the border is rhubarb. I’m not talking about those tough old stems that need to be forced to make them sweet and are only edible early in the season. Forget those and plant Rhubarb Glaskin’s Perpetual, it is one of the fruit world’s best kept secrets. The stems are a soft greenish colour and extremely low in oxalic acid, the thing that makes rhubarb sour. The beauty of this is that it means you can harvest the stems right the way through the season! I grow it in a clump in the border as the foliage is attractive in its own right.
Blueberries Blueberries are fabulous. They thrive in pots in John Innes Ericaeous Compost with an annual top dressing of lime-free J Arthur Bower’s Conifer & Shrub Fertiliser. As well as giving you a fabulous crop of antioxidant-rich berries, blueberries have gorgeous ornamental foliage that turns stunning, firey shades in autumn. Growing two plants together is not completely essential but it ensures a really good heavy crop of berries from both plants.
Strawberries
Every garden can fit in my next choice - strawberries. They are so easy to grow that I am always surprised not to see them in more gardens. You can either buy them as young 9cm pot size plants which will fruit fully in their second year or big 1 litre pots which will give you a proper crop in their first year. If you have children
visiting your garden they will love being able to pick their own strawberries and there is nothing to beat the taste of a warm strawberry fresh off the plant. Choose a selection of varieties to give you the longest cropping period. I always grow them in a normal pot rather than a strawberry pot as I find it easier to keep
them evenly watered.
Goji Berries
If you have a larger garden you can grow our Scottish grown Goji Berries. Gojis are very high in antioxidants and are really easy to grow, fruiting in their first year. They are big shrubs, between 6 and 8 feet tall and so need a big garden. Give them somewhere where they get good air circulation as this will help avoid mildew in
summer. I don’t have a lot of space but I thought I might try growing it on a trellis as a fan specimen?
Raspberries
The other fruit choice I have to have is raspberries and this year sees a new commercial variety, Polka, out to steal the
crown from Autumn Bliss, the current top variety. Like Autumn Bliss it grows and fruits all in the same year. It is however sweeter, crops more heavily and fruits 2 weeks earlier! It sounds like a winner to me! I would split a pack of 10 canes between 2 spots in the garden. I find raspberries grow very happily for me in a border among roses and other shrubs with a minimum of maintenance.
Asparagus
My summer treat is asparagus – around about Ascot Week in mid June the delicious spears are ready. Asparagus need a settled spot, if you are lucky enough to have lots of space an asparagus bed is a lovely indulgence, but if not a quiet corner in a border is fine or put three crowns into a nice big pot. Asparagus Stewart’s Purple is a delicious variety with a low fibre level in the stem making it really tender. Add to that the fact that purple asparagus is more than 70% sweeter than green and you have a winner – delicious chopped raw in summer salads.
Courgettes
Finally, I always find room for a pot of courgettes, last year I grew F1 Midnight, a variety we talked about in the
grow your own talk last spring. It was fabulous, really free fruiting, mildew resistant and completely delicious.
If you want some tips on accessories to help you get the best from your new
Adventure in Gardening take a look at Graham Tarrant’s article, Increasing Your Yield, in the Spring Magazine. If you want to know more about all the varieties we have on offer come along to one of our Adventures in Gardening Talks in March. They last about one hour and you need to book your free place in advance so that we can make sure there is a place reserved for you.
Now, this is just a taster of what you can grow in even small gardens don’t let anyone put you off - you can grow pretty
much any fruit or vegetable in your garden, just give it a try.
Pip Bensley
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