The Edible Garden

‘Call is floral food, edible landscaping, ornamental vegetable gardening, call it what you like, but if you want to grow courgettes in your borders, plant cabbages on roundabouts, grow your lettuce amongst the flowers, and if you do the best part of your gardening in bare feet, or if your garden isn’t behind your house, then welcome to another way.’

In this timely new book, Gardeners’ World’s thrifty and resourceful Alys Fowler shows that there is a way to take the good life and re-fashion it to fit in the city. Abandoning the limitations of traditional gardening methods, she has created a beautifully productive garden where tomatoes sit happily next to roses, carrots are woven between the lavenders and potatoes grow in pots on the patio. And all of this is produced in a way that mimics natural systems, producing delicious homegrown food for her table. And she shares her favourite recipes for the hearty dishes, pickles and jams she makes to use up her bountiful harvest, proving that no-one need go hungry on her grow-your-own regime.

Good for the pocket, good for the environment and hugely rewarding for the soul, The edible Garden urges gardeners everywhere to chuck out the old rules and create their own haven that’s as good to look as it is to eat.

Alys trained at the Horticultural Society, the New York Botanical Garden and the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew. After finishing her training, she worked as a journalist for the trade magazine, Horticulture Week, and then joined the Gardeners’ World team as a horticultural researcher. The lure of the garden, however, proved too much and in 2006 Alys became Head Gardener at Berryfields. She is now a permanent presenter from Greenacre, the show’s new home. Alys’s inspiration for urban gardening comes from her time volunteering in a community garden on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York City. Much of the ethic, thrift and spirit she encountered there is found in her work today.

FOR JULIET

(This book is dedicated to Juliet Glaves)

Introduction

I want it all, the whole far-flung earth and everything in it.

I want streams and hills, rivers and seas, mountains and pastures. I want a whole, happy, earth. And when I’m not being overly ambitious about my environmental desires, I also want a garden with a little bit of everything in it. These two desires are not unconnected: my happy earth will, in part (and no small part), be achieved by my ability to grow a large percentage of my food in my garden, in a way that does not devour resources.

It has never been possible for us all to have gardens big enough for herbaceous borders, rockeries, orchards and vegetable patches. And it is not going to happen now, but too often I hear the same complaint, ‘I want to grow vegetables but my garden isn’t big enough for a separate patch.’ To this I say mix it together and don’t worry about the rules that say things need to be segregated. You can have your vegetables, fruit and flowers in a productive garden that is beautiful to look at. It is actually not difficult to marry the joys of growing your own with the beauty of a flower garden.

There are thousands of us out there that are desperate for wholesome, home-grown food, but not at the expense of our city lives. This book is about taking the good life and re-fashioning it on bits of wasteland, in back gardens and on fire escapes. From planting plans to political issues, this book looks at how and why we need to make our gardens more productive. In today’s world, growing your own not only makes economic sense, it’s a powerful political gesture about our oil-reliant food chain and how we can go about fixing it.

Whether you have a balcony, a courtyard or a sprawling plot this is about saying that your garden pleases you, pleases your palette and pleases the wider environment.

A LITTLE HISTORY

Growing in straight lines hasn’t always been the norm for vegetable gardens, nor have they been exclusively about vegetables. The segregated kitchen or productive garden is a Victorian throwback: it says more about money and space than anything else. While the rich kept their vegetables, flowers and ornamental plants strictly separated, smaller gardens elsewhere were more likely to be a mixture of both.

The traditional cottage garden is a mixture of flowers and vegetables, often grown in what might appear to be a slightly haphazard manner. The potager is a grander version, with more order (and more lines), but is essentially about mixing the benefits of flowers, fruits and vegetables together. The cottage garden is quintessentially English, the potager says France, and if you hop across the pond you’ll find another, more contemporary, style called edible landscaping. Edible landscaping aims to create a space in which useful plants are designed into the garden landscape. In other words, you can eat your view.

Although some edible landscapes can be quite formal (using vegetables like bedding plants to create careful patterns), others happily abandon traditional formalities and seem to mix form, function and frivolity. They may include herbs for the kitchen, cut flowers for the vase, plants to bring in beneficial insects, vegetables to dine off, and maybe habitat nooks such as ponds and insects’ homes to bring the rest of nature in to play.

It’s this rule-breaking style that’s won my heart. I have set out on a journey to make an art out of supplying my kitchen. I can only guarantee one thing: there will be no straight lines.

POLYCULTURE

Growing more than one species or variety of vegetable together is called polyculture, contrasting with monoculture where you grow a single species. An organic garden that grows more than one type of vegetable is a type of polyculture, but true polyculture is to grow a variety of plants together that will benefit from being in an ecological community. Perhaps the best-known version of this idea is the ‘Three Sisters’, the traditional Native American way of growing beans, corn and courgettes or pumpkins together. The beans grow up the corn and courgettes scramble around the base. The beans lend nitrogen to the hungry corn, the corn acts as stakes for the beans to climb up and the courgettes act as a living mulch, conserving water and keeping weeds down. Together, the three make a community. Polyculture is a new name for a very ancient way of farming that aims to mimic natural ecosystems by following nature’s pattern.

More complex polycultures can use up to nine different species. Here, radishes, lettuces, cabbages, pot marigolds and parsnips are all sown at the same time, each variety being broadcast in drifts across your patch of land. Radishes emerge first, shading the ground and trapping moisture to benefit the other vegetables. As you start to harvest your radishes more vegetables begin to germinate. Regular picking allows each plant to establish its space within the system. Deep-rooted vegetables, such as parsnips, exploit the lower soil and shallow-rooted ones, such as lettuces, exploit the upper soil, which should mean less competition for resources. You do have to thin your crops constantly, but experiments show that given two equal-sized pieces of land you can plant more per area using polyculture methods, with equal or greater plant emergence, and although plants do tend to grow more slowly under polyculture, overall yield is usually greater.

There are so many benefits to polyculture. You have reduced pest and disease problems as the crop diversity means it’s very hard for pests and diseases to build up to serious numbers. As there is no bare or exposed ground, water is conserved and plants benefit. Also, different species offer different habitats so local biodiversity increases.

You do have to pay more attention to set-up and harvesting than if you’re working in a straight line, but there is little weeding other than regular thinning of plants, and these thinnings are your supper. Polyculture set-up issues are mostly to do with keeping a pleasing vision. A lot of plants need to be raised as small plants in pots ready to go in when a space is available so you don’t see great gaps, but if you view this as one way of never running out of food, then perhaps it’s not such a drawback.

There are few set rules, and many different combinations, so you have to work out for yourself what will work best for your plot according to your soil, aspect and space. If you decide to adopt the principles of polyculture you are a pioneer of a new form of gardening and you should document every success and failure you have – the more we know, the better the system will work. One of the joys of digital media and mobile technology is that we can share our understanding, so think of polyculture in Wikipedia terms and go out there, and grow, then publish.

I find myself somewhere between polyculture and edible landscaping, dipping in to both to steal the best bits from each. My garden doesn’t have a clear plan to it, except that I try and keep the tall vegetables to the back of the border and shorter vegetables, and those that need regularly harvesting, to the front. While working to raise the fertility of my soil I have stayed fairly clear of root vegetables, other than the potatoes I’m using to break up the ground and hide the fence. I have direct sown radish, rocket, marigolds, dill and other flowers in drifts, but have interplanted with other vegetables that I’ve grown in plugs (small individually raised plants), as I’ve found it easier to create the right layers this way. Every day is a new experiment as I learn what varieties and combinations work for me and my garden.

You do need to know and understand your own local conditions to grow a healthy mix of edible and ornamental plants. The only rules are that you need good soil, light and water if you want good vegetables. I do understand that for many people growing in straight lines is a simple, convenient way of planting and harvesting, but I have found that growing in a careful muddle is surprisingly simple once you’ve got your head around the principles. All gardening is endlessly interesting, discovering what grows best where and with what, whether it’s conventional straight lines or not, but when you muddle up flowers, fruit and vegetables rather than separating them, you end up looking out for all parts of your garden at the same time. You notice more about what’s going on, your vegetable garden is never out of sight and out of mind, but ever present. Instead of having to go to just one part of my garden to pick my supper I now have to wander through my garden, thinning salads for my supper, watching new vegetables grow and emerge, keeping my fingers crossed for the tomatoes and eagerly awaiting the first potatoes. It seems so obvious, but my first urban vegetable garden was at the bottom of my narrow terrace garden and I would rush back from work and either run past the top half of the garden, not even noticing it, or I wouldn’t get to the bottom at all. No other form of gardening has brought me closer to the space and to understanding my role within it – which turns out to be surprisingly little, as I do more eating than battling with pests.

LOCAL LOVE

I cannot teach you about your local knowledge, or about local love and loyalty, except to say that in order to know your place, and where you belong, you need to understand that you are part of an ecosystem far bigger than your needs, and that you are responsible for its health and must be a good caretaker.

When you grow your own vegetables, herbs and cut flowers you start to actively contribute to your local economy. It’s not just about spending less money, though you will definitely spend less on groceries (and gym memberships), but about becoming more aware. When you work your soil and produce your own food you begin to understand all the limitations that come with natural abundance; you come to realize that you cannot exhaust the soil year on year (or exhaust yourself). You start to want to buy things differently, particularly handmade, crafted, local or loved products that are made by people rather than corporations. When you develop your own skills and self-mastery you start to recognize and admire the skills of others. You will increasingly notice what’s going on locally and you’ll start to want to buy things differently.

You will always have to buy things in order to grow your own, whether it’s the initial set-up cost of bringing in good compost, repairing old tools or buying new plants and seeds, but by growing your own you will start to recover a proportion of economic responsibility that is not about the boom and bust of cheap commodities sold at the highest prices and made at the lowest (and always at a cost to the earth).

You may also quickly become part of a local network. You’ll find people who will give you animal manure, or swap plants, and people to water your garden when you’re away. You may join community gardens and gardening groups, and generally begin to pay more attention to your community.

Looking after your local surroundings is a pleasing responsibility and brings all sorts of rewards with it. Some of these are obvious – you eat them – but others will only become apparent when you stand back a little.

The New Order

I think this has been a long time coming.

For a while I have kept my subversive gardening thoughts to myself. So I may have put the odd patch of flowers at the end of the vegetable bed (a little whimsy), or left the rocket recklessly to flower (a moment of weakness), or grown clover under the cucumbers – but it could all be seen as just an experiment.

It’s only possible to keep quiet for so long, or in my case until I started to notice others coming out of the wilderness. I’d read about their work on the net, or they’d noticed the way I’d done something, and suddenly we were all admitting our own mildly eccentric growing patterns to each other. At the beginning of the year someone came into my garden and said, ‘Oh I like growing weeds too.’ This was one of the foremost organic gardeners in the country, a woman with not a lazy bone in her green fingers, recognizing that the sterility of traditional growing methods might not work for everyone.

When I was recently brambling (botanical rambling) over the Internet, looking for some fellow polyculture growers, I came across the site Punk Rock Permaculture e-zine. I knew then that things are changing, and rather rapidly. Punk Rock Permaculture is an online magazine dedicated to the cooler side of permaculture. Its tag line is ‘a place to make places better’. Entries have included simple DIY medicinal herb gardens, how to rip up your lawn to grow vegetables, and something called a ‘permaculture geek rap’, a hip-hop rap about how to make the world a healthier place. The point is not so much about the site, though I’d recommend a visit, but that a young man in the US is writing about growing vegetables using a language that absolutely no one would have predicted five years ago – slightly anarchic, a little punkish, it reads more like an album review than a site on environmentalism. Growing vegetables is one part of the way he defines himself, along with bike riding, eco-building, punk folk and cooking veggies. He’s not alone and is part of a growing body of urban growers who are young, hip and cool.

My muddle of flowers and vegetables provides plenty of salads by June. ‘Australian Yellow Leaf’ lettuce contrasts with the reds of ‘Bresson Rouge’ lettuce. Garlic is dotted between the young dwarf beans, and dark leaves of Tuscan black kale provide contrast at the back.

These younger voices have created a breathing space that allows us to step back and look at how we go about growing and talking about food. It’s obvious that there is a way that’s not all straight lines and wide spacing, that’s not necessarily about owning a certain sort of land or being a certain sort of grower. By letting go of some of the formalities of traditional growing, we can begin to express food growing in slightly more romantic, perhaps some would say frivolous, terms.

For the vase: cool blues of eryngiums and opium poppy seed heads in late August.

Call it floral food, edible landscaping, ornamental vegetable gardening, call it what you like, but if you want to grow courgettes in your borders, plant cabbages on roundabouts, grow your lettuce amongst the flowers, if you do the best part of your gardening in bare feet, if your garden isn’t behind your house, then welcome to another way.

Here is how I see it. Why plant any old plant when it could be edible, or useful? Why not replace all those shrubs and small trees in your garden, that give little more than a burst of seasonal interest, with a fruit tree, redcurrants and blueberries? I want a beautifully productive garden that weaves together flowers, fruit and vegetables in a way that mimics natural systems so that nature and I can get along peacefully together. No battles with pests, no need to exhaust the soil, just enough vegetables for my table and enough of everything else to make it balanced. The tallest order is that it has to be an aesthetically pleasing mixture that in time will evolve to be more productive as I grow with it.

HOW TO MIX TREES, EDIBLES AND FLOWERS

From the start I have to admit that there is no plan – no regime, no particular order or rules to abide by, just recommendations. Your own experience teaches you more than anything else, so you will need to take a big breath and leap forward.

First you need to assess what is already in your garden, what it’s worth to you, how productive it is, and what you can change. I have a magnolia tree at the bottom of my garden that does not give me a single thing to eat, but every spring it makes my heart sing as it bursts into flower well before the rest of the garden has woken up. A quince would flower in a similar way, an apple tree would give me lovely flowers as well as a vast amount of fruit, even a hazel would be more productive. But I love that magnolia, it was one of the reasons I bought the house. It stays.

On the other hand Leyland cypress, willow, poplar, ash, large eucalyptus are all huge trees that can rob a garden of productivity. Leyland cypress in particular makes the soil below dry and barren. If you have a large, ugly conifer or a tree that leaves your garden in shade, think about taking it out. You don’t have to remove all existing trees, you can work around lots of them, but if you want fruit trees and vegetables a garden does need to get good light and have soil that is not already filled up with other roots.

If you are going to add fruit trees – and every garden should have at least one – think carefully where to put them. Don’t try to move a tree once you have established it. If you’re not sure of its final destination move it around to a few different locations in the pot that you bought it in, and think about it for a few days before planting it.

Fruit bushes, such as currants and raspberries, need similar thought. Some soft fruit will grow under the canopy of an existing tree, but it will grow tall and thin as it searches for light. If you are establishing young fruit trees and fruit bushes at the same time you also need to think about them competing for space to get their roots established.

PLANTING IN DRIFTS

The flower and vegetable layer of your garden is the easiest to sort out. Other than perennial vegetables, various brassicas and perennial flowers, such as rose bushes, most of the things you’ll plant for an edible landscape will live out their life in a year or less. So there’s always next year to get it right; you can experiment and learn from the lessons. Play around with very short-lived vegetables, such as radish or lettuce. If they didn’t work out in one place try them somewhere else with the next batch: by the end of one season you’ll have a good idea of the best spots.

The one thing you can’t ignore is spacing. All vegetables and flowers have an optimal spacing distance from their neighbours to allow them to grow big, fast. The key is to grow things in drifts. You can take a bare patch of land and sow several different vegetables across it, using the same space for one batch after another, thinning out as they grow. But it is far simpler to grow plants of similar sizes and shapes together in a graceful drift.

A drift is a group of five or more plants of the same variety planted together, generally in a teardrop shape that is thicker in the middle and further apart on the outsides. This planting pattern is not new. The highly influential Arts and Crafts movement designer Gertrude Jekyll was known for her painterly style of planting, using drifts of colour in her gardens. And drifts are what nature does best. Go for a walk in the woods or rubberneck on a train journey and you’ll see wild plants in great drifts, from rosebay willow herb along railway lines to great stands of bluebells in woods. They weave in and out, getting thicker and thinner, but staying together. You occasionally find a few plants dotted around singly, but more often than not they sit around in gangs.

A happy mix: calendula and kale are brilliant contrasts and the flowers bring in plenty of beneficial insects to keep pests off the kale.

Using drifts of vegetables in an edible garden means creating a band of, say, lettuce around a courgette, or a drift of radishes along the edge of large, slower growing vegetables. You can give the majority the spacing they require, making a few compromises around the margins. The microecology of your garden can vary quite considerably, even in a comparatively small space, so any part of your garden can go from relatively damp and shady to hot and sunny in a matter of a few dozen centimetres, rather than metres. Drifts allow you to work with your soil and its conditions, placing sun-lovers in the sun and so on. Much like block plantings (rather than rows), drifts have an advantage over some pests. A straight line of anything a slug likes is fairly easy to ruin, it can just munch its way along it, but a block or drift benefits from safety in numbers. In general, the central plants are held safe, even if the edges are sacrificed.

A weave of red lettuces nestles under a young courgette. The lettuce will be picked before the courgette grows to its full size.

Sunshine and shelter: ‘Brown Turkey’ fig and ‘Brandt’ grape take advantage of my hot patio.

Look for suitable matches for drift planting. Plant taller-growing vegetables with other flowers or vegetables that will benefit (or won’t mind the shade), or exploit different habits by planting deep-rooting carrots with shallow-rooting annual flowers (or vice versa). Sweetcorn is relatively thin and tall and the space around its feet is wasted if nothing is planted there. Courgettes, pumpkins and lower-growing vegetables can all be used as living mulch to keep the soil moist (which is how corn likes it) and to make the most of available space.

Whatever your style of gardening, one of the most challenging aspects to any method of food growing is getting a continuous and varied supply of food. It is quite easy to get a glut of French beans, or have 40 or so lettuces all ready for the table at the same time. The trick is to have just enough for each night, and to know that there will be more tomorrow.

MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR SPACE

In order to fit in as much as possible, which is both pretty and useful, you need to think cleverly about your space. It may just look like a box, but you can think and grow outside of that. Within every garden there are different microclimates, meaning that the temperature, wind, even moisture will change across the space. You can’t grow kiwi or peaches in the middle of most gardens, but if you have a sheltered, sunny (south- or southwest-facing) wall or fence it’s a perfect microclimate for tender fruit. Brick walls are particularly good as bricks absorb heat through the day and release it slowly overnight, keeping the plant that bit warmer.

Most gardens will have spaces you can exploit to your advantage, possibly sunny south-facing corners or sheltered spots against the house for tender fruit, or for coldframes. My garden slopes away from the house and the patio wall is a perfect suntrap. It faces southwest and the patio stands about 1m (40in) above the garden. I grow cucumbers and tomatoes that like the heat against the retaining wall, and come winter I place old windowpanes against the wall to create a simple coldframe for winter greens. Whatever winter sun appears, this wall will catch it so the glass panes will make the most of any possible solar gain.

Vertical gardening: runner beans ‘White Emergo’ are tall plants so make sure you put them where you can reach to pick them.

Along the deliciously hot and sheltered back walls of my patio, I’m growing a vine and fig, both perfectly suited to baking in the midday sun. They’re underplanted with lavenders, thyme and rosemary, all happy in the heat and content with the dry conditions typical beside walls. The soil is thin and not terribly rich, but if I was to add a lot of organic matter to retain moisture and feed the soil I could grow tomatoes, perhaps even aubergines, that would also enjoy this sheltered hot spot.

Baby gherkins start their journey upwards in an old bath. Meanwhile the space below is put to good use with lettuce and a young tomato.

Before planting any fruit trees you must think about when and where the frost comes into your garden. Frost pockets are areas that never thaw out on the coldest days. They are patches of cold air, usually caused by hollows or dips or at the bottom of a slope. Placing an apple tree in a frost pocket probably makes no difference to the tree in late winter, but if that pocket is still there in spring when the tree comes into flower, flowers may be unable to form or may be frosted off.

Wind can be a serious enemy: no plant can thrive if it is constantly beaten by drying harsh winds. Unfortunately, in urban areas this problem is compounded by tall buildings. Wind is driven between them and channelled into streams of air that often can’t escape, so whips round and round, pushed up over solid buildings only to drop down again into the next empty space. The best windbreaks are ones that allow the wind through, but slow it down, rather than impervious barriers. Living windbreaks, such as deciduous trees or hedges, are good, but evergreen trees are more problematic as their foliage can act like a sail, making them vulnerable in very windy conditions. Living windbreaks do, however, compete with other plants for light, nutrients and water.

Robust and fast-growing plants can help reduce wind. Jerusalem artichokes have long been used along the edges of vegetable gardens for this purpose, and sunflowers and sweetcorn can help, though they will probably need staking. You can erect temporary windbreaks, such as the sort you might use on a beach, to protect young crops. Hessian sacking and beach windbreaks can create a protective microclimate.

EXPECTATION OF HARVEST

It is incredibly hard to be self-sufficient in vegetables without dedicating a lot of your time to growing: for that you really have to treat your plot almost like a job. But I get a meal a day through the summer with what I consider little effort. There are times when the garden expects a lot from me, and times when it is undemanding. As I am happiest in my garden, dedicating time to it is an easy and natural thing to do.

We all (even me) need to have reasonable expectations about what can be achieved, both in terms of the space and the time we have available. Be very pleased if you can eat a salad every day you wish. If you can create a whole meal for those that you love from your garden, that is a grand achievement and nothing to be mocked at in your first year. If your space is limited to a balcony, then producing your own fresh and dried herbal tea is inspiring enough, and will make a difference to your bank balance and your footprint.

Even in the most productive gardens it’s hard to avoid hungry gaps; late spring is notoriously difficult when winter greens, kales and cabbages are ending and early summer salads aren’t yet ready. Here I rely, in part, on foraging in my local parks and wilder areas of the city to provide me with nettle soup and wild salads until my garden gets going.

FORAGING

There is a time in any garden when you have to harvest elsewhere, because of the time of year, because you forgot to sow something, you’ve run out of greens or just because the bounty elsewhere is too good to miss. Even within city limits you can pick masses of lovely food for free.

Foraging for anything other than blackberries is not about quantity: wild foods offer small amounts to be gathered here and there. It takes time, it’s about knowing your place – where the best mushrooms appear or where the largest stand of wild strawberries grow. It is deeply satisfying and links us indelibly to the land. Reclaiming parks and wild areas as part of our culinary landscape is important – if you care to eat something, then you care to protect that bit of land and your right to go harvesting. We might even be able to control some rampant plants, such as Japanese knotweed and Himalayan balsam, if more people knew how to eat them.

My earliest memory of wild food is my mother picking young hawthorn leaves with unbelievable glee that spring had arrived. She took me around the garden and pointed out what you could and couldn’t eat, which flowers were full of nectar, which were the sweetest grasses to chew. I took these memories and half-remembered lessons with me when I moved to the city, and each spring I wander with the dog and nibble hawthorn leaves with just as much glee.

SOME RULES OF FORAGING

• Don’t forage in Scientific Interest and National Nature Reserves without the express permission of Natural England.

• On private land you need the permission of the landowner before you can dig or uproot any plant. It is illegal to collect plants or fungi for commercial purposes without the landowner’s permission. However, you can pick (not dig) them up for your own use.

• Certain plants, such as the mint pennyroyal, are protected by law and it is illegal to collect them without a licence.

Not just for eating: collecting comfrey for plant food.

• Be a sustainable forager and only take what you need. Harvest respectfully: seeds and flowers are the plant’s future.

• Understand your poisonous plants. Some plants look edible, but are deadly. Go foraging with someone who knows the difference until you are entirely sure what’s what.

Linden flowers for tea from the small-leaved lime tree.

• Take a good reference book with you.

• Know which stage of the plant you should eat. Understand there are some herbs and wild plants that are fine to eat except if you’re pregnant or breast-feeding.

• Take a good knife, secateurs, gloves and plenty of bags (paper if you’re picking mushrooms as they sweat in plastic).

• Tackle roots cautiously and triple-check identification. If you gather roots, you kill the plant or part of it, so only collect them where there are plenty of plants and only take what you need. Wild horseradish is very strong, so you need less than you’d expect.

• Pick mushrooms extremely cautiously. I am only really happy with a few obvious ones. The rest I leave alone unless I’m with an expert.

• Consider pesticides, herbicides, pollutions and dog pee. Think about all that could, might and will have drifted onto your plants and pick wisely.

In spring young leaves are tender and soft, and your garden is least productive. Pick young nettle leaves, sticky cleavers, ground elder, garlic mustard, dead nettles, and delicious wild garlic or rampions that are only around in spring. I forage my way out of the hungry gap with nettle soups, wild green stir-fries and spring salads. Many balms, dead nettles and red nettles can be eaten into early summer, with pignut and sheep’s sorrel. Late summer and autumn are the seasons of plenty, beginning with wild raspberries, then mahonia berries and Darwin’s berry Berberis darwinii, then the many blackberries, bilberries, sea-buckthorn, guelder rose, elders, sloes, damsons, hawthorn and juniper berries that I bottle, dry and jam for winter supplies.

Sow a line of snapping peas thickly for tender young shoots.

THE NO-DIRT SOLUTION: GROWING IN POTS

It’s one thing to play around with how to grow in the ground, but what if you don’t own a patch to plant into? I have always found growing food in pots easier than in the soil as conditions are controllable, and with good compost, regular watering and good light you can get very good results. One of the joys of growing in pots is that you can move them around. This not only gives them the best possible chance as the season progresses, but you can place plenty of flowers and nectar-rich plants between your vegetables to create an ecology that will attract beneficial insects and pollinators to your pots, or you can grow the two together in large pots.

I also like to try and create a soil ecology within the pots. I often add excess composting worms from the worm bin to larger pots, though the climate within a pot can get rather hot for this sort of worm so you tend to find them congregating at the base of the pot if it all gets a bit much. They need a regular source of organic matter to feed on so don’t overtidy the pot, as dead and dying leaves act as a good source of food. Every time I empty a pot, I am surprised by how many worms I find. They do sterling work, as the soil in pots can get very compacted and soil without enough air is very detrimental to plants. These worms and all the other fauna that follow them create drainage channels that allow air and water to move more freely through the pot. In turn, this promotes deep-rooting plants, which are better able to withstand drought than those rooting near the surface.

An autumn decorative edible display combines red lettuce, kale and violas.

WHAT CONTAINERS CAN YOU GROW IN?

There is no ideal container, it just needs to provide enough room for a decent root run; if it is too shallow or too small the plant will quickly dry out. The cheapest pot is a growbag – a plastic bag filled with potting compost, often formulated for growing vegetables and providing a set amount of food. They tend to be long and shallow and I think a better solution is just to buy a bag of top-quality compost for containers and cut the top off (or lie the bag on its side and cut planting holes in the plastic), make some sort of drainage hole and plant away. Vegetables like cucumber and tomatoes need support – either trellis, manufactured supports or homemade. You may prefer to plant these in pots deep enough to insert canes or pea sticks. Top-quality compost usually has about six weeks’ worth of food, and after that you will have to feed every two weeks or so with liquid feed.

DECORATIVE, EDIBLE VEGETABLES FOR POTS

Many colourful recipes work just as well in pots as they do in the ground.

CONTENTS