Secret Garden Club

This Sunday, November 20, I’ll be taking a Secret Garden Club smoking workshop – food-smoking that is. I’ll be demonstrating techniques for tea-smoking, and hot-smoking a variety of food and vegetables and then I’ll show how to build a simple cold-smoker using everyday materials for a minimal outlay.

This is the first in a series of Secret Garden Club food and gardening workshops and a joint venture with MsMarmiteLover of the Underground Restaurant Supper Club fame. While I’ll be providing the gardening tips and info, MsMarmite will be showing how to turn garden produce into delicious food for attendees to sample. Click here for more details and booking information.

Smoking might not have too much to do with horticulture, although we’ll be using homegrown foodstuffs as far as possible, but we’ll return in December with an alliums masterclass – a discussion of the onion family from chives and garlic to onions and leeks and taking in exotica such as Egyptian walking onions and Walla Walla sweets along the way. We’ll plant out some garlic and harvest some leeks.

In January we have a workshop on herbs and medicinal plants. This session will also look at growing produce in a restricted space – you don't even need a garden to grow herbs – a pot or windowbox will do nicely.

Beating the limitations of a small or non-existent garden will be addressed again in February when we investigate at some ingenious ways to raise potatoes and also in March when we’ll show how to have homegrown salad leave son your doorstep all year round.

The sessions will be informative but informal – there’ll be lots of interaction and lots of time for questions and to discuss your own particular gardening issues. The food and drink will be stellar and there will be goodie bags to take away and inspire you to successfully grow your own however big or small your plot.

Interested? Go to http://www.wegottickets.com/undergroundrestaurant for details of timings and prices. You can also keep in touch with our Secret Garden Club blog which details the sessions as they happen and where you can comment and ask questions.