Waking up in the sun

After what seems like weeks of wind and cold and rain, it only takes a couple of sunny days and suddenly it looks as though we might get some produce this year.

These are tree onions, or Egyptian walking onions, which is a much more exotic name by far.
These edible bulblets are produced at the top of the stems.

Walla Walla sweet onions, grown from seed, beginning to swell at last.

These Quattro Stagione lettuces have been looking like limp flattened seedlings, but are now finally beginning to heart up.

Little Gems are also putting on new growth fast.

Last week they were immature white buds; this week, we have raspberries!

Hosts of strawberries hang down over the side of the raised bed.

Purple-podded mange tout peas need another couple of weeks before they're ready to eat, I think.

Can you beat the blight?

The tomato plants look gorgeous at this time of year. Green, sturdy, in flower with the first truss just setting. It's always hard to imagine in June that in a few short weeks these lovely healthy plants could be a mass of sooty rotting foliage, as the blight hits.

This year, with the cool, rainy, windy weather battering our gardens, there have been reports of blight already. The RHS reported some early confirmed cases of early tomato blight on its Facebook page on June 14th, and then last week it came closer to home, with two gardening friends of mine in London reporting blight on their tomato plants.

That might seem just unlucky, except that in this particular case I discovered that the affected plants had been bought from the same nursery. And that in one case, these blighted tomatoes had been planted out next to tomato plants raised from seed and that the home-reared plants were still healthy.

I can think of no better argument for knowing the provenance of your plants and, wherever possible, starting from seed. You can control the growing medium, the environment, the feeding, the watering ...

Tomato blight: blackened stems, sooty-looking leaves, brown
patches on the fruit.

In the case of tomatoes, the arrival of blight in the UK is a case of 'when', not 'if' and even with the best of care, I reckon outdoor grown tomatoes in Britain will get blight sooner or later. But the middle of June is a bit too early to have to consign one's tomato plants to the incinerator.

Since I started growing tomatoes outdoors 15 years ago, there has been roughly one year in five where the plants have either escaped blight or it has arrived late enough to enable us to harvest a proper crop beforehand. 2002 was a blight-free year, as was 2006. (It's not that I keep meticulous records, but I remember these years particularly: 2002 was the first year I had my allotment and the tomatoes were about the only crop I had time to plant out and grow successfully; in 2006 we were staying with friends and bringing home bowlfuls of tomatoes every day. "I never knew growing tomatoes was so easy," they would say. "It isn't, usually," I would mutter back.)

Tomato blight has always seemed to be unavoidable. And once you've got it, you've got it. However, this year and especially when I was researching tomatoes for the Secret Garden Club workshop on Mediterranean vegetables back in April, I've thought a lot more about how one might increase the chances of avoiding blight in the first place.

Red Alert: can ripen in June

1. Grow early varieties, like Red Alert. They should start fruiting before the end of June, even grown outside (disclaimer: not this year, we have a few immature fruits the size of olives so far); normally you wouldn't expect blight until July so you would hope for a month's worth of cropping.

2. Grow as far away as possible from other tomatoes. If you have any sort of choice.

3. Grow in fresh soil. This is where I suspect the problems lie with the garden centre that my neighbours shopped at - as described above. Growing in fresh compost is essential, and I think, unwillingly, growing in pots or growbags rather than the open ground is desirable. And if you use pots, these should be thoroughly cleaned and rinsed before filling for the tomatoes. Greenhouse tomatoes tend to fare better than those grown outdoors, although I'm reluctant to give up outdoor tomatoes altogether. (I don't have the indoor space, for one thing.)

Sungold tomatoes beginning to ripen

4. Don't be so keen to pinch out those side shoots. If you grow cordon-style tomatoes, such as Sungold, Ailsa Craig, Tigerella, the advice is always to pinch out the shoots that grow between the main stem and the leaf stems. Leave them in, they say, and the plant will become wildly bushy and grow a mass of leaf at the expense of fruit. Over the years though I've come to think that maybe the over-enthusiastic pruning of side shoots is unhelpful. Every cut creates a wound; every wound is an opening into which blight can penetrate. My most blight-resistant tomato ever was Broad Ripple Yellow Currant, a bush variety which tumbled about all over the place, but which never succumbed to blight. Last year I semi-forgot about trimming a Marmande (semi-indeterminate, or not-quite-cordon) in the greenhouse and while everything around it eventually turned black and crumbled, the Marmande soldiered on. I'm sure it would have produced more fruit if I had pinched, and pruned, but we were still picking tomatoes off the plant in early December. (Although a Marmande that ripens in November tastes nothing like a Marmande that ripens in August.) I can't find any references that suggest bush or untrimmed varieties are more blight-resistant; this is anecdotal evidence only.

5. Try grafted tomatoes, or even better, graft your own. This is my secret weapon in the battle against tomato blight. The idea is that you take the top of one tomato variety and graft it to the root and stem of another - with tomatoes you would choose a 'top', or scion to give it its proper name, which would give you lots of delicious fruit, and a root and stem, or 'rootstock', which is known to be disease resistant. The rootstock confers this resistance to the scion, which continues to produce its delicious fruit as before. In other words, you get the best of both worlds.

Fruit growers have been grafting for decades, although more usually in their case, the rootstock is chosen to control the size of the mature tree. This is how you are able to grow apple or pear trees, say, which never grow taller than 8-9ft and yet are laden with fruit. The apple or pear tree 'top' has been grafted on to the rootstock of a much smaller tree (often in the case of apples and pears, a quince rootstock, as it happens).

Tomato grafting is fiddly rather than difficult. We showed Secret Garden Club attendees back in April how to graft tomatoes - detailed photos and instructions are here - and the initial results are looking good. I'm already planning to graft more tomatoes next year to give them more of a chance to beat the blight.

Any more blight-beating tips would be most welcome - I suspect a combination of tactics is the strategy that will work best.

Kailans - gorgeous greens worth tracking down

I harvested the first of the kailans, this week. Slightly later than usual but then everything is shaping up to be 'slightly later' this year. This has been a must-grow crop for me ever since I discovered how unobtainable they are in the UK after feasting on them during a trip to Singapore in the 1990s.

Kailans are a type of brassica with thick juicy stems, deep green leaves and a small head of florets. Joy Larkcom calls it Chinese broccoli in her essential text Grow Your Own Vegetables and certainly in looks they are closest to the type of broccoli sold as 'tenderstem' by Waitrose and others. Not the same, though. Kailan stems have a distinctly nutty mustardy flavour. It makes other types of broccoli seem bland in comparison.

It's not totally unobtainable in the UK. There's usually a crate of kailans set outside the Loon Fung supermarket in London's Chinatown and the New Loon Moon on the other side of the street. But that's the only reliable source of supply I've found other than growing my own - if you know of a UK supplier, do please share the secret.

Despite being mainly thought of as an oriental vegetable, they grow much like any other brassica here in the UK. I sow the seeds indoors in modules in March, then slowly harden them off as they grow, moving them out of the propagator as they germinate on to a sunny windowsill, then into the patio greenhouse and finally, around four weeks after the shoots appeared, outside.

Once they are about three inches tall and with proper leaves, I transplant the seedlings into a raised bed with lots of good compost. The first stems are ready to cut after about six weeks. If you leave a good bit of stem and leaf on the plant when you cut, the stem will regrow, making kailans a reliable cut-and-come-again crop. Harvested regularly, each plant will keep going until the first frosts.

Kailans growing in a raised bed

Once the stems are in the kitchen, I tend to cook them very simply.The big tough foliage needs to be trimmed off, leaving a good plump stem plus the younger, smaller leaves. A quick wash and a shake to dislodge any clinging insects and then they can be either steamed or boiled briefly - I like to leave a bit of crunch in the stalks. 

The Chinese often drizzle oyster sauce over kailans; in Singapore I ate them dressed with garlic in oil. Either of these are good, as is a quick slug of soy sauce and sesame oil. Yesterday I smeared the stems with an anchovy butter which I'd originally made for the last of the asparagus: the savoury bite from the anchovies went well with the nutty taste of the kailans.

Fat stems: cut above the first four leaves
shown here to ensure the plant will regrow
to provide you with another harvest.

The trouble with radishes

Why does growing radishes give me so much trouble? Children grow radishes, for heaven's sake. They're the sort of crop you just drop in the ground to pop up quickly while everything else takes its time. Radishes are known as an catch crop or a marker crop, the latter especially with parsnips which can be slow and erratic. The faster-growing row of radishes 'marks' the row of parsnips, helps to keep it weed-free and - in theory - provides a quick harvest while the parsnips are still pondering germination.

And yet they give me endless trouble. They don't like my clay soil for a start and would prefer something more sandy and freer-draining. Their leaves are pockmarked by flea beetle: by the time I harvest the effect is like delicate lacework. The slightest check in growth and off they bolt, leaving a thick stem with a woody  stub of a radish at the end of it. Last month's spell of fine dry weather following the record-breaking wet April is a good case in point and I'm writing this after coming in from lifting a good three quarters of the first radish sowing - all bolted.

Radish leaves reduced to holes, complete with flea beetle - in the centre of the picture.

I usually make three radish sowings: in March in a sheltered raised bed. I get to March and I long to be able to put something in the ground and radishes seem to fit the bill. The second sowing in April are the parsnip marker rows. Hearteningly, this year's April sowing is shaping up quite well, especially welcome after losing so many of the first lot. The third set, in May, is always totally hit and miss. Mostly miss.

And yet I will persevere with radishes. Partly because, yes, they are quick to mature. If they're going to fail, they fail quickly and I don't feel I have invested too much time and space and hope on them. And partly because the ones that do slip through the net are well worth it. Home-grown radishes have a much stronger, more well-rounded flavour making shop-bought ones bland in comparison. They're so attractive on the plate - I always get a delicious sense of anticipation from a dish of ruby and crimson radishes. I've tried white varieties such as Ping Pong and the Polish yellow radish Zlata without much success: alongside the standard French Breakfast, I would rate Scarlet Globe and Amethyst the highest, although Amethyst is a bit of a bolter. All these three have a strong clean flavour, plenty of crunch and that all-important peppery kick to the taste.

The leaves may be beetle-bitten, but these radishes are still good to eat, if a bit misshapen.

Pumpkins - up or down?

Squash and pumpkins will expand to fill the available space, I find. If you put them in the garden they will run riot all over the garden. If you put them in the allotment then by September you'll find pumpkin stems and leaves trailing across all your beds.

My preferred solution has always been to train them upwards: to give them a climbing frame such as 10cm plastic mesh secured with bamboo canes. With a little initial encouragement and tying in, the plants soon get the idea and ramble upwards instead of out towards the neighbouring plot. I have indeed seen someone use an actual climbing frame, presumably one the kids had grown out of, for this purpose very successfully, but plastic mesh and bamboo will stand up to the task remarkably well.

Trained upwards, the fruit will hang down from sturdy stems. Off the ground, they stay clean and safe from slug damage.

This year, however, I need the squash to trail along the ground. I'm growing them as the Native Americans traditionally did, alongside climbing beans and sweetcorn in a companion planting partnership known as the Three Sisters. The sweetcorn provides a sturdy stem for the beans to scramble up; the broad-leaved squash will provide ground cover, suppressing weed growth and reducing water loss by evaporation.

Sowing squash seeds, each one sown 2cm deep in well-watered compost. These survived the cat inspection.

Once all the fruit have been harvested from each of the plants, the green matter can be dug back into the soil for the next year's crop. As well as nutrients from the gradually decomposing greenery, the beans will also fix nitrogen from their roots to feed the soil for the following months. 

Left on the ground, the plants will spread outwards and act as a weed suppressant.

Slipping a bathroom tile under the developing fruit will keep them some protection from the bare earth. 

The Three Sisters and other companion planting schemes is the subject of our next Secret Garden Club workshop on Sunday May 27. We'll be explaining how to adapt the traditional Three Sisters planting to the cooler, more unpredictable British climate, and how to grow specific plants together to deter pests. MsMarmiteLover is devising a Cherokee-inspired feast to follow the planting session. Click here for details and how to book tickets.

The case for organic food

Why I love Organic kicked off its Organic – Naturally Different campaign with a debate and dinner at the Toynbee Hall in London, attended by a number of leading voices in the organic field, including Craig Sams and Jo Fairley, the founders of Green & Blacks, Helen Browning, the CEO of the Soil Association, and Jeanette Longfield, co-ordinator of Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming.  John Craven of Countryfile (although he’ll always be synonymous with Newsround to me) chaired the meeting ably and genially.

On the pro-organic side of the debate, Mercury Prizewinning rapper Speech Debelle was an engaging champion for home-growing and local shopping. Craig Sams’ impressive command of detail, particularly over global land loss after years of intensive farming and the comparative sustainability of organic practice, met with an appreciative audience in a room that broadly agreed with him.

Dissent of a rather half-hearted nature was provided by the so-called 'sceptics': food writer James Ramsden and The Guardian's Oliver Thring. Neither of them appeared to be much against organic food – that would be a fairly difficult stand to take – so were reduced to objecting that it was expensive. 

Although billed as a debate, there was no robust ‘This House Believes That …’ to be contested. Unsurprisingly perhaps, there was no-one to speak up for the use of artificial pesticides and fertilisers, and no-one to champion genetic modification. Beyond essaying that there wasn’t enough food to go round and that more people needed to be working the land whether organically or not, the ‘debate’ about organic food appears to be won; what remains is how best to  make organic food the norm and affordable.

The discussion from the floor shifted, perhaps inevitably, to the need for a change in food culture (and observations that the French food culture so often held up by the Brits as a model is now in serious decline), to rely less on meat, and the proposal, which had some support from the floor and from the panel, that food labelling for non-organic food should be as stringent as that for organic. That it should say exactly what the food had been sprayed or treated with and how many times. I reckon you could watch sales of organic food rocket after that.

Following the formal debate, discussion spilled over into dinner, a sumptuous organic feast designed and cooked byMsMarmiteLover:

Salmagundi of vegetables, herbs and edible flowers

Hand made Burrata with tarragon salad and pomegranate seeds.

Asparagus mimosa with pansies

Dover Sole en papillote with home-grown kumquats and samphire

Ginger and mint new potatoes

British cheese selection with biscuits, organic walnuts and almonds, chutneys

British iced 'fancies':

Chocolate and beetroot cake topped with candied beetroot

Courgette and poppy seed cake topped with candied courgette

Carrot cake topped with candied carrot

Left, hand-made burrata; right, salmagundi

British iced fancies

Growing ginger: progress notes

Those fresh ginger roots which I bought from a local mini-mart and buried in compost back in February have now outgrown their first 12cm pots, with roots protruding from the drainage holes at the bottom and the plants themselves about 60cm tall. I repotted them at the weekend into 20cm pots and have moved them to another sunny windowsill where they have more space.

As it is still so cold outside, especially at night, I'm not thinking of moving them out of the house anytime soon.

Most of the books and websites I've consulted suggest that I'll be lucky to get anything much in the way of new rhizome growth that I can call a crop, so for the time being I shall just enjoy the plants, which look very stately with their tall, upright bearing and slim leaves.