The Life of a Kitchen Gardener

I was introduced to the wonderful world of nurturing, picking and eating homegrown produce when I was a child. I don't remember giving a second thought to growing food during my late teens; then I got my first home with a garden. It will come as no surprise to veggie growers to learn that I swiftly replaced the overgrown low maintenance planting with higher maintenance, but hugely rewarding edibles. An allotment soon followed. It was a neglected plot. Bringing it back into full production was extremely hard work, but every particle of soil reclaimed from the tenacious grip of couch grass meant more space for growing glorious food.

Over the years my love for growing and eating homegrown produce has not diminished, but the assortment of crops I grow has changed. When I became a parent to three children under three years old, I stopped growing anything requiring too much attention in the kitchen. Podding peas became a thing of the past, while strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, okra and peppers were grown in great numbers. I also embraced potatoes in pots, not because I was short of space, but because rooting around for spuds in a container is far quicker (and safer) than finding a fork and digging up potatoes with three hungry children trailing in your wake. The potatoes also came out cleaner than they did when lifted from the soil, which sped up the whole process of food preparation considerably.

As our children grew older I added their favourite foods to the mix. Shiny aubergines, asparagus, purple beans and sweetcorn were welcomed into the greenhouse and onto the plot. Our strawberry patch expanded and raspberries were given a free rein to walk wherever they pleased, so long as they fruited. At harvest time the children would run excitedly to the kitchen garden with their friends and delight in picking great bowlfuls of juicy tomatoes and succulent strawberries warm from the sun. Harvesting crops was a novelty for some of their friends. I hope that they will remember those sunny days of childhood and try growing food for themselves one day.

Now our children are teenagers with busy lives. For most of the year they barely have the time to notice that their food may have travelled only a matter of metres from the patch to their plate, but then in summer, when school’s out, I see them helping themselves to fruit from the kitchen garden or picking a salad for lunch.

For the past two years one of our children has grown chillies on her bedroom windowsill. She also has an ever-extending collection of cacti. May this be the start of a lifelong love of gardening for her. Our youngest teen likes to see flowers in the house. I am hoping that our new cutting garden will inspire her. As for me, I will be found in the vegetable garden, trying out new crops and looking forward to that point in summer when the school closes its doors and our children remember where their food comes from. 

I Wish I Could Be Like Monty Don

As sure as night follows day, the asparagus knife will go missing just as those succulent shoots are ready for harvesting. It spends much of its life lurking in the shed, making all who enter feel miserable about its lack of use and the associated lack of asparagus, then as soon as the cropping season is upon us, the knife goes AWOL. At this point, I ought to insert a photo of asparagus peeping enticingly through the soil, but having harvested it with a kitchen knife (again) and devoured it with the Easter egg hunt (again), you will have to make do with a quince. 

The Orchard at Le Grys Farm

I have a similar problem with seeds which should be sown in April (no, I don't eat them too). I spend the entire month of March looking at them and virtuously resisting the urge to sow them, then as soon as we hit April, all the packets of seeds go on a merry jaunt with the asparagus knife. This year, after two weeks of hide and seek, I have finally conceded defeat and am off to purchase new seeds today (along with another Easter egg hunt), after which the old seeds will leap out from behind a cushion or some other seed-concealing home furnishing, giggling wildly at my hapless attempts at finding them and squealing, “we were here all the time!”

'Stella' Cherry Blossom 

I know everything has its place, but herding it into its home can be a monumental effort involving massive quantities of self-restraint (a quality I appear to have mislaid along with the asparagus knife). I have seed containers arranged by the month à la Sarah Raven, but brand new shiny seed packets need to be read, admired, shuffled and chewed over, not filed away sensibly where I can actually find them. 

All March and no April

I wish I could be like Monty Don with his perfectly arranged shed filled with sharp secateurs and tidy trowels arranged in height order. Instead I have a pigsty (literally as well as figuratively) where the only things I can find with any regularity are roller blades and bicycles (neither of which appear to be of any use when cultivating a garden - although you may disagree).

Fritillaria meleagris in the orchard

So I have decided to give myself a Christmas present of an organised potting shed. No I haven’t won the lottery; the shed is an existing piggery and I shall attach hooks and well-positioned nails to create a home for all those myriad lost items. Then all I have to do is find the missing garden tools, hang them on their appointed brackets and use the reclaimed hide-and-seek-in-a-fluster time for actual gardening. 

Apple blossom

A few nails in a wall isn’t a major DIY project and once I start moving things into their new homes, old friends such as the long-lost loppers will hopefully come out from their hibernation behind the stack of tangled spring rakes. So why isn't this an Easter present? The truth is that I have more pressing business to attend to this weekend. There are seeds to sow; plants to plant; and a whole lot of chocolate to find.

Wishing you a very happy Easter. 


P.S. My humblest apologies if you are happily sowing your beans this weekend and humming a certain Jam song with David Watts replaced by Monty Don. It's small consolation I know, but the song is reeling round my head as I type. 

Eating Opportunities

It might have done wonders for Novak Djokovic's tennis, but a gluten-free diet has done little for my sporting prowess. It has, however, led to the discovery that pancakes made with gluten-free flour are excellent. My harshest critics - the kids and their friends - agree, so it must be true.


It's a similar story with crumble. A former passionate consumer of oaty crumbles, I am now a gluten-free crumble topping devotee. Even if I didn't have coeliac disease (I do), I would love gluten-free crumble. It is not challenging to make, I just change the flour in an oat-free crumble recipe. It is more akin to shortbread than crumble and is, quite simply, the dog's doodahs. 


I’m not saying it will improve your tennis. To be honest, I don’t even know if Novak Djokovic eats crumble and I am certainly in no position to comment on whether he is partial to a rhubarb one. But since the rhubarb season is upon us, we are blessed with an additional excuse (were it needed) to enjoy a bowl of crumble.

This year I won’t be picking any of the rhubarb I brought with me to Norfolk as it needs to recover from the rigours of the move. Happily though, I have access to my old kitchen garden in Essex and have been filling my boots with rhubarb and asparagus.

Our asparagus bed was planted with four varieties to prolong the cropping season and it is wonderfully productive. Some people are put off by the length of time it takes to establish an asparagus bed. For me though, if I hope to live somewhere for more than three or four years, in goes the asparagus. 

We have no asparagus here in Norfolk, so I will plant a new bed with one-year-old crowns this month. Then will come the long, but worthwhile wait for a harvest. This means not cutting any spears the following Spring, which is more than anyone burdened with a serious deficit in the self-control department can stand. So, for a strong hybrid, I will naughtily sneak one or two precious spears while no one is looking and then resume my saintly gardener stance and join the rest of the family in waiting patiently for the crowns to establish. 

The following year, I should be able to harvest succulent spears for about six weeks and the year after that, I - and anyone else who comes near the farm - will get down to some serious asparagus-devouring until late June.

A more immediate eating opportunity (I hope), will be the arrival of our new chickens' first eggs. Every cluck sends me scurrying into the garden lest it should herald that all-important inaugural egg.  


No pressure, girls.