Next weekend, Stoneleigh Park, in Warwickshire, is hosting what it says is the first show devoted to home produce. Riding on a wave of enthusiasm for growing your own, the Edible Garden Show has more than 100 exhibitors devoted to the good life.
Recent research by the Horticultural Trade Association shows that 43% of adults with a garden are now raising fruit and vegetables, compared with 34% in 2007. At a London horticultural trade show last month, it was obvious that suppliers of gardening kit are convinced the trend is here to stay. Flowers hardly got a look-in among the raised-bed kits, “retro” vegetable seed ranges, cloches and ingenious ways to raise plants in the tiniest of spaces. They’ve cottoned on to the fact that even those with only a minute back garden, patio, balcony or window box are keen to raise their own radishes and want to do so as stylishly as possible — after all, everything is going to be on view from the house.
Small is now beautiful, certainly in marketing terms — you can buy a dinky bag of five Jamie Oliver seed potatoes from Homebase (£1.99) to plant in your multistorey potato grow pot from Lakeland (£19.99; 015394 88100, lakeland.co.uk). For those with limited space, there are miniature greenhouses that can be dismantled (from £51; crocus.co.uk), and pop-up protective cages and cloches that will fold down to the size of a Frisbee at the end of the season (from £7; gardenskill.com).
So, what should we grow? Lucas Hollweg, Sunday Times Style’s resident cook, suggests that, at the least, you grow herbs to flavour your cooking. If confined to containers, rosemary, oregano and thyme will not need too much attention; and, being perennial, they will last from year to year.
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Even a bay tree will be happy in a pot. Dill, chervil, tarragon, fennel and sorrel provide flavour that is as good added to salads (cut-and-come-again varieties of these can be cropped over a long period), as to cooked dishes. As for basil, more is more — a few leaves are handy for embellishing your tomato salad, but Hollweg says that you’ll need a big pot of the stuff if you want to make pesto — “You can get through a whole plant in one go.”
Don’t be too rigid about dividing plants into strict categories, either, as many edible plants are beautiful. Climbing beans come in yellow, purple, pink and white-speckled varieties, as well as green; lettuces can be tinged with pink, speckled, frilly- or oak-leaved; fennel leaves make frothy foils to tall plants in the border; while small fruit trees provide blossom and autumn colour, as well as crops. Flowers can be added to your dinner, too — from marigolds, borage and nasturtiums in a salad to rose petals and lavender in puddings.
Lucas Hollweg’s Good Things to Eat is published at the end of April (Collins £20)
Ready to plant?
Helen Bostock, horticultural advisor at RHS Wisley in Surrey gives us her top five tips for people preparing a kitchen garden.
1. If you haven’t a garden or much space of your own, get your name down on a list for an allotment.
They are so cheap and so in demand, you need to sign up quickly - the wait can be as much as 40 years. Alternatively, look into local land share schemes. Chef Hugh hearnley-Whittingstall launched his own national scheme (www.landshare.net) in 2008 and it now has has almost 60,000 members.
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2. Only grow things you actually want to eat.
Sounds obvious but if you’re not a big broccoli fan there’s little point in growing a whole row of the stuff! Plus you won't be as bothered with taking care of the plant as much. However, the more love and care you take the better quality the produce you get at the end will be.
3. Start off with easy, rewarding vegetables such as tomatoes, lettuce and rocket.
These are three of the best growing things you can plant in your kitchen garden. Rocket keeps growing throughout the season, giving you new greens to use in salads with relatively little effort. The same goes for tomatoes, as long as you remember to water them and some lettuces can be picked extremely soon after sowing, so you don't have to wait around to reap the rewards of your hard work. You can always move onto the more adventurous things like cauliflower when you’ve got a few basics under your belt.
4. If there’s room on the plot, invest in some asparagus crowns.
These take a few years before you can start to harvest but the sooner you plant them, the sooner you can enjoy lovely fresh spears of asparagus. And, because asparagus is a relatively expensive vegetable (and delicious so you'll eat lots) you are making a good saving.
5. Don’t be put off by the idea of growing fruit
A growbag with some strawberries in or a couple of pots of blueberries are very easy to manage and make for delicious summer desserts - or just a sugar boost whilst you're out in the sunshine.