Thread: Nothing tastes better than fresh produce eaten at once

Nothing tastes better than fresh produce eaten at once

Dan Pearson
Sunday May 18, 2008
The Observer

So many people are excited by growing their own vegetables that back gardens are being dug up as though we are digging for victory.
One friend, whose husband discouraged her from getting an allotment because he feared a resulting rift in their marriage, dug up the lawn instead and now the kids are at it, too. Waiting lists for allotments have never been longer - 12 years in some London boroughs. Is it the organic movement and the knowledge that if you grow your own, you control what goes into and on to the plant? Or is it that you can avoid air miles, packaging and trips to the supermarket?

One thing is certain is that there is nothing like the alchemy of nurturing a plant from seed to fruition, and nothing tastes better than when produce is picked fresh and eaten immediately. Buttery new potatoes with a pinch of mint; the squeaky snap of French beans or the aroma of a warm tomato - these are luxuries that once sampled are hard to turn your back on.
Getting started is easy as long as you have a sunny corner and the commitment to follow through. Vegetable growing is cheap in terms of raw materials, but time-consuming. You have to be there from the moment the seed is covered with earth, through the thinning, weeding, watering, staking and constant vigil against pests and diseases. It's all part of the sport and never time wasted once you get the bug.

If space is limited, you can grow tomatoes or runner beans in pots or growbags, cut-and-come-again salad and herbs in a window box, potatoes in a dustbin. No time is better than now to get on with it, for we have warmth ahead of us and most vegetables need sunshine in our damp British climate. I'd always recommend using a loam-based compost or recycled green waste, which avoids using peat. It's worth including in the shopping trolley a bottle of liquid seaweed, a great all-round fertiliser and ideal if you want to garden organically.

If you have ground available, make sure it is not overhung by trees. Salad crops such as lettuce, rocket, flat-leaved parsley and mizuna mustard seeds like a little protection from the midday sun but, on the whole, heat and water are the raw ingredients for alchemy.

The inclusion of organic matter is a key factor in holding moisture in your ground rather than to have to over-apply water, another resource we need to conserve. If you can get hold of it, digging in plenty of compost or manure will pay you back tenfold, as vegetables like to live well. 'A pound on the hole and a penny on the plant,' is a saying that comes from years of gardeners knowing that the greater sum of success is in the preparation.

Vegetable gardens are not simply productive spaces and, in my eyes, the gaps in the rows of lettuce are never like gaps in teeth. They represent harvest and production and a lot of satisfaction along the way.

Vegetables are also beautiful. A wigwam of scarlet-flowered runner beans or inky Blue Lake climbing French are handsome things and remember that tomatoes were first introduced as ornamentals and you will start to see beauty in the beds.

A yellow fruiting courgette, ruby chard or crinkled cavolo nero is just as ornamental as any flower in a flower garden and, teamed up with tagetes to keep the whitefly off the tomatoes, nasturtium, calendula and heartsease for their edible flowers, you rapidly learn that there is as much joy in the end product as there is in the doing.

· Read more by Dan Pearson at blogs.guardian.co.uk/allotment

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/gar ... %2C00.html

GROWING YOUR OWN FOOD IS PRETTY EASY AND TASTES GREAT. IT CAN BE DONE IN CONTAINERS EVEN WITH LIMITED SPACE. GROW LIGHTS CAN COMPENSATE FOR LIMITED LIGHT.

GROW LIGHTS ONLY COST 25 BUCKS FOR THE 60 WATT SIZE....INCLUDING THE LAMP. IT IS POSSIBLE TO GROW ALL YOUR VEGGIES INDOORS IN CONTAINERS. PLANTS SUCH AS STRAWBERRIES AND BLUBERRIES ARE BEAUTIFUL HOUSE PLANTS....AND YOU CAN EAT THEM. A CONTAINER OF MIXED GREENS IS A GREAT WAY TO "GROW YOUR OWN SALAD". AND INDOOR GARDENS WITH GROW LIGHTS CAN KEEP YOUR GARDEN GOING THROUGH THE WINTER. I HOPE HOME VEGGIE GARDENS CATCH ON.