Grow Your Own
Chef Skye Gyngell's favourite homegrown herbs, plus tips for growing, harvesting and cooking.
Chef Skye Gyngell and gardener Lucy Boyd from Petersham Nurseries share tips on growing the best salad vegetables at home.
Garden centres will supply seeds and seedlings, but for more unusual varieties look online. Here are a few recommended websites.
Top tips on nurturing your growing kitchen.
"The produce of summer is glorious – and courgettes, peas and broad beans are among the finest,” says chef Skye Gyngell. We're right behind you, Skye.
Vegetables grown in containers will need to be kept well watered...
Your soft fruit garden
Berries and soft fruit are delicious, nutritious and really easy to grow at home, explains chef Skye Gyngell.
Soft fruits take up very little space, and are a low maintenance growing option. Why not set aside a sunny corner of your patio or balcony to grow two of Skye’s favourite soft fruits, strawberries and blueberries, both of which are easy to grow in containers.
STRAWBERRIES
Nothing
says summer like strawberries, and they are the easiest plants to grow.
At Petersham they are grown in little pots, covered with a cage, but
you can push the plants into an old brick wall where the bricks have
eroded. They’re fabulous for little kids to pick too. Alpine
strawberries are expensive to buy, and great to use in salads, while
Honeoye, Mara des Bois and Darlisette are great options, all boasting
fabulous flavours.
Growing:
Either plant rooted runners in autumn to produce a crop the following
summer, or buy frozen plants (their growth has been suspended by
freezing) from late spring to mid-summer, which will produce a crop
within 60 days of planting.
Put into 20cm pots filled with
multi-purpose compost, ensuring the crown of the plant is completey
level with the surface of the compost.
Water regularly, but don’t soak.
When the flowers appear, feed weekly with a high potash feed until the
fruit starts to turn red.
Harvesting: Pick when ripe. After harvesting, trim the leaves to the crown.
BLUEBERRIES
Blueberries can be expensive to buy, making them well worth growing. They are bursting with nutrients and flavour, and especially delicious in pies, muffins, fools, or simply eaten freshly picked. Try Sunshine Blue, Top Hat and Blue Crop varieties.
Growing: Blueberries have a shallow root system, making them ideal container plants. Plant blueberry bushes in spring in 30cm-40cm pots filled with ericaceous (acidic) compost.
Put in a sunny, sheltered spot and as the buds swell before flowering, feed with an ericaceous fertiliser and water well.
When the berries begin to appear in summer, protect them with bird netting and wait until ready to harvest. Protect pots from the cold in winter with a layer of bubble wrap or horticultural fleece.
This is also the time to prune. First remove the soft shoots growing from the base of the plant, then cut back shoots that have previously flowered. Finish by removing any dead growth.
Harvesting: Harvest when the fruit is plump and blue.