How to Grow Your Vegetables
Ravishing Runner Beans
Fresh, young runner beans are a gem amongst the many wonderful vegetables available during the British summer. Runner beans have been growing in South America for over 2,000 years, and are a popular garden vegetable in Britain too. Stronger in flavour and coarser in texture than green beans, they are also much longer and have attractive purple beans inside the pods.
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Lovely Lettuce
Lettuce comes in many varieties, colours, shapes and sizes and is the basic must-have vegetable for any salad. They can be grown outdoors from early April onwards, once the ground has had time to warm up for the spring. Lettuce is very versatile and does not take up too much space, so it could be planted around your other vegetables.
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Fantastic Dwarf French Beans
Like all the climbing types, the pods of the dwarf French beans come in a variety of colours all offering different tastes and textures whether eaten freshly picked or taken out of the freezer and cooked.
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Bonza Beetroot
Beetroot is making a comeback. It makes a fantastic colourful addition to a meal whether it’s in a salad or a main dish – some people even use beetroot in cakes or desserts, so it’s very versatile. Gone are the days when you had to eat beetroot out of a jar with strong vinegar to preserve the vegetable. It’s both easy to grow and cook!
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Smashing Spinach
Spinach is always linked to strength and most people think of the cartoon character ‘Popeye’ when they think about this particular vegetable. With its delicate texture and bright green colours, it provides more nutrients than any other food. Although spinach is available throughout the year, its season runs from March through to May and September to October when it’s freshest and has the best flavour.
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Perfect Potatoes
Potatoes are officially the world’s number one most popular vegetable! The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the deadly night shade family. The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well. Potatoes are the world’s fourth largest food crop, following rice, wheat and maize. The potato is grown across the world in a wide variety of conditions.
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Cracking Carrots
The carrot is officially the world’s second most popular vegetable after the potato – according to a survey by the National Trust in 2002, it was number one in England. Of course, everyone associates carrots with the colour orange; however, you can also get and grow carrots in white, yellow, red and maroon. Carrots can be sown in late spring and small carrots will be ready in August.
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Tantalising Tomatoes
Tomatoes come in many shapes, sizes and colours – although you can’t possibly mistake a tomato due to its famous bright red colour. For years, there has been an argument over whether the tomato is a fruit or vegetable. Because the tomato is the ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant: therefore it is a fruit! Mostly people serve tomatoes as part of a salad or main course of a meal.
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Succulent Strawberries
The strawberry is a member of the rose family and is unique in that it is the only fruit with seeds on the outside rather than the inside. Growers from all over the world claim their strawberries are the best. In Wepion, Belgium, ‘The World Capital of Strawberries,’ they even have a museum dedicated solely to this sumptuous red berry.
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Fabulous Cauliflower
Cauliflower comes from the Brassica family and typically only the head (the white curd) is eaten while the stalk and surrounding thick, green leaves are generally discarded. Its name is from Latin caulis and flower, an acknowledgment of its unusual place among a family of food plants which normally produces only leafy greens for eating. There are lots of varieties including the famous purple version.
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Colourful Cabbage
Cabbage is a leafy green vegetable and like the cauliflower part of the Brassica family. It’s normally a mass of compact leaves, usually green in colour but in some varieties it is red or purplish. Cabbage is often added to soups or stews. Cabbage becomes sweeter when cooked and makes a good vegetable addition to meats and other dishes.
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Classy Courgettes
The courgette is a variety of cucurtbit, which means it’s from the same family as cucumber, squash and melon. It is the most popular vegetable of the squash family, being extremely versatile, tender and easy to cook. Just don’t boil them! They have a deep green skin with firm pale flesh and are also known as zucchini.
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Luscious Leeks
The leek is related to the onion and garlic family. The edible portions of the leek are the white onion base and light green stalk. The onion-like layers form around a core. The tender core may be eaten; but, as the leek ages, the core becomes woody and very chewy and is better replanted than eaten.
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