- Hello, and a very warm welcome back to the garden.
It's currently March,
and it's that big transition out of winter
and spring coming up.
It isn't quite time to properly get on with everything,
but there are actually a lot of quite surprising harvests
that you might have in the ground
that you might not be making the most of,
especially ones that are gonna help you
cover the hungry gap.
I'm also gonna talk about key timings
in terms of sowing some of your staple crops
and some of the jobs that are really important to do
during this month.
We'll start off in the solar tunnel,
and a lot of the winter crops are starting to run to seed.
This is a Chinese salad cabbage.
It tastes amazing.
We can see these little flower heads appearing.
Now, flower heads of these brassicas
are one of my favorite things about spring,
and also the hungry gap,
'cause there's a lot of sweetness in the tops of these
and there's a lot of plants that offer these tops
that we can enjoy.
So even though these are running to seed,
you don't get the bitterness in the leaves.
They still taste amazing,
and these tops are absolutely delicious,
whether you want to eat them raw or lightly pan fry them.
This part of the solar tunnel smells amazing
because this thing is flowering.
Can you guess what it is?
It's pak choi, and ah, honestly,
it just, it smells of summer in here and it looks beautiful.
And actually, on a warmer day, hoverflies and bees
love going for these kind of brassica flowers.
So even though, again, you can eat these tops,
these yellow flowers are so delicate and beautiful
and you can use 'em to decorate some of the salads
that you're perhaps making
with the end of your winter greens.
And I just think that just sometimes
letting a vegetable do its thing
and observing what happens can yield such beautiful results,
and it's very precious to see
this kind of color at the start of March.
In March, I like to really gradually ease into seed sowing.
My core months of seed sowing are very much April
and I think May is the crescendo of seed sowing for me,
'cause you can start almost everything,
apart from say tomatoes or peppers.
It's a bit late for them.
So right now we've got these shelving units.
We've got lots of peas coming through,
we've got lots of onions coming through,
we've got some radish, we've got some beetroot.
Also other things, such as some broccoli,
just so we can start getting and building up
the seedling production,
because these onions will be going out
in about a week or two.
These peas are gonna be going
into the polycrub and perhaps into here
so we can start getting
that nice early harvest of garden peas,
which is such a beautiful welcome to a new growing season.
This kale plant in front of me here is a red Russian kale,
and it's been blown over and blown around
because of all of the storms and winds
we've been having over winter.
But what's happened is that somehow, by going on the side,
it has seemed to have shocked it
to form a load of shoots coming up.
So these are all different flower shoots,
and they're all completely edible.
You can just chop them up.
There's a lot here,
and it's quite amazing to see this flourish
that has happened from them growing almost on their side.
So Sam was saying earlier that what if we actually grew
red Russian kale on purpose at an angle like that?
So we can both make the most of perhaps pathway space
and also have more of that special crop of the kale flowers.
And also it looks pretty striking.
I love it.
It's like a forest of kale shoots.
In front of me here are two crops.
I've got beetroot.
It is actually lasting the winter pretty well.
It's bolt hardy.
You can eat the leaves of beet roots,
but, you know, plenty usable.
The other thing as well here is swede.
Now, I made the mistake
of planting them way too close together,
thinned them two or three times.
Still a bit close, but that's okay
because one of the most valuable greens
that you can get from your garden
over the hungry gap is swede leaves.
Absolutely delicious
and actually really productive, as well.
They send out this amazing fresh flourish.
It'll probably start properly in about two to three weeks,
and then once you've enjoyed all of those leaves,
again, it's something else that flowers
and you can eat the flower shoots.
So not only can you eat the roots of swede,
you can also eat the leaves and the flower shoots.
As a gardener, I'm constantly looking
at what do I already have growing
that could provide a second or different type of harvest,
and one of my favorite recent discoveries
is that these beautiful,
delicate little flowers of rosemary are edible,
and if you can just imagine sweetness
with rosemary together,
that's exactly what these taste like,
and they're an absolute delicacy at this time of year.
I'm here next to the purple sprouting broccoli.
This is great 'cause you can also eat the leaves,
and I've just been peering through
and I can start to see the very first shoots
starting to form, and it's quite a cool sight.
And these, we've got about nine, 10 plants here,
are gonna be quite a significant part
of what I'll be eating over April and May.
In front of me here is the garlic bed.
There are two varieties, Germidour and Primor.
The Primor doesn't so look good.
It's got a little bit more of a pale coloring to its leaves,
but I'm gonna remain optimistic and see how it does.
However, the Germidour has this beautiful
kind of green sheen to it,
and there's quite a few there.
There's more further down in the garden
and I'm getting really excited
for both the normal garlic harvest,
but also all of the green garlic.
And then to the right of me,
on the subject of garlic, is elephant garlic.
And I've got here 16 cloves that I've planted out
and they're just poking through.
In the polycrub, the elephant garlic there
is about this tall and looking quite amazing,
and I've also got two really interesting plants
growing in here, which we reckon
is actually cumin plants that somehow,
the roots have overwintered.
And if we're right and if everything goes to plan,
if that cumin flowers,
then we can get cumin seeds grown in Wales outside.
I think that will be a massive success
to celebrate later in the season.
Something that's been nice all winter
and even into nearly mid-March,
we've got this fresh flat-leaf parsley
that's just been going and going and going.
It's looking nice and healthy,
and it's a great kind of herby flavor that we can joy
with all of the quite leafy things
that are coming into the hungry gap.
So what I'd definitely do is save
some of your best parsley plants,
leave them in the ground over winter,
and hopefully you'll be able to enjoy their crops
all through that season.
I might butcher the name, but this plant next to me
is Asturian tree cabbage.
The official name will be on the video,
and this was quite a revelation.
It was one of my favorite varieties that I grew last year.
I was a bit unsure whether it would overwinter.
There was a couple of signs of rot,
but it seemed to have broken through that
and you're seeing this really kind of lush
and light green growth,
the same color that it was growing last year,
and it is such a sweet, delicious cabbage.
It doesn't head, I didn't realize that,
until it was a bit too late,
so I didn't get to enjoy it that much last year.
But this year, especially during the hungry gap,
all of these leave are coming forward
and I honestly believe that this is gonna be
one of my core staple brassica varieties
that I'm gonna grow every single year
from this point onwards.
In my latest book, one of the topics that I go over
is the key crops that I grow for the hungry gap,
and I'm crouched in front of one right now.
This is a cultivated area, although quite wild.
It's wild garlic,
perhaps one of the most versatile ingredients
that you can grow, and it is truly quite magical
and it spreads really rapidly.
We started off with around 10 or 20 bulbs,
they're just really small bulbs, a few years back,
and now it's spread into this amazing carpet of wild garlic
that will probably, you know, if nothing changes here,
it could outlive me and continue spreading
all through this back area
just like those snowdrops started with a few little clumps.
Wild garlic is something that you gotta grow,
especially in a semi-shaded area.
A key crop for me in March is potatoes.
However, what I usually do is now just focus
on new potatoes and second earlies so I can avoid blight,
and then the rest is actually a variety
called Sarpo Mira that is blight-resistant,
and I'm really impressed with how it performs,
and I actually grow those in containers
so I can tip out and harvest them
whenever I want over winter.
And that's gonna be one of my big projects
over the next two or three weeks,
is getting all my potato containers sorted
so then I have more space
opened up in the garden for other crops.
For gardeners in temperate climates, like here in the UK,
having an undercover growing space
is absolutely the most precious growing space
within the entire garden.
It's where you can extend your season
in terms of seedlings growing outside,
but also to grow high value crops
that might not do so well outdoors,
especially in the cooler areas.
Now one of those high value crops is tomatoes.
I like to start tomatoes from around about mid-March.
I find if it's any earlier,
I'm usually holding on to quite large tomato seedlings,
which might risk the chance of getting stressed,
and I'd much rather, when they get to the right size,
transplant them and be happy with them.
Because our last frost is usually mid-May,
I do kind of err on the side of caution
and I find that anything before March,
sowing tomatoes before March is often
a little bit too early.
So next week is quite a defining moment
of the growing season for me,
'cause it's tomato sowing time.
One of the biggest opportunities
that you can get from a vegetable garden
is the ability to have new flavors and new crops
just around the corner, no matter what season it is.
So just think carefully as you are planning
and planting your garden what extra crops,
even if it's just at the end of a bed
or say half a bed, such as purple sprouting broccoli,
can you put it in to always have that little bit of magic,
that anticipation of something really exciting
that you can enjoy, no matter what month it is.