Kitchen Garden February 2015

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down-to-eArth AdviCe for growing fruit & veg | KitChengArden.Co.uK | februAry 2015

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CONTENTS

EXPERT ADVICE TO HELP YOU GROW GREAT FRUIT AND VEGETABLES

30 YOU

✪ oN tHE CoVER Follow us At facebook. com/KitchenGardenMag FOR OUR CONTACT DETAILS TURN TO Pg 17

SUBSCRIBERS’ CORNER See page 28 for details

&

YOUR PLOT

JoBs tHis MontH: 6 on tHe Veg PatcH

Just Ask your local newsagent to reserve you a copy each month

4 | FEBRUARY 2015

GET GROWING 20 Beginner’s guide to garlic ✪

sow broad beans, force herbs, start early peas and plant shallots

Follow Andrew tokely’s easy guide to growing this trendy crop

10 in tHe greenHouse

24 tried and tasted cHard

start sowing tomatoes, feed the soil, plant some early potatoes

12 Hot toPics

the latest news and comment from the world of kitchen gardening

14 Your letters and tiPs

learn what other KG readers have been up to and pick up some great first-hand advice

18 Question tiMe

Regular Gardeners’ Question time panellists Bob Flowerdew and Anne swithinbank answer your fruit and veg growing conundrums

102 neXt MontH

hAvINg TROUbLE FINDINg A COPy OF ThIS mAgAzINE?

38

24

KG veg expert Joe Maiden puts six popular chard or perpetual spinach varieties to the test

30 garden oF dreaMs

Gaby Bartai visits a scottish town where post-industrial regeneration has sparked a new kind of growth

38 readY steadY soW ✪

Part two of our review of the new season’s seed catalogues. tony Flanagan picks out some highlights

46 outdoor HotBeds For earlY HarVests

Discover the highlights to come in your March issue

In this second part of our hotbed special, Charles Dowding looks at giving veg a head start

106 last Word

51 toP oF tHe ProPs

this month KG reader John sharratt explains how he converted an outside toilet into a store and greenhouse

Ben Vanheems looks at some different propagators and how best to use them to get your season off to a flying start www.kitchengarden.co.uk

FEBRUARY 2015

recipes Anna Pettigrew offers some hearty winter fare using carrot, spinach and cauliflower

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Pg 98

94 56

78

WHAT TO BUY

£

44 WIN PRIZES WORTH £900

Don’t miss your chance to win one of 15 VegTrug prize packages each worth £60

56 ANNE’S TOP 10 ✪

82 KG BOOK REVIEWS

58 GROW IT YOURSELF: DORSET

84 SOIL TESTING, TESTED

This month it’s Anne Swithinbank’s top 10 friendly bugs

Nicole Smith looks at the latest books for gardeners

Grow It Yourself groups are becoming an international phenomenon. Wendy Pillar set up a Dorset group and tells KG her amazing story

We put soil testing kits to the test

88 GROWING GUIDES

Helen Gazeley reviews the very best gardening blogs and websites

64 CHILLIES AT A GLANCE ✪

90 GIVEAWAYS WORTH £1439 ✪

Your latest KG mini growing guide

This month you could win garden furniture, propagation equipment, gardening by the moon books, garden clothing

66 CULTIVATING IN KEIGHLEY

We visit Elizabeth Ramsden, the second place winner of our Passionate Plotter Competition

70 NEW PEST ON THE BLOCK ✪

Look out for a new fruit pest in your garden.

Scott Raffle explains what to look for and how to control it

73 CARING FOR TOOLS PART 2 Ben Russell has some tips on sharpening tools and general maintenance www.kitchengarden.co.uk

92 GARDEN STORE

46 78 SAVE CASH: BUILD YOUR OWN COMPOST TUMBLER

Julie Moore shows you how to make a rotating compost bin from an old barrel

News of the best new products and services reach the KG offices this month

94 READER SAVERS ✪

Free fruit collection, plus save up to £35 on blueberries, garlic, onions and rhubarb

96 DIARY DATES

Plus details of seed and young plant suppliers FEBRUARY 2015 | 5

YOU

&

YOUR PLOT

HOT TOPICS

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF GROWING YOUR OWN FRUIT AND VEG

NO-DIG CHARLES DOWDING SCOOPSTOPAWARD No-dig gardening guru and KG regular Charles Dowding was awarded the top accolade at the Garden Media Guild Awards, the gardening industry’s equivalent of the Oscars, held the Savoy in London recently.Charles has been a regular contributor since Grow It! magazine closed last year and was absorbed into Kitchen Garden. KG editor Steve Ott said: “I was so pleased to welcome Charles to the KG team last year and he has quickly become one of our most popular writers for his hands-on approach to gardening, the quality of his writing and the

sheer detail he brings to his features. We are all very pleased he has won this prestigious award and that the industry has chosen to recognise his work in this way.”

When we asked Charles how it felt to win the award he told us: “It feels good! Always when writing I am imagining somebody using my advice to save time, money and have better results. So this award feels like a wonderful recognition that I am achieving that aim and it was an honour to receive it in front of so many good writers and gardeners. I hope the award helps KG too, it’s a great magazine.”

Don’t miss Charles’ latest feature starting on page 46 this month.

Charles Dowding receives his award from Paul Hansord, commercial director of T&M seeds who sponsored the class

Get fit, Get healthy, Get GrowinG!

Leaders of a new gardening project, Growing the Future, based at the National Botanic Garden of Wales, are urging gardeners to forget the gym and dieting and sign up for a gardening course instead!

Growing the Future is an exciting project aimed at helping people to learn how to grow their own food successfully.

Whether you’re a complete beginner who dreams of having a garden of fresh produce but doesn’t know where to start, or a seasoned grower who wants to get the best out of your crops – there are courses designed for your needs. The project offers a

wide range of courses delivered through a network of hubs across Wales that are free or very inexpensive to attend.

To book courses, or for more information visit www.growingthefuture.co.uk or phone: 01558 667100.

To keep up to date with all the latest news, follow Growing the Future – on Twitter @GTFCymru and on Facebook at Facebook.com/Growingthefuture

■ Look out for an exclusive feature on unusual veg from Sheryl Richardson of the Growing for the Future Project in the next issue.

PAINTING PARADISE

The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, is launching a new exhibition in March that will explore the many ways the garden has been celebrated in art over the centuries.

The exhibition includes more than 150 paintings, drawings, books, manuscripts and decorative arts from the Royal Collection, including some of the earliest and rarest surviving records of gardens and plants.

Of particular interest is a rare early image of a kitchen garden at Windsor Castle in 1740, which has never been on display before.The picture depicts the north view of Windsor Castle.

Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden is at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, March 20 to October 11, 2015.

12 | FEBRUARY 2015

www.kitchengarden.co.uk

HOT TOPICS

WALLED GARDENS SEEK FRUITFUL FUTURE

Photo: Mick Wilkes

Gibside volunteers with their mountain of bricks

Photo: Nick King

The National Trust has launched an appeal to raise more than £2 million for the rescue and restoration of some of the charity’s 140 walled gardens.

Much needed conservation work will be carried out on national treasures including the rebuilding of part of the original kitchen garden wall at Gibside in Tyne and Wear, the restoration of a rare, early cast-iron glasshouse at Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire and the revival of the greenhouses at Blickling.

At Gibside, the site has successfully been converted back into a garden with key involvement from the local community and volunteers. When 20 metres of garden wall came tumbling down in February last year, four volunteers took on the task of gathering more than 10,000 bricks, each one almost 300 years old, and meticulously cleaned them for the wall’s repair.

With this work complete, £650,000 is now needed to rebuild the wall, reinstate earlier pathways and rebuild the 18th-century orchid house. With work currently underway to restore the pathways, borders, nuttery and orchard of the Upper Garden, Quarry Bank needs an additional £1 million to restore its ‘jewel in the crown’, an early 19th-century glasshouse, one of the earliest and rarest examples of a glasshouse with a domed roof.

POWDERHAM CASTLE GARDEN FESTIVAL

Quarry Bank glasshouse in disrepair

The team at Blickling Estate in Norfolk is hoping to raise £90,000 to complete funding for the garden’s greenhouses.

If you would like to donate to the National Trust’s Walled Garden appeal, please visit: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/walledgardens

www.tobygardenfest.co.uk www.powderham.co.uk tel: 01823 431767 Toby Buckland is thrilled to be offering this event again

BUGINGHAM PALACE WINNER OF DES RES COMPETITION

Three ‘grand designs’ have been announced as the winning entries in a national wildlife gardening competition. They are Bugingham Palace (individual), a mini-beast mansion (school) , and a seven-storey stack (group).

More than 100 schools, groups and gardeners up and down the UK entered the competition as part of 2014’s Wild about Gardens Week, throughout which The Wildlife Trusts and the Royal Horticultural Society asked people to provide much-needed places in which pollinators could spend the winter.

The organisations teamed up to encourage gardeners, schools and community groups to plan garden patches for the year ahead in an effort to offer insects vital pollen and nectarrich food, and also ensure pollinators awaken to a patch that provides the food and shelter they need to survive.

The Wildlife Trusts’ judge, Amy Lewis, said: “There was fierce competition but everyone who entered into the spirit of this competition clearly considered the needs of our pollinators.

Toby Buckland’s annual garden festival at Powderham Castle, Devon, is fast becoming one of the most important events of its kind in the South West, attracting local award-winning nurseries, enthusiastic gardeners and celebrity gardening experts.

This year the event will be attended

by Christine Walkden, BBC One Show gardener regular, and Gardeners’ Question Time panellist Bob Flowerdew.

The festival will also welcome Jim Buttress, former royal gardener and now The Big Allotment Challenge judge, and, of course, horticulturalist, writer and TV presenter Toby Buckland.

Toby explains: “I’m delighted with the success of the first festival and thrilled that so many specialist nurseries want to join us that we’ve had to make the festival even bigger.”

Friday, May 1, and Saturday, May 2, 2015. 10am- 5pm.

Tickets: Adults £7.50 on the day, £6 with advance booking online, children under 16 go free.

Winner: Whitchurch Primary School, Bristol

“Our winners are particularly exceptional examples of what can be done with a little planning and plenty of creativity.”

The individual award went to Wendy Field from Worcester. The judges really liked the creative design of this entry. ‘Bugingham Palace’ was modelled on Her Majesty’s famous residence – complete with a flying flag to show that the Queen Bee was at home. The other two winners were Whitchurch Primary School, Bristol (school award) and The Holly Lodge Centre, Richmond Park (group award).

Do you stories for our news pages? senDsenD themthem to tfLanagan@mortons.co.uk youhave havesome somehot hot stories for our news pages? to sott@mortons.co.uk www.kitchengarden.co.uk

FEBRUARY 2015 | 13

GET GROWING

chard Tried &tasted...

JOE’S TOP CROPS Top allotment gardener, writer and broadcaster Joe Maiden puts six popular varieties of chard or perpetual spinach to the test on his Yorkshire plot

c

hard is often grown as a colourful and delicious alternative to spinach. The texture is slightly harsher than spinach, but it’s a wonderful replacement, especially in late summer, autumn and up to Christmas in mild winters. However, leaf beet or chard is not only used for its leaves; the leaf stalks are also very tasty. They can be cut into short lengths like some people cook chunks of celery and boiled until tender or stir-fried.

Many books recommend sowing chard in March and April; however, my success with early sowings has been limited, with many plants going to seed, and I get my best results from sowings made in mid-May. This year I tried a later sowing to see if growth would continue in the poorest months. Normally from a sowing in May I can produce good leaves and stems during August. The drawback with this is that in August we have so much fresh veg available already for harvesting. So I thought I would sow in July to see if I could crop all the way through autumn and even through the winter and up to the following May before it goes to seed.

With my normal May sowing, the plants die back at Christmas time, wake up again in March and keep going until the end of May. All chard can be produced as baby seedling vegetables which are often seen in salad packs. The young colourful leaves are very attractive. Chard is often recommended as an ornamental vegetable because of the growth habit and fantastic colours.

Many towns and city parks are using chard in border displays, the distinct colours of the chard make fantastic ‘dot plants’; for example, white Swiss chard among dark coloured begonias, red chard among yellow marigolds and so on.

At the Harrogate Flower Show in autumn 2014, a class was introduced for six stems of chard, any colour or colours, to be displayed in a jar of water, and very eye-catching the entries looked too. Water is essential, otherwise the stems would go limp. That is perhaps why chard is not seen for sale, other than as baby leaves in salad bags in the supermarkets. Grow your own, it is not difficult.

ground preparation

I use the same preparation prior to sowing as for beetroot and tend to use an area well manured for a previous crop, such as onions. This year I used the ground where my overwintering onions were grown. I was able to keep this area clean by hand weeding close to my onion bulbs and carefully hoeing between the rows of onions. When the onion crop was harvested, I cultivated the soil with a little Mantis tiller. I dressed the area with 57g per sq m (2oz/sq yd) of Vitax Q4 fertiliser, firmed the area over with my feet and raked to a fine tilth.

Then I set my garden line ready for sowing. www.kitchengarden.co.uk www.

VarieTy choice The varieties I selected for this trial included:

■ ‘Rainbow ChaRd’ – This produces very similar results to the variety ‘Bright Lights’ (widely available).

Attractive selection of stem colours from one packet; a very useful variety for small gardens.

■ ‘RhubaRb ChaRd’ – Dark red stems with a tinge of red in the leaves. Pick the stems young and the plant will produce lots of new foliage.

(Seeds of Italy, D T Brown, Suttons, Simpsons Seeds, Seeds of Distinction).

■ ‘SwiSS ChaRd’ – Sometimes called seakale beet and produces dark green leaves with thick white broad stems.

Pick the leaves regularly to keep a good supply coming all season.

(Widely available).

■ ‘Yellow ChaRd’ – Bright, broad-leafed chard with very bright yellow stems.

Possibly the sweetest of all the chards, said to be best eaten raw or steamed. (Kings, T&M, D T Brown, Nickys Nursery).

toptip

■ ‘oRange FantaSia’ – Very bright orange stems with large leaves.

‘Orange Fantasia’ had a sweeter flavour than the other varieties on trial. (Nickys Nursery)

■ ‘VulCan SCaRlet’ – Dark leaves and strong growth. ‘Vulcan Scarlet’ makes a wonderful ornamental plant for pots and borders. (D T Brown, Mr Fothergills)

■ ‘PeRPetual SPinaCh’ – With this type being winter hardy, I decided to add this to my trial. It produces masses of mid-green leaves on thin green stems. (widely available).

Chard is now often seen in pots on the patio. I have used chard very successfully as a central feature in large hanging baskets and if it gets a bit unruly, trim out a few stalks and eat them.

full details of seed suppliers page 97

Sowing the crop

My sowing date was July 4, and the rows were spaced 45cm (18in) apart. With the back of my rake, I pulled out a narrow drill. The soil was dry so before sowing I moistened the drill by running water into the base with my watering can. The seed of chard is quite big, I attempted to space sow the seeds about 5cm (2in) apart. Then I pulled some dry soil back over them to seal in the moisture.

I had a really good germination after 16 days and could see the seedlings clearly. It was good ➤ LEFT: The chard trial was grown in soil previously used for overwintering onions RIGHT: Chard seeds are large and easy to sow

FEBRUARY 2015 | 25

part

2

Hotbeds for propagation KG’s award-winning writer, Charles Dowding, explains how a little natural heat can work wonders out on the open plot to encourage early sowings

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his is a time of waiting for temperatures to rise so that seed sowing can commence. However, I have learnt the hard way that sowing ahead of season does not pay off. The saying is right: “Sow carrots in January if you don’t want to eat carrots!” Still, where there’s a will there’s a way, and in this case it is a hotbed of any fresh manure and bedding in sufficient quantity to hold heat for a good six weeks.

HOW A HOTBED WORKS

heats well and is often available; other good The idea is to have a large enough heap of fresh manures such as those of rabbit and guinea manure to warm a bed of compost pig are unlikely to amount to a sitting on top of it. So a hotbed is sufficient quantity. actually two beds, a larger heap of Straw, however, is an “The fresh manure underneath a excellent bedding material fresher The slightly narrower, 15cm (6in) for two reasons: firstly, manure The deep growing-bed where because a heap of it can seeds are sown and plants set be free-standing as it is beTTer so out. Importantly, there needs held together by the ThaT iT sTays to be a cover on top to hold straw’s long fibres, and hoT for as some of the warmth around secondly, because it makes plants and protect them from a better compost to use at long as cold winds and precipitation. the end of the year. possible” By comparison, manure from MANURE QUALITIES animals bedded on woodchips The fresher the manure the better so that heats more slowly – albeit a little it stays hot for as long as possible. Horse manure longer – but then needs further composting to decay the wood even after a year in a hotbed.

BEST TIME TO MAKE ONE

Snow melted by heat from the manure

The options range from January to April and, after trying different dates, I favour mid February to early March.

It’s tempting to start earlier but the lack of light up to St Valentine’s Day means that the early heat generated is used less by plants, whereas the sowings on later beds tend to catch up and then grow more strongly through April.

Also, there is some residual heat for second sowings in May. Another advantage of a slightly later hotbed is that you can raise plants in the greenhouse from January sowings, and set them out into an early March hotbed with a significant head start over earlier sowings in an older hotbed. Beetroot is a good example: I multi-sow ‘Boltardy’, four seeds www.kitchengarden.co.uk

HOT BEDS PART 2

Plants emerging over the hot bed after one month of cold weather

to a module in late January and have decent seedlings for planting as clumps of four seedlings by early March. These can be harvested from mid April on a hotbed.

SUITABLE DIMENSIONS

In theory a hotbed can be any size but medium is best. If too small or too shallow, heat quickly dissipates. If too wide or too deep, you struggle to reach the middle of the growing bed. A good size heap is 1.5m (5ft) wide, 60cm to 70cm (2 to 2½ft) deep and any length you like. The growing bed on top is narrower, so 1.25m (4ft) wide bordered by 15cm (6in) planks to hold its compost.

ASSEMBLING A BASE

If the manure has straw and you don’t mind some small mess of fresh manure around the edges, simply stack it between four corner posts as markers. Keep trampling on the manure as you tip it out, especially around all the edges, otherwise you end up with a sloping mound rather than a level heap.

If using wooden sides, they can be large planks or pallets held in place with fence posts.

Pallets need lopping to size because if left at full height they become awkward later in the season as the hotbed sinks, meaning you have to lean over high pallet sides to reach the sinking bed of vegetables.

THE GROWING BED ON TOP

It works best to assemble a wooden frame on the ground, then ask a friend to help lift it on to the newly filled hotbed. There is no separation between fresh manure with its bedding, and the compost in a growing bed, which can be www.kitchengarden.co.uk

anything dark and crumbly.

I use whatever comes to hand, such as my own compost, two year old cow manure and municipal compost, though not too much of the latter if it contains many fragments of wood.

Tamp the compost firmly with a spade and fill the growing bed to a slight mound as it will soon level off in time.

KEEPING THE WARMTH IN OUTDOOR BEDS

This can be tricky because hotbeds are well above ground level and catch the wind. My first attempt at homemade lights saw them blow off at regular intervals (it’s fairly exposed here), until I screwed their corners to the main frame, but this made it more lengthy and tedious to access my plants for watering, weeding, picking and resowing. (For some good ideas see Hot Beds: How to Grow Early Crops Using an Age-Old Technique by Jack First, Green Books, 2013.)

An easier option, though offering less heat retention, is to lay fleece over cloche hoops above the growing bed. The hoop-wires go into fresh manure beside the growing bed, with a hoop every 3ft or so, and the fleece can be held in place with stones along its edges. Some rain passes through, so the growing bed needs less watering than when polythene lights are laid over the top, but the downside is there is less warmth than with polythene lights.

FEBRUARY SOWING

There are many suitable vegetables. My favourite is carrots because they are difficult to raise as plants undercover, whereas all other vegetables can be brought on from sowings in January, such

Second plantings made in the same bed of French bean, basil and sweet pepper

as lettuce, spring onion, beetroot, spinach, peas (for both pods and shoots), radish, coriander and dill.

Some varietal tips include ‘Amsterdam Forcing’ carrots, any cos lettuce which can be picked of outer leaves over a long period, ‘Boltardy’ beetroot, and ‘White Lisbon’ onions, which can be thinned as green scallions, then a few left to grow into sweet bulbs for early onions in May. Early potatoes are possible but risky as their tops can be frosted on cold nights in spring. However, if you are on hand to cover them against frost, it’s worth a try for a potato harvest by late April.

Vegetables not to grow, in my opinion, are space hungry plants such as calabrese, cabbage and broad beans, which are ‘expensive’ in terms of the space needed.

SPACINGS AND THINNING

Starting in early April, sow closer than usual to make the most of early heat and to have the first harvests from thinnings. Be prepared to pick vegetables a little smaller than usual – it’s worth it because they are so early and that makes room for continuing growth. ➤ FEBRUARY 2015 | 47

KGmini GrowinG Guide

Chillies at a glance Hot, trendy, spicy and easy to grow. Here’s how

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hilli peppers come in a huge range of shapes, sizes and colours and vary in heat from tingling to eye-watering to ‘blowing your head off ’ hot. So whether you like the taste or not, many make attractive plants once they start to fruit and you may not even want to harvest them.

SowinG time

Chilli seeds are sown individually into cell trays or small pots. They like plenty of warmth (minimum 21ºC/70ºF) to germinate so place in a propagator or on a warm windowsill. Once the

Sow: March-May Harvest: JulySeptember

seedlings are through, take them out of a propagator and move to a bright windowsill.

GrowinG on

Once the young plants start to outgrow their pots or cell trays, pot on into larger 13cm (5in) diameter pots. You can check if the plants are ready to be moved on by seeing if any roots are visible in the holes in the bottom of the pot. Place them on a warm windowsill indoors or by about mid-April put in an unheated greenhouse. Keep the compost moist, don’t over wet.

ToP TiP Feed fortnightly with a tomato feed once the plants start to flower

64 | FEBRUARY 2015

www.kitchengarden.co.uk

CHILLIES

planting out

Chilli pepper plants vary in size according to the variety but most will benefit from being moved into a slightly bigger pot or growing bag or planted into the ground. From late May to early June, after the danger of frosts has passed, they could be planted out. If you have a greenhouse, chillies will often do better under cover where they can be grown in the border soil or planted two or three in a growing bag, or individually into 30cm (12in) diameter pots of multipurpose compost.

Looking after tHe pLants

When they are about 20cm (8in) tall, you could consider just nipping the tips of the plant out if it has not naturally produced any sideshoots. This will encourage the plant to bush out and make a nice shape and produce plenty of flowers.

VarietieS to try

■ ‘hungarian hoT wax’: Long fruits that turn yellow then orange and red. An easy to grow variety that is not too hot. It will do reasonably well grown outside.

■ ‘numex TwilighT’: A stunningly beautiful, small, compact chilli with masses of fruits at different maturity so you get purple, yellow, orange and red fruits all together on the plant. Ideal chilli to grow on a windowsill. The fruits are quite hot and can be dried or frozen for use in stews or curries.

■ ‘orange haBanero’: There are many varieties of habanero chillies and these belong to the species Capsicum chinense. They are fruity and very spicy and can be relatively mild to very hot.

‘Orange Habanero’ has pretty stumpy orange fruits that are very hot. Plants are medium-sized with a neat growth habit so ideal for containers.

■ ‘poBlana ancho’: This is a very mild variety. The shiny, dark bottle-green fruits turn red when fully mature but can be harvested while still green. They are ideal for stuffing and roasting.

Harvesting

A lot of people are confused about when to harvest chillies. You can harvest earlier while they are still green and use straight away or leave until fully mature and then they will dry and store well. One way of storing them is to make a chilli string or ristra by tying together the stems of the chillies with cotton string. ■

What’S gone Wrong?

■ aphidS: Greenfly may feed on new leaves and growing tips and can distort the leaves. Rub off with finger and thumb or use a spray. There are organic ones available if you prefer and which work quite well with this pest.

■ BoTryTiS (grey mould): This can cause rotting of fruits and is more of a problem when growing in a humid greenhouse. Allowing plenty of air movement around plants and opening vents will help. Remove any diseased foliage or fruits as soon as you notice it.

■ whiTefly: A particular problem on greenhouse crops. Tiny white flies can be seen mainly on the underside of the leaves and fly off when disturbed. A sticky substance is excreted by the whiteflies which attracts sooty mould growth. Sprays can be applied or use a biological control which is a parasitic wasp called Encarsia formosa.

www.kitchengarden.co.uk

SupplierS SeaSpring SeedS www.seaspringseeds.co.uk 01308 897898

ThompSon & morgan www.thompson-morgan.com 0844 573 1818

dT Brown www.dtbrownseeds.co.uk 0845 371 0532 FEBRUARY 2015 | 65

WHAT TO BUY | BOOKS GET GROWING

KG BOOKSHELF OUR ROUNDUP OF SOME OF THE BEST BOOKS FOR GARDENERS Reviews by Nicole Smith

PUMPKINS AND SQUASHES

Having grown pumpkins and squashes for Halloween, it can be a challenge as to what to do with them afterwards; there is only so much pumpkin pie a person can eat.

Now here’s a book containing tasty recipes to give you plenty of inspiration for ways to cook with more unusual varieties such as patty pans, kabocha, butternut, acorn and spaghetti squashes.

Pumpkins and squashes contain more than 100 different seasonal recipes.

Whether you’re looking for winter recipes or jams, cakes or puddings, this book has it all. This guide even gives you tips on how to grow your own. The only downside is that it doesn’t contain any pictures to show you what the dish is supposed to look like once created.

■ Pumpkins and Squashes by Janet Macdonald is published by Grub Street, priced £12.99 ■ ISBN: 978-1-908117-16-8

WHO IS IT FOR?

Cooks who like to experiment and try tasty and unusual recipes with more unusual varieties.

★★★★★

WILD FRUIT Wild Fruit is a handy little book to help people identify different fruit from hedgerows and woodlands. It is a lavishly illustrated, easy-to-use guide packed with valuable information.

It covers the different stages of growth of each variety, perfect if you spot something not quite fully grown and still want to identify it. Tasting notes and historical facts are also provided to give the reader extra information that might be useful (especially if the fruit is poisonous).

Identification keys for flowers, leaves and fruit are very helpful while the recipes offer plenty ideas about what to do with the wild fruit once you have picked it. This book has great breadth but doesn’t skimp on detail.

Alan Génevé is a professional pharmacist and both he and his wife are keen amateur botanists.

■ Wild Fruit by Alain Génevé and MarieJeanne Génevé is published by Timber Press, priced £20 ■ ISBN: 978-1-60-4-69-586-1

WHO IS IT FOR?

Those interested in all aspects of wild fruit, including walkers, foragers and naturalists.

★★★★★

A GUIDE TO BEING A WILDLIFE FRIENDLY VEGETABLE GARDENER A Guide to being a Wildlife Friendly Vegetable Gardener shows the grower how to produce food in harmony with nature and is ‘dedicated to the Earth and all the lessons she teaches me’. This colourful, exciting guide has many whimsical illustrations to really lift the pages, illuminate the text and add detail to project pages. It includes chapters on Rethinking our Relationships with Nature, Creating Habitats for Wildlife and Designing Wildlife Friendly Food Gardens. There’s also a useful appendix that details how to deal with common garden pests. I’d just offer one caveat to that – the book is American and so tips on dealing with bears, beavers and groundhogs may be less useful to British readers!

■ The Wildlife-Friendly Vegetable Gardener by Tammi Hartung is published

by Storey Publishing, priced £11.99 ■ ISBN 978-1-61212-055-3

WHO IS IT FOR?

Anyone who wants to bring more wildlife into their garden.

★★★★★

SUBSCRIBE TO KITCHEN GARDEN TODAY TURN TO PAGE 28 82 | FEBRUARY 2015

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