Spring Get busy sowing vibrant, windowsill chillies, planting out potatoes, and sowing salads and fast-growing radishes outdoors

With their flash of green, red and white, radishes are the beauty queens of the vegetable kingdom. If sown successionally, all parts of the radish – the leaf, root and seedpod – can be enjoyed in a salad at the same time

In the garden

April is a terrible month for impatient gardeners. With windowsills bristling with potted-up seedlings, the temptation to plant them out can be overpowering (and disastrous). If you really want to get your hands dirty, why not plant radishes? With their flash of green, red and white, radishes are the beauty queens of the vegetable kingdom. They are also among the fastest growing of all vegetables, offering (almost) instant gratification. If sown successionally, all parts of the radish – leaf, root and seedpod – can be enjoyed in a salad at the same time. Raphanus sativus ‘French Breakfast’ is one of my favourites, a classic, oval-shaped radish, magenta on top with a crisp, white tip and a mild, nutty flavour. Others include ‘Cherry Belle’, a bright, cherry-red globe cultivar, and ‘Pink Beauty’, a sweet, round radish with pink flesh. Chiltern Seeds (see page 31) has all of these, as well as a mixed packet of red, yellow, white and violet radishes from Italy. For those with a penchant for the unusual, try ‘Rat’s Tail’, which is grown not for its roots but for its elongated, pencil-thick, edible pods, which are good raw in salads, tossed into a stir fry or pickled. Before the pods form, the single-petal, pink-tinged flowers will lure beneficial pollinators to your plot.

Radishes should be sown in drills 1cm deep at a spacing of 2-4cm. They need to be kept well watered and should germinate after two to three days. Thin any clustered seedlings to 2-4cm. Sow side by side with slow-germinating parsnips, which are often forgotten and accidentally dug up. A row of radishes makes for a good reminder. Because they grow fast, radishes can be inter-planted with overwintered garlic or onions, or sown around fruit bushes, such as gooseberries or currants.

For another ‘instant’ spring crop, sow a row of mixed salads. Try a mix of reds and greens, such as the Italian Misticanza mix (radicchio, endive, orache, mizuna, kale, mustard and corn salad) or the Provençal Mesclun mix (loose-leaved salads, such as chicory, rocket and watercress).

In the kitchen

In spring you can make good use of the tips, leaves and shoots of plants that will crop later on, either as salad ingredients or in soups and tarts. Peas, broad beans, asparagus and herbs are at their best when eaten as soon as possible after picking. One of my favourite spring flavours is green garlic. I sow my garlic fairly close together so I can lift some of it early, when the whole bulb and leaf can be used, and still have a decent crop later on. Peel, chop and sauté the bulbs and leaves (usually six, when they look like spring onions, or four, when they resemble slim leeks, are enough to serve four people) and add them to simple soups with potato, or to a quiche with leeks and nettles, or fold them through

focaccia dough. Dolmades rolled using tender, spring vine leaves can be made with rice, green garlic, raisins and pine nuts. Later on I use green garlic with the first, very small, artichokes in a sloppy soup of peas with a poached egg on top.

Pea tendrils, onion tops and the leafy tips of broad beans can be eaten in a salad of tiny new potatoes and brown shrimps, or stirred into a green risotto at the last moment. Blackcurrant leaves can be used to infuse custards for ice cream.

Asparagus comes into season at the end of this month. Eat the first few spears simply with lemon and butter. As they get a bigger, you can grill them and use them in a variety of ways. First, bend the stems; they should snap low down where they become woody (reserve the bottoms to flavour a stock for soups). Blanch them in salted, boiling water for one minute, then spread out to cool on a tea towel. Rub with olive oil and grill over charcoal (or on a griddle) for about six minutes, turning frequently. Serve with a dressing of sea salt, lemon and olive oil, and a few shavings of parmesan, or with sieved hard-boiled eggs, capers and radishes. Or try a vinaigrette made with freshly squeezed orange juice, vinegar and olive oil. Another favourite dish is paella with razor clams and spears of asparagus, fanned out like the spokes of a wheel. Or I may make a soufflé with the stalks puréed and blended, and the tips added whole to the batter.

What to sow

• I always look for beauty and fruitfulness when placing plants next to each other. In the past I’ve sown a ‘flag of salad’, with triangular wedges of different varieties radiating from the centre, and a patchwork of squares, sown individually with sorrel, chard, beetroot and carrots, and mixed with annual flowers. Other winning combinations include red orache, alongside striped borlotti beans intertwined with Ipomoea lobata, and Dahlia ‘Collarette Dandy’ underplanted with courgettes. One year, our local primary school’s garden had hazel wigwams twined with blue morning glory and the bean ‘A Cosse Violette’.

What to cook

• Spring on a plate Wash a bunch of radishes, leaving the stalks on. Place on a plate with a small pile of sea salt and a pat of unsalted butter. Push each radish into the butter, sprinkle with salt and eat. Another delicious idea is to serve new vegetables as crudités with a hot anchovy cream. For this you need: 2 large cloves of garlic, peeled and minced, 150ml olive oil, 150ml double cream, 2 x 50g tins anchovies. Simmer the garlic and olive oil in a pan over a low heat until the garlic is soft. Add the anchovies and cook on the same heat until they have melted into the oil. Add the cream and cook slowly until you have a velvety, salty emulsion (up to 30 minutes). Serve in a warmed bowl with vegetables around it.