Tales from veg patch a

MAKING THE MOST OF THE HARVEST AT HOME, KATHY SLACK COOKS SEASONAL DISHES AND SHARES THE STORIES FROM HER BACK GARDEN THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

THE HUNGRY GAP

There’s nothing to eat. Well, that’s how it feels. The veg beds are a patchy collection of a few hardy leaves that have valiantly survived the winter. This is The Hungry Gap. I cobble together a sorry bouquet of old kale, the odd cabbage and chard (there’s always chard) for soups and stir fries, but I’m ready for a change.

In my quest for variety, I experiment with eating the flowering tips of the kale and cabbages, plucking the thin stems that hold a cluster of tiny flowers. Treated like tenderstem broccoli and briefly steamed they turn out to be delicious – sweet but slightly bitter. I drown them in melted butter like a poor man’s asparagus.

A more skilled gardener would have purple sprouting broccoli and leeks just ready to harvest. They’re probably the sort of grower who thought to sow some radishes under fleece in February as well and are now smugly tucking into the results. I am, as you will know, not that grower. Leeks and radishes are just a matter of organisation, but purple sprouting is a harvest that requires time, space and some sort of Faustian pact with nature (they’re maddeningly susceptible to cabbage whites, mealy bug, white fly and, though hardy, need staking and ideally covering against wind and snow).

There might not be much to eat, but there’s plenty to do. I’m busy potting tomatoes and cucumbers; sowing beans, courgettes, squash, beetroot and lettuce in modules under cover; while carrots, spring onions, peas and radishes (finally) are going directly into the ground.

Meanwhile, the local countryside currently seems far more bounteous than the garden – thick, lush drifts of wild garlic and nettles, speckled with bluebells, carpet the nearby woodlands. So, I clear my potting bench and head out to the woods to hunt for edible treasure.