WAY TO GROW
Cook and gardener Aaron Bertelsen explains how to cultivate carrots and beets in your own backyard.
CARROTS
It was a lady who came to one of my vegetable talks who first told me about growing carrots in pots. She said that she did it to outwit the carrot fly, which operate at ground level, so if you grow your carrots higher up, they should escape. It works brilliantly.
Another great advantage with container growing is that you can tailor the environment to the crop. Carrots like it gritty, so I add some sharp sand to the mix – about one-part sand to 10 parts compost (potting soil). Tall, slender ‘long Tom’ pots are ideal.
Being closer to the house, your carrots will be less exposed to the elements, and you can easily protect them on cold nights with a bit of hessian (burlap) to stop the soil freezing so that they are easy to harvest.
I love carrots in all their different incarnations – slender, young and fresh in the summer, bigger and sweeter in the winter once the cold weather has started to turn the starches to sugar.
Carrots are best sown direct as they don’t like root disturbance. You can buy special tape with the seeds correctly spaced out, but I prefer to sow from the packet, sprinkling them as thinly as I can.
Inevitably, they will need to be thinned out further – initially to about 2.5 cm apart, then even wider as the carrots grow bigger – but I look on this as a bonus. Each time you do it, you are rewarded with a handful of baby carrots to put in a salad, dip into hummus or enjoy just as they are.
Water thoroughly twice a week for plump, tender roots. If you have never tasted home-grown carrots before, you are in for a treat.
FAVOURITE VARIETIES
‘Early Nantes’ has great flavour and I grow it successfully year after year. ‘Danvers’ is another good option, as it grows well in all soils, produces quite short carrots and has really good flavour. But perhaps the best all-rounder is ‘Chantenay Red Cored’, as it has excellent flavour, is so easy to grow and produces short, wide carrots.
KEY DATES
You can start sowing carrots in early to midspring and keep going right the way through to late summer to ensure a succession. Just keep popping more seeds into the spaces where you have harvested, or interplant them with other crops – remembering, of course, that they will need a tall pot to develop properly. Spring onions (scallions) would be the perfect partner, as the smell will keep carrot fly at bay.
My preference is to sow carrots in late summer because the ensuing cold weather makes them sweeter, the carrot fly have flown away, and it is a wonderful crop to have when there is little else around.
COMMON PROBLEMS
Carrot fly is the number one problem. Using tall pots helps to keep them at bay, as does growing chives or spring onions (scallions) around the edge or nearby – carrot fly hate the strong smell.
Carrots will also struggle in a soil that is too rich, or contains lumps of organic matter that haven’t broken down. Use a good, soil-based compost and add some sand.
10 minutes 40 minutes
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1 large leek, trimmed and diced 1 large celery stalk, finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, very finely chopped,
grated or crushed (minced) 1 teaspoon ground turmeric the seeds from 1 teaspoon
cardamom pods, lightly crushed 400 grams dried puy
(French green) lentils
1 litre chicken stock
1 teaspoon salt
1 x 200-gram bunch cavolo nero (Tuscan kale), large stems removed and leaves sliced juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon mild wholegrain
mustard handful flat-leaf parsley or coriander, finely chopped, plus a few whole leaves to garnish yoghurt, to serve
This is such a versatile dish, and one that really makes the most of the intense, slightly bitter flavour of cavolo nero.
It is quite unusual to see these earthy ingredients combined with exotic spices, but it really does work. I like this as a main course, but you can also use it as a side dish to accompany lamb, chicken, sausages or even a substantial fish such as sea bass.
I use puy lentils for their nutty flavour and excellent firm texture – the little gleaming dark greeny-grey pebbles look so beautiful with the black leaves of the kale. Make this with vegetable stock (broth) if you prefer, for a completely vegetarian dish.
Heat the oil in a pan over low heat, add the leek, celery, garlic, turmeric and cardamom and cook for about 10 minutes until soft.
Add the lentils, stock (broth) and salt, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. Uncover the pan and stir through the cavolo nero. Simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes, stirring gently now and then, so as not to break up the lentils.
Remove from the heat, add the lemon juice and stir through the mustard and parsley or coriander. Serve warm, with a good dollop of yoghurt, and garnish with some extra herbs.
Serves 4 as a main course,
6–8 as a side dish