The Good Life Hosts of Grow, Cook, Eat, Karen O’Donohue and Michael Kelly talk to Donal O’Donoghue about the new season

Grow, Cook, Eat is a TV show that takes you from soil to stomach, part cookery, part gardening, but very much its own beast. Donal O’Donoghue meets hosts Michael Kelly and Karen O’Donohue at their Waterford base, Grow HQ

“We like to have vegetables on the show that are a bit of craic,” says Karen O’Donohoe of TV show, Grow, Cook, Eat. Her co-host, Michael Kelly, smiles. Fun vegetables are just part of the big picture in a catch-all show that takes us from planting to plate over an eventful growing season. “Wait until you see the sweetcorn episode!” says O’Donohoe with evangelical zeal. So roll up for the ‘Ring of Fire’ pepper! Witness the devastation wreaked by marauding pigeons on a bed of kale! See how a snapped Achilles tendon (Karen’s) fails to thwart our intrepid co-host! Who said growing vegetables was boring?

Much of Grow, Cook, Eat is filmed at Grow HQ on the edge of Waterford city. This four-acre site, with a café, shop, gardens and greenhouse, was established just over two years ago, its life story chronicled through the two seasons of the TV show. Michael Kelly, founder of Grow It Yourself (GIY) and Grow HQ, is busy in the shop when we drop by. Karen arrives shortly afterwards. “Hey dudes,” she says (she calls everyone dude) and we’re off, talking. Grow, Cook, Eat is not a gardening show, Kelly emphasises, but more of an umbrella proposition that runs over seven episodes and seven vegetables and also features GIY tips, community news and meets commercial growers.

Pulling the strings are Michael and Karen, in some ways utter opposites: where Michael is the quietly-spoken thoughtful type, Karen is mad as a March hare, cracking jokes and dispensing hugs. Perhaps that’s why they work so well together, both on screen and off. “This was my first time growing these vegetables,” says Karen of season two. “So I am the Everywoman viewer. I’m a working mum and I don’t have loads of space at home so I was learning all the time.” Michael agrees that his TV colleague wasn’t faking her lack of growing knowledge. “That is real ignorance you see on screen,” he says and Karen explodes with laughter.

Grow, Cook, Eat evolved from a chance meeting between Michael Kelly and TV producer David Hare at Ballymaloe LitFest. The GIY man pitched the idea and Hare, whose recent credits include Neven Maguire’s Seafood Trails and How to Cook Well with Rory O’Connell, was hooked. “It was a bit of a punt by RTÉ as neither of us had done any TV before,” says Michael. Karen nods. “Yes they were taking a risk with us and when I say ‘us’ I really mean ‘him’. She laughs, Michael smiles, yin and yang. “In some ways this show is the ultimate master-class on food,” says Kelly. “We strip it back to showing how you go from say a bunch of freshly picked beetroot to this amazing dish.”

This season’s seven vegetables are peppers, pumpkin, kale, sweetcorn, onion, courgette and French beans. There is practical advice, from dealing with pests to preparing your garden for the winter months, and a new chef

on board, Katie Sanderson, who delivers the ‘eat’ part of the show. “We didn’t want to make a preachy show where people might feel that were being talked down to by experts,” says Michael. So mistakes were made and filmed. “Last year the blight got our spuds and this year something equally bad happened to our sweetcorn when we forgot about it.” Karen interjects. “You forgot about it,” she says. Then there was the kale which got savaged by opportunist pigeons and on the first day of filming Karen ended up in A & E.

Neither Karen nor Michael was a natural born grower. “More like a natural born killer,” says Karen. “I’m not even going to try to deny it. I came to growing full of the theory but it was just that: facts and theory. It was only when I came here to Grow HQ, that it all made sense.” O’Donohoe, from Ladysbridge in East Cork, officially joined GIY in 2015, where she now works as Community Development Officer. “I get up every single day with a complete conviction and belief in the work that we do here and I am surrounded by like-minded people,” she says. “The big message is that everybody can grow something. At least just give it a go.”

Last year GIY celebrated its tenth anniversary. “It has been mental,” says Kelly, who some 16 years ago left his IT job in Dublin and moved with his wife to the country in search of the good life. They bought a cottage in Dunmore East where they grew their own food, kept hens and pigs and raised a family. The first time he ever grew garlic was such an epiphany that he likens it to that scene in Castaway where Tom Hanks rubs sticks into fire on the beach. After that there was no going back. “It has been an amazing time from my own personal journey to setting up the first GIY group here to building this place,” he says. “Our vision ultimately is for everyone to grow their own food.”

In the meantime Grow, Cook, Eat continues to spread the food news. Season two has yet to debut but Michael and Karen have already chosen their seven vegetables for season three. Doubtless there will be a lot more craic in that line-up (the word is that chard and Oriental greens may be making an appearance) with mistakes as well as triumphs jostling for room in a show where the most craic comes from the spark between its co-hosts. So what did the fledgling broadcasters learn from season one? “I think we are probably better presenters,” says Michael. “Careful now!” warns Karen. “Can we just say that we are a little bit better?”

They are too modest by half.

The big message is that everybody can grow something. At least just give it a go