3 veg to grow and three delicious dishes to make with them

Nothing beats creating meals from what you’ve grown in your own garden

As robust winter vegetables vanish from our plates, it’s a joy to taste fresh asparagus, beetroot and rhubarb again, all now in season and earning their keep on the daily changing menus at Ballymaloe House.

Of the three, asparagus demands the most commitment, but the rewards are tremendous, both in the unbeatable flavour of homegrown asparagus and its abundance in the six-week growing season from late April onwards.

The asparagus bed in the Ballymaloe Walled Garden is 30 years old and 70 meters in length. ‘I struggle to harvest it all some days,’ says Head Gardener Mags Coughlan about its prolific growth rate. ‘I could pick it all in the morning and it could be growing again in the afternoon if we have a bit of heat.’

By mid-April, asparagus spears start pushing up through the soil, a welcome sight for gardeners and indeed cooks who depend on the early-season vegetable to carry them through until summer’s bounty springs into life.

“We call the months of April and May the Hungry Gap, and asparagus is a Hungry Gap vegetable as it arrives just as the winter crops are finished and before the summer vegetables are ready,’ explains Mags.

In contrast, beetroot is an incredibly easy vegetable to grow. It’s sown directly into the earth in drills; the further apart the seeds are placed, the bigger the beets will grow.

Beetroot is generally pest free, a blessing in a busy kitchen garden, although pigeons can occasionally pick at the leaves. Covering them with netting will prevent this. The vegetable comes in a few varieties; ruby beetroot and golden beetroot are self-explanatory while Chioggia beetroot, which on cutting reveals concentric candycane stripes, is a pretty addition to salads, lending a sweet, earthy flavour.

Rhubarb is neither fruit nor vegetable but in Ballymaloe it’s considered the first fruit of the season. Myrtle Allen brought it from her childhood home in Cork to Ballycotton, planting it in the Walled Garden where today it supplies the kitchens and is roasted and transformed into relishes and compotes.