Alan’s five favourite edibles
■ Climbing French bean ‘Cobra’ Runner beans crop heavily, but I prefer the slender, pencil-like climbing French beans for their tenderness. Grow them up wigwams of canes or a tent-like row of bean poles, remembering that they are greedy plants that never like to go short of water. Don’t plant them out until the end of May, when danger of frost is past.
■ Onion ‘Centurion’ I always grow onions from sets – those tiny bulbs – rather than seeds. They are much less fiddly to deal with and yield every bit as heavy a crop. My onions this year were fully 10cm in diameter, and that’s plenty large enough. They like really fertile soil and bags of sunshine. Make sure the sets are planted just underneath the surface so that their tops don’t stick out, otherwise blackbirds find it great fun pulling them out of the ground.
■ Potato ‘Charlotte’ When growing space is in short supply, most folk don’t bother with potatoes, but if you can give an early variety even a small bed to themselves – or plant two or three seed potatoes in a large tub – you’ll enjoy that magical moment of harvesting your own spuds, taking them indoors, cooking them and slathering them with butter… mouthwatering! And ‘Charlotte’ has a great flavour.
■ Mint I grow half a dozen different varieties of mint. I don’t always harvest them (though they are great with roast lamb) but I simply love the aroma they release when I brush past them. To prevent them taking over, I grow them in pots sunk into the ground along the edge of the beds, with their rims protruding.
■ Rhubarb ‘German Wine’ As statuesque as a hosta or gunnera, with vivid red stems, and a must for pies and crumbles. Pull off the stems as you need them in the first half of the summer, and then keep removing faded leaves and you will have plants that are strikingly handsome. There are lots of really good red-stemmed varieties available now.
Alan puts people first with expert tips on designing a garden that appeals to young and old alike