QUICK-GROWING CROPS TO PLEASE THE MOST IMPATIENT GARDENERS
Radishes are among the fastest growing crops Huw Richards (above)
If you’re a beginner gardener, or just someone who doesn’t want to wait long to see the fruits of their labour, then growing quickmaturing crops is the answer.
Permaculturist, digital creator and author Huw Richards, whose gardening Youtube channel has more than 750k subscribers, believes growing veg doesn’t need to be expensive or timeconsuming.
He recommends the following quick-maturing veg...
Pea shoots
Start them off in a yoghurt pot with holes in the bottom, resting on a saucer on a windowsill. Put 5cm of peat-free multi-purpose compost in the pot.
Huw explains: “You can get dried marrowfat peas from the supermarket and put them over the surface, 1cm between each pea, fill the pot with a couple more centimetres of compost and keep it moist, like a wrung-out sponge, on a sunny windowsill, and you will have a big harvest in a couple of weeks.”
New potatoes
Buy a bag of seed potatoes, space them around 30cm apart and bury them 15cm deep in a large container filled with multi-purpose compost, or a soil and compost blend, in a bed from mid-march. If you have a cold night, cover the ground with horticultural fleece.
If you grow them in tubs they will require more water, but you should be harvesting them 10 weeks after planting them out.
Good varieties include ‘Swift’ and ‘Rocket’.
Nasturtiums
These vibrant flowers add a peppery flavour as well as rich colour to salads and other summer fare, but don’t start them off until April because they are frostsensitive. “You can harvest the leaves after six weeks and after eight to 10 weeks, you’ll get the flowers. Grow them from seed, one to two seeds in a 7cm pot, 2-3cm deep and start them off inside on a sunny windowsill,” Huw advises.
Leafy greens
Lettuce and spinach are among the most popular leafy greens, says Huw, and they are all pretty fast-growing. “There are so many different types of lettuce and so many different colours, so just pick the one that stands out the most to you,” he says.
Sow them outside from mid-april in sun or partial shade and, depending on the weather, they can start appearing in as quickly as five to seven days and be ready for harvesting in seven to eight weeks.
Mint
If you are growing edibles in a container, a mint plant is perfect, as you can add the leaves to summer drinks and salads, and they are pretty tough specimens. Either buy a plant from your local nursery or get a pot of mint from the supermarket and split it into smaller plants, or you can take cuttings and just propagate it in water, says Huw. He explains: “It grows so quickly and you can keep it within a pot and harvest it within three to four weeks”
Radishes
These are among the fastest growing crops, ready for harvesting in four to five weeks, but Huw has found a variety called ‘Radish 18 Day’, which is supposedly the fastest-maturing type. Huw suggests leaving a few behind to let them flower: “You can eat the flowers and they will create these edibly-spicy seed pods.”
■ The Self-sufficiency Garden by Huw Richards and Sam Cooper (£16.99) is available now.