Kew experts tout Jamaican crops as UK warms up

GARDENERS should grow Jamaican crops instead of lettuce and potatoes to combat the effects of climate change, Kew experts have said.

Horticulturalists at the Royal Botanic Gardens have been experimenting with foreign alternatives to traditional crops after finding that summers had become too hot for lettuce and fennel.

Alternatives include callaloo, a leafy green vegetable native to west Africa but now very popular in Jamaica. Gardeners have also been experimenting with other Andean tubers to provide an alternative to potatoes, including oca and mashua, a climbing nasturtium.

Helena Dove, a gardener at Kew, said: “The reason it’s important is, if we grow all three and one of them has an issue, we still have a crop.

“In London, particularly, lettuces work really well from about March until about June. That’s when you get lettuces. But then in the summer try out callaloo, try the Malabar spinach.

“Optimism is key … I grow tree spinach and amaranth. I grow dandelions, which everyone laughs at,” she said.

“I grow my fennel either very early or very late in the season.”

The garden is launching a new exhibition, Food Forever, to draw attention to the world’s reliance on a very small number of food crops that are vulnerable to pests, diseases and climate change.