Annual herbs and veg Time to plan your planting

PLANTS must pay their way when you grow your own, especially if you have a small garden. So over the next fortnight I’ll suggest some good bets, starting with annual veg and herbs, and turning to perennial edibles next week.

Start planning your planting now and look out for the containers and equipment you’ll need to transform a postage stamp into an attractive and productive hub.

You will only need window boxes, a few containers, possibly one or two small beds and certainly walls or fences – perfect for some fresh, tasty produce.

With space at a premium, it must be kept fully occupied, so use good compost and organic liquid feed to keep plants growing vigorously.

Although you’ll have very little homemade compost, you could use a wormery and get highly nutritious wormcast from raw kitchen scraps.

Aim for as little bare soil as possible, so avoid land-hungry plants such as slow-growing hearting lettuces and broccoli.

Go for closely packed, cut and come again greens. Or the direct-sown cima di rapa with its delicious taste of broccoli.

Harvest after a few weeks, when it reaches 30cm, and resow. It’s been one of my best discoveries of 2018.

There’s no shortage of cut and come again leaf crops, including beet, chard and oriental greens such as pak choi, mizuna and komatsuna.

Use tender beetroot and turnip leaves as well as their tubers. These quick catch-crops fill a space before courgettes and runner beans.

Or simply sow successionally for cropping between April and October.

Herbs, such as coriander, also work well. Varieties such as Cilantro or Calypso produce a good flush of leaves and are suitable for both containers and the open ground. When the weather warms up in April, sow in clumps or rows. And because the seed is large, it’s easy to poke individual seeds in to soil or compost round other plants.

But, as with every plant, ruthlessly remove coriander when it flowers or goes straggly after a month or so. There’s no room for a plant that’s not pulling its weight.

Herbs are always a good idea but focus on ones you could use at any time, not just occasionally. They lose that precious flavour all too quickly, so timely picking is essential.

I find salad rocket meets the bill. I’ll direct sow every month between late March and September, making sure each row is at least 30cm long.

This allows for regular harvesting and prevents premature bolting, I have to

water regularly during a dry spell, like last summer. Astra and Esmee do especially well.

Nothing beats a garden burgeoning with healthy plants but it also needs shape, colour and style. Carefully chosen vegetables, herbs and the fruit I’ll discuss next week will give you this.

Although green provides a wide palate of shades, leaf and produce come in many colours.

There’s nothing wrong with traditional deep red or purple beetroot, but some varieties offer much more. Rainbow beet is a mix of five differently coloured skins: purple, red and pink stripes, yellow, green and white.

And, while good old Swiss chard is a key player, Bright Lights chard is a feature plant, with its green, yellow, red and near-purple leaves standing high and proud in any bed.

And you can go further in even the smallest bed by letting three Painted Lady runner beans scale a 2metre tripod, towering above other vegetables or flowers.

And why not paint a wall or trellis with these climbers? Make full use of these vertical areas with tall mangetout peas.

After a colourful display of flowers, you can eat Carouby de Maussane’s purple pods, or Spring Blush’s dappled pink ones.

NEXT WEEK: PERENNIAL EDIBLES

Some varieties of coriander are suitable for both containers and the open ground