Innehållsförteckning för Grow & cook 2024 från BBC Gardeners' World

Most fruit and vegetables can be grown in pots and, while they will need more water and food than those grown in the ground, there are advantages too. They are portable and therefore easy to keep close to the house so you can pay close attention to them. Container crops will also be free from soil-borne diseases. Here are some tips to give you the best results possible in a small space. To get the best from growing vegetables in pots, and to ensure you always have something to pick, it’s worth taking the time think about the plants you grow and how you grow them. Choose good quality peat-free, multi-purpose compost, and consider adding slow-release fertiliser granules and water-retaining gel to keep your crops growing well. Fruit and veg…

INCLUDING… MANGETOUTS Sow these in batches through summer and you’ll have a long supply of sweet and crunchy snacks to graze on when out in the garden. FRENCH BEANS Whether it’s short dwarf types or tall climbing ones, these beans crop well in a small space and the more you pick, the more they produce! RUNNER BEANS Just three plants grown up a bamboo wigwam can produce an abundance of fresh summer pickings, as well as the chance to stock up your freezer for winter. BROAD BEANS Cropping early in summer, enjoy the beans whole or skinned, plus some varieties are good for eating the pod, and the shoot tips are great for salad too. Runner beans There will nearly always be fresh veg to hand in summer if you…

INCLUDING… TOMATOES Cordon-grown tomatoes, trained to canes, are a summer labour of love and something of a summer obsession but, if time is tight, grow bush types in pots, which need no pruning or training. AUBERGINES An essential ingredient if you eat a lot of Mediterranean food. Growing your own gives you the chance to cook with aubergines of all different colours and sizes, at the peak of their freshness. CHILLIES Unsurprisingly lovers of warmth, chillies need an early start in a cosy propagator or toasty room indoors at the end of winter if grown from seed, and a greenhouse is best if you want a super-hot harvest. USING UP GLUTS A handy chutney recipe to use up all those green tomatoes that don’t have enough time to ripen at…

INCLUDING… LEEKS One of the first ones in and the last ones out, leeks are an almost constant presence, sown in spring and still ready for picking as winter ends. Easy to grow from seed. ONIONS Some gardeners sow onions at the turn of the year but there is a long window of opportunity, with the chance to plant onion sets in autumn and spring. Space plants close together to pick spring onions. GARLIC Best planted in autumn so that they are exposed to a cold snap, garlic cloves are easy to plant and great in soil that drains well. Dry cloves after harvesting for a longer shelf-life. A LASAGNE WITH A TWIST This meat-free take on a classic is full of goodness from the garden, and the long harvesting…

The great thing about growing food is that whatever space or situation you have available, there will be a crop to suit it. Even if all you have are a couple of window boxes, you’ll be able to enjoy your own home-grown harvest, whether it’s sweet strawberries, pungent herbs or hot peppery rocket. Or maybe you’ve just moved into a new garden with a good space but aren’t sure where to start? These tasks will get the ball rolling and help make your growing spaces as manageable and productive as possible. 1 DIVIDE A PATCH INTO SMALL AREAS When space is at a premium, every inch of growing space counts and splitting up even a small raised bed into sections will help you get the maximum harvest possible. Use stringlines…

What are the best crops for your garden, balcony or patio? When should they be started and when can they be harvested? And most importantly, what delicious dishes can be made from the homegrown harvest? All these questions will be answered in the following pages, crop by crop. It may seem obvious, but when it comes to choosing the right crops for your garden, start with asking yourself what you actually want to eat. It’s easy to end up growing some edible plants and then realising that you don’t like eating them that much or aren’t sure what to do with your harvest! Once you’ve done this, it’s then a good idea to work out what crops will work with the space and growing conditions that you have. Turn the…

INCLUDING… CALABRESE This quick-growing crop is usually called broccoli in the shops and is easy to grow, especially if bought as plug plants, which can be ready to harvest in just three months. CABBAGES Few crops are as varied, versatile and long cropping as cabbages. Summer ones, autumn ones, winter ones, red ones, coleslaw ones; there is a cabbage to suit most tastes or styles of cooking. BRUSSELS SPROUTS Love them or hate them, these Christmas dinner (un)favourites get sweeter and more flavoursome as the winter progresses, and take up less room than cabbages or cauliflowers if space is tight. CAULIFLOWER Thriving in cool, damp summers, cauliflowers come in a range of colours if you grow your own, and can be harvested at almost any time of year, depending on…

INCLUDING… ASPARAGUS It will take a few years to establish but, once you’ve got your asparagus bed cropping, you can look forward to an annual gourmet treat that heralds the fact that spring has well and truly arrived. JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES These underground tubers spread and spread so there’s always a lot to go around. Dig up the bits you don’t want and plant them at the edges of the garden to make a windbreak. RHUBARB A rare treat in early spring when there is so little else to harvest. If you force a clump of rhubarb then you can be tucking into it in late February when many other crops are still inside seed packets. HOMEGROWN CAKE A quick, tasty spice cake to make as a treat in early spring…

INCLUDING… RASPBERRIES These super sweet treats might not make it back into the kitchen at all because once you start snacking it’s hard to stop! Grow as many as space allows, so that some can make it into a pudding or cake. PEARS As autumn sets in, so the pear season starts and the flavour and texture of a perfectly ripe pear from the garden is incomparable to the woody fruits sold in plastic bags. There are loads of varieties too. BLUEBERRIES A great choice for growing in pots because of their need for acid soil (which, in many gardens, is easier to provide in a pot) blueberries are attractive as well as productive crops, with glorious autumn foliage. A WARMING PUDDING The wonderful thing about storing summer fruits is…

January Dig compost or well-rotted farmyard manure deeply into vegetable plots to improve the soil structure and fertility. Build raised beds using a kit or recycled lengths of timber. Plant new fruit trees and bushes. Prune apples and pears to limit the size and the shape of trees. Order vegetable seeds, onion and shallot sets, seed potatoes and asparagus from specialist mail-order suppliers. February Prepare your veg beds by raking the soil level, breaking down lumps and removing stones. Cover clumps of rhubarb with forcing jars or old buckets to get early crops. Feed fruit with sulphate of potash to boost flowering and fruiting. Bring potted strawberries into the greenhouse or cover plants with cloches for earlier crops. Buy seed potatoes. Sow the following crops indoors for planting out later: cauliflowers,…

There are so many reasons to grow your own food and that’s before the benefits it can have to your wellbeing are taken into account. Growing a crop as large as a pumpkin from something as tiny as one of its seeds is a rewarding experience, and following the changing seasons as you nurture your plants over weeks or months is thoroughly enriching. These good things and more can be yours when you grow your own food. Here are some brilliant benefits of raising your own crops, if you needed some more convincing! MORE CHOICE If you’re fed up with the same old apples in the shops, or the limited choice of potatoes, then growing them at home opens up hundreds of possibilities and is a great way of rediscovering…

INCLUDING… POTATOES Even if you’ve only got a balcony available you can grow some spuds in a recycled compost bag or large pot and enjoy the unbeatable taste of fresh new potatoes. PARSNIPS Sow these when the soil has warmed in April and they can be more or less forgotten about until winter, when the sweet roots will make for a brilliant soup or roast vegetable. BEETROOT A versatile crop that’s not just for pickling. Find just a square metre of space and you can sow straight in the soil to have fresh leaves and baby roots for salad, or larger tennis-ball size ones for roasting. CARROTS Grow these in long deep pots on the patio for an easy crunchy salad crop that is potentially much sweeter than the carrots…

INCLUDING… ROCKET These fast leaves are packed with intense flavour and only a few are needed to add a strong kick to a salad. They will self seed if allowed so you’ll always have it to hand for snipping in late spring and summer. SPINACH So versatile in cooking, adding flavour when mature and as baby leaves, while older leaves are great for bulking out soups and stews. Perpetual spinach crops over a very long period to harvest at any time. CUCUMBER Although useful, you don’t have to have a greenhouse to harvest fresh cucumbers, which have so much more flavour than the ones in shops. A sheltered sunny corner of the garden will also give a good crop. LETTUCE If all you have is a windowsill then you can…

INCLUDING… COURGETTES Once these plants start to fruit, there’s no stopping them and you can harvest anything from a dainty fruit the size of a sausage, to a monster marrow that can feed a family, all from the same plant. PUMPKINS Delicious as both a savoury and a sweet crop, these are great for planting in the first year if you inherit an overgrown allotment. Keep the soil around their roots weed-free for a heavy crop. BUTTERNUT SQUASH These supersweet heavyweight fruits start to ripen in autumn, perfect for when warming soups, risottos and stews start to appeal. They can store well too. A SUMMER SALAD Cropping abundantly in high summer, thin slices of fresh, succulent courgettes will add welcome sweetness and colour to summer salads, and this tasty one…