A few of years ago we resolved to grow food seriously; a large garden or an allotment will keep your household well fed. We now have onions, shallots, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, butternut squash, corn on the cob, leeks, Jerusalem artichokes, spinach and salads most years. Nature is prolific – from the seeds of one tomato you get hundreds of plants, each with dozens of fruit. Indeed, there are some edible plants that are so prolific you will never starve.
Jerusalem artichokes and rhubarb are crops that need virtually no attention and they will embarrass you with their profusion. You’ll be giving them away – begging friends to take some. Once you have planted artichoke bulbs, you’ll have plenty of this root crop to dig up year on year, any time between November and March. A modest application of organic manure annually is more than enough to encourage them – they can become a bit of a pest if they’re allowed to spread into areas where you have other plans, so best to keep them in a separate bed.
Rhubarb you can ‘force’, by the simple expedient of placing something over the plant that will funnel the growth upwards towards the light. We use a spare compost ‘dalek’. The result is finer, pinker, longer stems, like those you pay a lot for at the greengrocer’s or in the supermarket. Alternatively, you can leave the rhubarb to do its own thing, which will bring you a heavier harvest of bigger, thicker stems that are also delicious when cooked and put into a crumble. Rhubarb needs only a bit of manure to yield almost more than you can manage.
Another easy crop is the squash or marrow. There are many varieties, but I can tell you that a courgette, if left unnoticed and unpicked for a few days, is a marrow. My favourite are the big butternut squash because they will keep for two or three months into the winter if stored somewhere cool and airy. Bring these on from seeds, plant them out by putting each seedling on the top of a little mound of well-manured earth, and water when dry. For this small effort they will reward you with a grand supply of hard-skinned golden fruits with a wonderful flavour. Try slicing them up and bake sprinkled with salt and oil until they start to caramelise.
