This Year ....

I wrote this list last year on our kitchen noticeboard to remind me about the new things I wanted to grow this year. However so far I have done nothing about them!

Malabar Spinach

I saw this growing when I visited the RHS Flower Show at Tatton last year. It is actually not spinach at all. It's not even related! Well, OK, it's distantly related, but it doesn't taste much like spinach at all. When it's raw Malabar spinach has very fleshy, thick leaves that are juicy and crisp with tastes of citrus and pepper. When cooked, though, Malabar spinach does look and taste a lot more like regular spinach. It doesn't wilt as fast, though, and it holds up better in soups and stir-fries.

Chickpeas

Chickpeas are a new crop to the UK although they have been cultivated for centuries in Asia and the Mediterranean. They are small leaved annual legumes, growing about knee-high, with great drought resistance and freedom from most pests. Plants are not fully hardy although capable of withstanding light frost. With attractive grey-green foliage and the capacity to fix nitrogen, chickpeas show great promise in the warmer and drier parts of the country for a long season of production, with low demands for water or nutrients and little effort needed to grow them.
However at one pea per pod you would need the grow a lot! My other half thinks I'm daft!

Watercress

In order to thrive, watercress must be kept permanently wet. It can grow submerged in water (as it does in a stream), but will do just as well in damp soil. The simplest way to achieve this is to sit your container in a deep saucer filled with water. Periodically flush the container with fresh water to keep the pot from becoming stagnant. (In hot weather, you'll have to do this more frequently.) By early summer, apply a liquid feed such as nettle tea. The soil outside now is too cold to sow watercress seed, but by late March or April it will have warmed up enough to sow direct into a pot.

Patty Pans

I have grown lots of varieties of pumpkin and squash over the years but have never tried these. They do look rather fun though!

Sweet Potatoes

Unlike normal potatoes, sweet potatoes are grown from ‘slips’. These are the long shoots that have been removed from ‘chitted’ sweet potato tubers. ‘Slips’ don’t have roots, although sometimes there are signs of small roots beginning to appear. The roots will grow once the ‘slip’ has been planted. Having read up a bit about them they do much better in a warm summer and after last year's disappointing summer - the jury is out as to whether I am going to give them a go or not!

Started off at home

Bought 'Slips'

Well that's the list covered - let's see what actually makes it to the plot!