Growing your own

I don’t want to be too negative about this. Kitchen gardening is great fun, and this present enthusiasm for ‘growing one’s own’ is good news for everyone, but particularly for parents who wish to teach their children a great deal about their world in an agreeable and positive fashion. And there are some fruits and vegetables that do, so to speak, pay their way. Apples, surprisingly, are one, provided they can be stored efficiently, while pears are always best picked from the garden, since they travel so badly when ripe. On the other hand, plums and greengages rule themselves out because the blossom is liable to be frosted disastrously. (Not that that stops me growing them, but then I never said I wanted to save money particularly.) Bought strawberries are often sour, so growing them at home means a much better choice of variety, even if crops are small. Fruits hard to find in shops, so definitely worth the effort, are quinces, mulberries, morello cherries, Japanese wineberries, honeyberries and pineapple guavas.

Asparagus has not much longer a season in the shops as in your garden (six to eight weeks) and, once planted, will last for many years, if you have the space to give for a permanent bed. Salsify, scorzonera and seakale are virtually unobtainable commercially, so obviously worthwhile, as are black tomatoes, kohl-rabi and Chinese artichokes.

This March, sales are up in the garden centres by as much as 30 per cent over the same month last year, thanks in large part to this increasing enthusiasm for kitchen gardening. As I say, it’s not saving us much money. Never mind, eh?