Grow your own community lunch!
Introduction
The beauty of growing your own fruit and vegetables is enjoying the tastiest, freshest food – and sharing your harvest with others. When you’re digging and planting alongside your friends and neighbours, the whole experience is even better – and the rewards are greater to share and enjoy.
Sowing the seeds, caring for them and watching them grow, providing everything those plants need for a bumper crop – the process is the same whether you’re cultivating cress in a little pot on the kitchen windowsill, or planting purple sprouting on the allotment. All your hard work pays off, to create the most delicious, home-grown food – just perfect to share at a summer barbecue or community lunch.
Enjoy it with your community!
A great thing about gardening as part of a wider community, is that when you have a glut of anything – tomatoes, courgettes and strawberries are particular favourites at this time of year – there are plenty of people to share with; why not get together to make jams, preserves or pickles!
Here are a few essentials...
These essentials will help you create a lovely community lunch - grown easily and enjoyed together:
Potatoes – a very reliable crop for containers, easy to grow and so delicious! Just pop one sprouting seed Potato in a large pot of compost, just below the surface, and add more compost as the leaves appear, to prevent the new baby potatoes becoming green and inedible. Keep the plants well-watered and when flowers start to appear, the new potatoes will be ready to harvest – just tip out the pot and search amongst the compost for the baby potatoes. Absolutely delicious just washed, boiled and served with butter and mint.
Tomatoes – are great in grow bags and can even be grown in hanging baskets, if you choose a tumbling variety. Grow from seed or buy as young plants for a speedier harvest. Tomato plants can be grown in pots outdoors or in a greenhouse, and they’ll need weekly feeding and plenty of water. Support the plants with canes, so that the weight of the developing fruit doesn’t snap the stems. When 5 or 6 trusses of flowers have set fruit, nip the top shoot out, to encourage a heavier crop.
Lettuces – there are so many different varieties, colours, textures and flavours to choose from. My favourite way to grow salads is to ‘cut & come again’ – where you leave the roots and stem growing, harvest the delicious young leaves and then new growth will mean you can harvest again in a short while. Lettuce is easy to grow from seed, and is happy growing in pots, window-boxes or planters, so it’s ideal for smaller spaces.
Carrots – an absolute favourite with children! New baby carrots are so sweet and delicious, they’re a great way to get kids interested in growing food. Sow the seed very thinly in rows, in deep planters which have good drainage, using multipurpose compost. Keep the young plants well-watered and you’ll be able to start harvesting when the little carrots are about the thickness of a pencil.
If you have not grown veg before try one of the above, you will not be disappointed!
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