COLUMNIST: Kelly Ireland
I think it was the sense of abundance and sharing the surplus that gave me the warm fuzzies.
I still get this feeling as an adult. Now, it is eggs and seedlings throughout spring and summer which transitions to tomatoes, apples, and other good things as the seasons progress.
On the Celtic Wheel, Lughnasadh (pronounced Loo-nas-ah) is the celebration of the first harvests of the year. It is a traditional time for gathering, commemorating not just the harvest to come, but to give thanks for the community around us that made the harvest happen in the first place. This festival is traditionally held on the 1st of August and is celebrated in a number of ways such as baking breads, crafting corn dollies, gathering around a fire, cooking barley soups, and preserving the fruits of the season in jams and pickles.
It is also a good time to pause and reflect on all the hard work that has gone into growing a productive garden, to look back and see what is producing a good crop, and what could have gone better.
When it comes to growing food, I like to give myself some easy wins. Sure, I will always try to grow melons in the polytunnel because I like to torture myself with failure, but elsewhere on the plot I am all about actually having something to eat. So, here are my top five easy good things to grow.
You can sow these directly or in modules. I do both. The module ones are under cover to give them a head start and once they are about ten centimetres tall, I plant them out, put some sticks in the ground, and wind some twine around the sticks to stop the beans from flopping. They may get a bit of nibbling but they seem to bounce back unless, like last year, it is a truly awful slug year and I had to do a hasty re-sow.
You can eat the top leaves in a salad whilst you wait for the pods to fatten. Once you have the beans you can use them in all kinds of ways. In potato salads, blitzed into a dip, or in a risotto are all great ways to use them up. I have also recently read about someone who roasted the pods with olive oil and salt. I have not tried this yet, but I plan to.
Broad beans are also a great introductory crop for seed saving. You just leave them alone until the pods are papery and the beans are rattling inside the case. Then you simply pop the dried seeds into an envelope and store them somewhere cool and dark until next year.
Even in a small garden, there should be room for a currant bush. I have lots of them, most of which I have propagated from cuttings from the original plants given to me by a neighbour over a decade ago. My technique is simple: cut a dormant stem in winter and stick it in the ground. The following year, it grows if you can keep the weeds at bay. Currants are an expensive thing to buy in a shop because, like most soft fruits, their shelf life is short.
I have all kinds of currants, but the dominant one is blackcurrant, Ribes nigrum. I make cordial and jam mostly, but there are lots of other uses for them: crumbles, sorbets, fruit leathers, summer pudding, and blackcurrant infused gin are all great ways to use up berries. I also save and dry the young leaves earlier in the year to make a tasty tea blend.
You can feel good about eating them as they provide over 30% of the recommended daily amount of vitamin C in just 100g serving. They also contain a wide range of minerals such as potassium, calcium, iron, and zinc amongst others. Easy to grow, tasty to eat, and good for you makes them a winner.
You can grow potatoes in pots, in sacks, in the ground. I often find one growing out of the compost bin from a bit of peel that had enough eyes (buds) on it. The main thing for a successful potato crop is to give them the room they need. Putting ten in a pot isn’t going to give you a better yield than, say, three seed potatoes in the same space. Potatoes need room to grow, and they need to be covered from the light to keep growing more baby potatoes.
If you google how to grow potatoes, you will find a lot of advice, which can make it seem like a lot of digging and effort. I employ the Ruth Stout method to grow them. Over winter, I cover the area I want to grow potatoes in a thick layer of mulch, usually straw. Come spring, I rake up the straw, remove any obvious weeds that may have taken root (usually creeping buttercup round here). Then I place the potatoes on the ground at the recommended spacing and cover them with a deep layer of straw. As they start to shoot through the straw, I top up the layer. I harvest after flowering when they are starting to die off.
Ruth Stout didn’t stop at growing potatoes in this way, she grew her whole garden with what she called the no-work method. Often touted as ‘The Mulch Queen’, her books make interesting reading.
I have grown potatoes like this for the past five years and it really works. I am sure potato purists will tell me I am reducing my harvest potential, but I get enough to feed myself and my family for a good few months this way and I haven’t broken myself with epic amounts of digging.
You do need to keep an eye out for blight. I have been lucky as it doesn’t seem to be a problem in the area in which I live, but I have heard of whole allotment sites being affected and having to put a blanket ban on potato growing for a year to try and reduce the problem. If you are on an allotment, maybe ask your neighbouring plot holders if they have had any blight problems.
I like this plant because it looks pretty as well as being tasty. I grow 'Bright Lights’ because I love all the coloured stems. Chard is another plant that is more expensive in the supermarket, again because it wilts fast so won’t sit on the shelf as well as other veggies. When I cut chard for cooking, I put the stems in a jar of water to keep them fresh.
I always start chard in a cell tray, usually 2-3 seeds per cell. I will thin out once germinated and then plant out when they are a good size to handle, usually about 5-7cm. They are susceptible to slugs, but not as bad as some other greens. I have had broccoli and cabbage totally wiped out overnight, with the chard being strangely left untouched. I do net my greens as we have a healthy pigeon population nearby.
Chard goes well with all kinds of things. You can use it in any meal that you would use kale, cabbage, or broccoli. This year, I am going to put it in feta filo triangles.
Chard is an excellent source of vitamin K, which is important for bone health. One cup of lightly cooked chard will give you over 300% of your daily requirement - I think it’s worth growing for that reason alone.
Apple trees come in all shapes and sizes. There are step-overs, espalier, and dwarf - whatever the size of your garden there is an apple tree to suit it. I appreciate that pruning an espalier is a big ask of a novice gardener, but most are sold on a frame so if you keep to that and don’t go too daft, you should be good.
I know apples are cheap enough in the shops, but the varieties are so limited. In the U.K., there are over 2500 distinct types and yet in the supermarket you are unlikely to see more than four types.
You could treat yourself to a heritage variety that you will never see in a supermarket, and be the envy of your friends with a beautiful apple tree that has a fascinating history to go with it. For example, the Coul Blush eating apple originates from Ross-shire and is Scotland’s most north growing apple and it is also an ingredient in Caorunn gin.
If buying apple trees is out of your budget, you can still enjoy growing apples. I save seeds from apples that I have eaten, then wrap the seeds in damp kitchen roll and place them in the fridge in a plastic tub (old cream cheese tubs work really well) for around six weeks. After six weeks, they will start to sprout, at which point you can plant them in some compost. and pop outside in a sheltered spot. Keep an eye on them and make sure they don’t dry out.
I am yet to get any apples from my small nursery as it takes between six and ten years for a tree to produce fruit, but am encouraged by a friend who has been doing this a lot longer and now has a lovely crop from trees grown from seeds. It is worth noting that apple trees grown from seed will not be true to the parent tree, so you have no way of knowing what you will end up with, but that is the fun part, right?
So, there you have it. Those are my top five good things to grow if you want an easy harvest that money can’t buy.
Will things go awry? Possibly. Will you learn a lot along the way? Absolutely.
And you should have something to bring to the harvest festival/Lughnasadh fireside to share with your friends and family. I hope it gives you the same warm fuzzies it gives me.
Kelly Ireland is a keen gardener living with her partner on an off-grid smallholding in the North East of Scotland. Kelly completed her Permaculture Design Certificate in 2022 and is using this to develop the gardens around their home.
Keep up with her garden on Instagram at @growingseasons_.