Edible spring flowers

Spring is a busy time for gardeners, with seeds to be sown, digging and planting to be done, and the first weeds making an appearance. Green manures may not be the first things that you think of to sow, but there are many green manures that are ideal for spring sowing and bring many benefits to your garden.

Cornish hedges are an exuberant delight. I visited in April a few years back, and every lane was awash with alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum). This year, in May, they put on a stunning display that would put a Chelsea show garden to shame.

The fashion world used to work so far in advance that if you wanted a new swimming costume for your summer holiday, you would have to buy it in the spring. By August, swimming costumes were nowhere to be seen, and it was time to buy your winter coat. Things have changed with the rise in long-haul holidays; it’s always summer somewhere in the world, and you can buy clothes of all types year-round.

Fresh from the success that allowed astronauts to eat lettuce grown in space in August, NASA’s Veggie plant-growing hardware on the International Space Station (ISS) has been reloaded with new plant pillows – this time sown with Zinnia ‘Profusion’.

My parents are coming to visit today, to ‘see the garden’ (which is probably just a convenient excuse for them to visit). I am a little apprehensive – not least because it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop raining all day. We were going to have a barbecue; we’ve thought better of it.

Over the weekend I got involved in a project that Sustainable Didcot (one of the local Community Action Groups) is putting together under the banner ‘Incredible Edible Didcot‘. The aim of the Incredible Edible movement is to encourage edible planting in public/communal areas, so that local people have access to food they can pick, but also so that people can come together with a sense of community. Sustainable Didcot have a community allotment, with a polytunnel, on the site where I used to have my allotment (our tenures didn’t coincide!), but this will be their first public planting.

I love growing unusual edible plants – not only are they potentially useful and easy to grow (because the pests and diseases they suffer from are not widespread), but they can be beautiful too.

On Friday evening we headed to London (an unusual event in itself) to the Natural History Museum for one of their special After Hours events. The museum stays open late into the evening for guests who have booked tickets to visit the special exhibitions while it’s quieter (although the main bulk of the museum closes as normal). We weren’t booked in for an exhibition – we ended up in the restaurant for a special tasting session of edible insects.

One of the great joys of spring is seeing trees leaf out and bloom. They bring so much joy, and do so much for us, and yet are rarely valued as they should be. In particular, ancient trees are wondrous, magical things. Impressive and complex structures, they have lots of nooks and crannies in which wildlife can find a home. As fungi feed on the tree they provide food for woodland creatures, and a hollowed out trunk provides shelter. Although ancient trees are in the final stage of their life, and technically in decline, they have a lot to give, and can go on living for a long time, depending on the species.

Ryan and I have just spent a few days in Dorset, and – apart from Friday when it rained non-stop – the weather was lovely. While we were there we popped in* to see Joy Michaud at Sea Spring Seeds, a small company that sells plants and seeds, specialising in chillies. You may have met Joy on the Sea Spring Seeds stand at a gardening event – she loves taking her seeds on the road and meeting her customers, even though there’s plenty of work to be done back at the farm!

I’ve mentioned the TomTato and the Egg & Chips plants before – they’re exclusive to T&M, grafted vegetables that grow two crops – potatoes combined either with tomatoes or aubergines. Now opinion is divided as to whether they’re genius space savers or a novelty that won’t give you your money’s worth on either crop. But if you’d like the opportunity to decide for yourself then they’re on offer today – you can buy a pair of plants (one of each variety) for just £4.99.

Hurricane Barney battered the garden a bit last week, but it seems to have withstood the weather