Homegrown style: These are salad days indeed
Anyone with a tiny garden has Joy Larkcom to thank for cut-and-come-again
lettuce
, says Francine Raymond
Without a shadow of doubt, Joy Larkcom has had more effect on the way we grow
and eat salads and vegetables than all the celebrity chefs put together.
Often described as the original hunter gatherer, Joy studied horticulture at
Wye, and her academic background encouraged her to dig deep — everything she
writes has been researched in depth. She writes about what she knows and
what she has grown.
As we spoke recently, Joy, 75, was just back from a visit to Australia. She
has lost none of her wanderlust, and described how she and her young family
set off in a caravan for a year’s Grand Vegetable Tour in 1976, travelling
from Holland to Hungary, studying vegetable culture and bringing back seeds
of old varieties which were sent to the Vegetable Gene Bank, in
Wellesbourne.
There she discovered purslanes, endives and a huge range of chicories, and can
be held responsible for the proliferation of salad rocket on every dish in
every restaurant. Joy also promoted the intensive method of salad
cultivation known as cut-and-come-again, something market gardeners and
anyone with a tiny garden will thank her for.
Since then she has travelled the world, lured by tempting names of unknown
plants, especially oriental vegetables — pak choi, mustard leaves, Chinese
cabbage, mibuna and mizuna, which can now be spotted on supermarket shelves
and grown from seed late in the season.
Joy tried to get seed companies interested in importing foreign varieties and
offering organic versions available to us all, but it was Suffolk Herbs
which took on the mantle initially. Within 10 years we could all grow and
buy saladini crops, just snipping off what we needed. The British salad at
last regenerated from the soggy tomato with limp lettuce bathed in a pink
vinegary beetroot jus, to a palette of flavours, textures and colours – from
fernlike dill to crisp pak choi to lemony buckler-leaved sorrel and bitter
chicory. We can now augment our salads with handfuls of rocket, basil and
garlic chives, young chard leaves, asparagus tips and blanched runner beans,
decorated with nasturtium and borage flowers.
Joy’s Grow Your Own Vegetables is probably the most well-thumbed reference
book I possess, her Organic Salad Garden is one of the most useful and
Creative Vegetable Gardening is the most inspirational. She numbers Monty
Don, Alice Waters, Graham Rice and Alys Fowler among her fans, and has won
many awards, holding the Veitch Memorial Medal from the RHS. She has
tirelessly championed organic cultivation and promoted veg growing
throughout the industry – often the only woman at carrot conferences on the
Fens.
Like me, Joy left Suffolk to downsize to the sea — me to coastal Kent and Joy
to southern Ireland. Any regrets? Absolutely not.
Although her new garden is just half an acre, she says the older she gets, the
bigger it seems. She had planned it to be low maintenance, but has totally
failed. The mild climate means things grow too fast — you can almost hear
the grass growing, and the salty winds can blacken the plants at a blast.
Like me, Joy has planted a lot of fruit including an apple allée.
Joy and her husband, Don Pollard, who she says “enables me to carry on and
only occasionally asks if I ever intend to stop” are happy with their life,
but like us all, wish they had more time and energy.
She is completing what she threatens will be her final book. Called Just
Vegetating, it is a compilation of articles, filled with personal
reminisces, due out next spring. I can’t wait.
Joy Larkcom’s top six vegetable tips
1) Vegetable beds can be any shape or size – it’s rather fun if they
are unusual shapes. Just make sure you can easily reach the centre from the
paths at the sides. That way you need never tread on the soil, so building
up the precious soil structure is the key to fertility.
2) Sounds obvious, but only grow what the family will eat. It is
amazing how many home-grown vegetables are never harvested, or end in the
compost heap, because the family doesn’t appreciate what the “head gardener”
grows.
3) Curb your impatience if spring is cold. If the soil feels cold to
your touch, delay sowing or planting until it has warmed up. Use cloches or
clear plastic to cover the soil and warm it up if necessary.
4) Sow little and often to avoid gaps and gluts, especially with
fast-growing crops like lettuce, radishes, peas, pak choi, rocket and
spinach. As soon as one sowing has germinated through the soil, sow the next
lot.
5) Keep good records of everything you do: sowing, planting and
harvesting times, varieties, results. Every garden is unique, and your own
record is a far better guide to what suits your conditions than any advice
from experts.
6) Investing in a polytunnel is the most cost-effective way of
extending your growing season. It enables you to grow tomatoes, peppers,
cucumbers, aubergines and other warmth lovers in summer, and fresh greens in
winter and early spring.
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