Horticultural

Growing Unusual Vegetables book

Another Christmas present that has been added to my reading pile is Growing Unusual Vegetables by Simon Hickmott.

If you like browsing through seed catalogues, this book is an agreeable read, that acts like a more comprehensive version of the weird end of the vegetable spectrum as covered in Matthew Biggs' Book of Vegetables. The only thing Hickmott's book lacks is a section on how to prepare each vegetable for the pot - there's a long section on what both types of water chestnut look like, but no hints on whether they need peeling or other treatment before boiling.

Top of my weird veg list is seakale - if anyone knows where I can lay my hands on a thong (root cutting) or two I'd be grateful (I'll buy them off you if you name a reasonable price).

Skirret's another curious root vegetable I'd like to try, although I do remember seeing it being harvested on the 80s TV series The Victorian Kitchen Garden, which I watched on DVD recently, and the roots looked a nightmare to prepare ifor the pot.

I sometimes struggle with knobbly jerusalem artichokes, and the girth of skirret roots is considerably less: for some of these unusual crops I wonder if there is a tendency to grow them just for the "aaah" factor, rather than for their intrinsic worth: in other words, you can impress your plot neighbours and dinner guests by serving chayote squash skew and skirret rather than pumpkin skew and carrots.

Complete Book of Vegetables

I picked up a copy of Matthew Biggs's Complete Book of Vegetables yesterday. Flicking through it on the train on the way home, I've already got several ideas for new vegtables to try: soya beans for one - I tried and failed a couple of years back, but I am keen to have another go next summer as I absolutely love endamame, the Japanese dish of steamed soya beans sprinked with salt. I also came across a couple of things I'd never even heard of - the Doodhi, for one - a "vigorous annual climber grown for edible young fruits, shoots and seeds"- it's also known as the bottle gourd.

The book's a great combination of practical advice on how to grow each vegetable, a bit of its history, and a recipe or two based around the vegetalble. For instance, did you know that the name "chard" comes from the french "carde" and derives from the resemblance of the leaves and stems to globe artichokes and cardoons? There's also an entry on the chayote, a climber that produces huge fruits that I know of as mirliton from my time living in Louisiana: it's a popular ingredient creole cooking, served stuffed with spicy shrimp and crabmeat.

Book recommendation

I treated myself to Antonio Carluccio's Vegetables (the book, you understand, not his carrots) last week. It's contains a cornucopia of lovely recipes for the kind of veg you're likely to grow on an allotment but not find in a supermarket - well, a British one anyway - including chard, cardoons and chicory.

Anyway, I can't hang around here, I've got to get down the plot and see just how many weeds have sprung up in the wet weather - and to assess whether my squash, which have had a rather sluggish start this year, have finally started to produce fruit.

More later.

House plant news

I got my hands on a copy of gardening literature legend Dr DG Hessayon's new book this week. It's being billed as a companion book to his original and best work, the House Plant Expert, (aka 'the bible') which was first published in 1960 and doesn't seem to have been out of print since. It was this book that helped me choose my first houseplants as a child, and I spent many hours poring over its pages (yes, I was a bit of a geek as a youngster; some things never change).

The comforting, if deeply eccentric, typography and layout of the original are still there, along with a mix of photographs new and old. In fact some of the images look older than me: there's one of a girl standing next to a (currently deeply untrendy) specimen swiss cheese plant in a 70s nightmare of a living room that could pass as the set of Abigail's Party ("I like Demis Roussos ...").

The book isn't trying to replace the original, which has been updated with new editions anyway: it's a coda, if you will, covering houseplants that have only become popular in shops and garden centres in the last few years, and covering some exotics such as orchids and bromeliads in more depth. I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a must-buy, but if you're a Hessayon fan like me, this will complete your library.

Update: forgot to say above that mine's a press copy - the book is out on April 8.