Gardening: Exotic vegetables to savour from around the world

SOME people collect souvenirs on their travels, Joy Larkcom picks up interesting vegetables

THERE can’t be many people who don’t pause to wonder when the “traditional” British salad of shredded Iceberg lettuce gave way to bowls of colourful mixed salad leaves, filled with texture and tang. Or what about gardeners growing and stir-frying pak choi, mizuna, red mustard and a host of other Oriental greens? Joy Larkcom is far too modest to take all the credit for the nation’s changing growing and eating habits but her travels, growing experiments and writings have had a long-lasting impact, and now her four decades’ worth of gardening adventures have been chronicled in Just Vegetating: A Memoir (£18.99, Frances Lincoln).

It was 1976 when Larkcom set off around Europe with her husband, her two children and a caravan on what she called her Grand Vegetable Tour. While her husband looked after the children and did the cooking, she got on her bicycle to find out what people were growing. “Undoubtedly the most extraordinary find was the ‘maceiras’ on the Portuguese coast, deep beds dug out of the sand, with the sides held in place with a network of horizontal vines,” she says. “They were unique, and grew amazing early crops in the warm and sheltered microclimate created there.” Another eye-opener was the examples of stone mulching they found in Spain, which enabled crops to be grown on very poor soil in dry areas. “The process might start with a layer of manure laid virtually on rock, mixed with scarce soil, then covered with stone to conserve moisture during the day and throw out heat at night,” she says. “The way these ancient Arab techniques were married to the use of modern plastic covers, both in low tunnels and in large polytunnels, was fascinating.”

Throughout Europe, Larkcom was introduced to all sorts of new and interesting vegetables, and generous locals shared the secrets of how to grow and cook them successfully. In Italy she learned about using wild plants: how to strip the outer skin from a thistle stalk to find the tender part beneath and how to spot the edible leaf rosettes of young poppies, thistles and dandelions. In Provence and Italy she learned all about courgettes, peppers and aubergines. Italy was also the source of “cut-and-come-again” and intercropping techniques and it was the country that provided a huge range of red and green chicories and winter salad plants. France proved a great source of herbs while in Belgium she discovered new vegetables, such as iceplant and winter purslane. By the time the trip had ended, Larkcom had collected nearly 150 samples of local varieties of seed, finding something of interest in every country she visited.

Back home, Larkcom’s Suffolk garden soon became a trial ground where she could experiment with the practices seen overseas. “It really wasn’t difficult to adopt the gardening techniques we had seen: the main problem was persuading my husband that we had to change all the beds in our garden from large plots into narrow beds,” she says. “Most of my ‘ideas’ mean work for him. Adopting cut-and-come-again techniques on a wider scale made a lot of sense, and enabled us to grow suitable plants for the bags of mixed salad which we starting selling.”

In Just Vegetating, Larkcom shares a lifetime of gardening experience, from the first columns she wrote in the 1970s to the challenges she’s faced in the garden she now tends on the west coast of Ireland. A fair chunk of the book focuses on Larkcom’s trips to China, Japan, Taiwan and the US in the 1980s where having navigated a lot of red tape she finally managed to explore these countries with their vast resource of vegetables. Inspiration for these trips had come from having grown everything on the short list of Oriental vegetables at the back of a Chiltern Seeds catalogue. She realised that these leafy greens and brassicas would be the perfect partners to the hardy salad plants she had discovered in Europe, helping to ensure a continuation of plants during the autumn to spring period.

Today Larkcom grows komatsunas, mustards, mizuna, pak choi and many other Oriental vegetables along with her Savoy cabbages, Brussels sprouts and kales. “The Oriental vegetables are slowly being accepted, but the potential of the leafy greens in particular, especially during the winter months, is still not appreciated,” she says, adding that these vegetables offer considerable hardiness and variety but UK seedsmen still only tap a few of the varieties that are available from Japanese-based seed companies. “One of the problems may be that they do require fertile soil and plenty of moisture, and are very likely to bolt if sown too early in the year. If people fail the first time for one of these reasons, they are unlikely to try again. The main point is that sowing is best delayed until July. The one exception is cut-and-come-again seedling crops, which can be harvested very productively from sowings early in the year.”

Larkcom continues to garden at her home in Ireland, saying that the main difference as compared to her earlier exploits is a question of scale and age. She has a smaller garden and doesn’t trial quite as many varieties as she used to, but it’s clear that Larkcom is as full of enthusiasm for gardening as she was in the 1970s and is happy to share her knowledge. And that includes her ingredients for the perfect salad: “I still think crunchy ‘Little Gem’ lettuce, or similar varieties like ‘Tin Tin’ make the best basis for a salad,” she says. “I’d add a little rocket for spiciness, a little green-stemmed pak choi for texture, some red-leaved Batavian lettuce for flavour and colour, chopped Chinese chive leaves for a hint of garlic along with a few of their white flowers if in season, some nasturtium flowers for both colour and spiciness, and maybe sprinkle the tiny purple florets of ordinary chives on top.” Just the thing to eat while daydreaming about setting off on your own Grand Vegetable Tour.

• Just Vegetating: A Memoir by Joy Larkcom (£18.99, Frances Lincoln) is out now.