With expert broadcaster, author and long-standing AG columnist, Anne Swithinbank
The beautiful joys of purple sprouting broccoli, mystical elder and making use of British wool
Choosing which fruit and veg to grow can be a challenge, especially when time and space are at a premium. Topping the list for me have to be crops best eaten super fresh, the elusive and expensive.
Purple sprouting broccoli is a hot contender, being comparatively costly to buy, not always widely available in the shops, and delivering a long season of tasty flower stems on the veg patch.
It truly earns its space. Half a dozen plants are often enough. These need a long growing season and protection from cabbage white butterflies seeking to lay their eggs on leaves. I usually recommend covering them with a durable and reusable mesh, but what if you are trying to reduce your reliance on plastic in the garden?
Sheep shearing usually begins in May, but while Britain was once famous for the quality of its wool, fleeces are now worth next to nothing. Keeping in mind the desire for reducing plastic, this creates a potentially strong market for wool-based garden products such as crop protection fabrics (though I have yet to find a British-made cover that is only 2mm thick) but also potting composts and slug controls. A few enterprising companies have found uses for wool and are well worth supporting.
Every year at Michaelmas, our village holds a goose fayre and for me, the highlight is a booth selling elderflower champagne brewed by a mother and daughter team. We’ve tried making our own here with some success but sometimes it explodes out of its bottles prematurely, spraying our brewery with sticky wine. When the sun is shining on those heads of small white flowers, collect some and have a go at making wine, champagne or cordial. If that seems like too much work, simply dunk the flower heads in batter and fry them to make delicious elderflower fritters.
Grow purple sprouting broccoli
The spears of purple sprouting broccoli are a true delicacy, with more flavour than calabrese and a cropping period right in the middle of the hungry gap between winter and summer.
Many gardeners will have sown their broccoli in April, but this is a busy month with much that needs starting and delaying up until June will still deliver plants of sufficient size to crop well. They germinate quickly in natural warmth and grow steadily, to make decent-sized plants before the chill of late autumn.
I like to sow thinly into a 10cm (4in) wide pot and transplant seedlings promptly to indi
