THE NATURAL FORAGER’S GARDEN
I can remember from childhood the odd, earthy smell of beetroot boiling in a saucepan before the process of peeling and slicing for salads. I wasn’t keen on the odd sweetness of its roots or the tide of red that seeped across the plate. This was one of the few foods I would not eat but kind of wanted to. The breakthrough came some 40 years later in the shape of beetroot pie, where the roots were contained and mixed with cheese and onion. Roasted beetroot came next and proved a revelation, especially in combination with soft goat’s cheese and toasted hazelnuts. Raw, grated carrots, yacon and beetroot are great in a vinaigrette dressing. If you don’t want your food dyed pink, then golden or even white beetroot is the answer and well worth growing at home.
Here, a first sowing made in late winter is maturing, as a reminder to sow again for roots to harvest in autumn.
All gardeners develop their own personal timetable for when and how many veg seeds to sow, yet however clever we think we are, there is often a glut of something. Half a dozen celeriac plants would have been plenty, who knew that so many peas would germinate well, or that loose leaf lettuces grew so large? Sometimes we sow one for the slug, one for the vole, one for us and they all thrive but I relish the challenge of abundance. Gluts encourage generosity (though try giving courgettes away in late summer) and send me leafing through recipe books to discover new ways of using up lots of one thing.
In the wilder parts of the garden, cow parsley has given way to the flat creamy heads of hogweed and spires of meadowsweet. Hedge banks in the green lane are stuffed with bedstraw and threaded with honeysuckle and wild roses. By day, woodpeckers flirt around the runner bean poles and flocks of long-tailed tits, 20 strong, cross the garden, stopping to rid it of aphids and caterpillars. At dusk, the garden turns magical and as bats flit after moths, badgers grunt and a chorus of young owls practise their calls, we reflect that although plants are important, they are only half the story.
How to grow beetroot
Beetroot is a crop worth starting in late winter under glass when soil is often wet, cold and far from workable. I usually sow several seeds to a module and try not to be surprised when many germinate. Unless they are described as ‘monogerm’, the ‘seed’ of a beetroot
