In praise of thinking less, doing less, remembering less

(and still growing a bitchin' garden)

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Is it bad that I routinely use the word ‘bitchin’ these days? It just seems so pleasantly emphatic and ridiculous... when I’m really feeling enthused about something the word seems to spill out of my mouth without provocation.

It’s perhaps not ‘on brand’ with wholesome garden content, but then if you can’t toe a delicate line between wholesome goodness and bitchin’ ridiculousness, what’s the point. I’m getting sidetracked. Today, I want to make your life easier.

Thing is, I know we’d all like to grow beautiful (bitchin’) gardens, but with every year that passes, the weeks slip by faster and the number of things we are required to do seem to billow out like a storm cloud. In the face of so much stuff, so many obligations, our gardens understandably fall by the wayside. I suspect this is why people used to to walk past our house and assume, looking at the well-groomed garden, that a retired couple lived there. Only they don’t that so much anymore because in addition to the corn plants stretching skyward and the tomato that refuses to bear viable fruit, we have a very small, plastic lawnmower, a tangled hose, several bags of manure that I am determinedly ignoring and various pieces of random detritus (plastic bladed scissors, a tomato sauce bottle flung by little, determined hands and about a hundred pieces of broken up pavement chalk). Clear indications that this is the realm of a toddler.

If you are in a similar stage of life to me (or maybe even if you’re not) it is hard work staying on top of a garden, too. The good news is: it doesn’t really matter if your bags of manure hang around a while before you get to spreading them, or if your hose lies around for a few weeks like a sad, tangled snake. It is actually, truly fine to do less. Many gardens even benefit from a low-intervention approach - you’ll likely wind up with more wildlife and insect diversity if you don’t overly tidy your backyard. The only thing that really matters in the garden is your planting windows. Those little pockets of time we have, every year, to get specific seeds into the ground. The windows that come around only once, the ones you can’t afford to miss. I’ve missed too many of these in my lifetime, and it’s always totally infuriating having to tell myself ‘oh well, I’ll get it right next year’.

Well, this year I am thinking ahead. It’s less than a week until autumn and, for the first time, possibly ever, I am ahead of the game. I have a Plan. And therefore you have a plan too, because I’m going to share my plan with you, so you don’t have to worry about remembering it yourself. Here are five plants that will make the next six months of your life truly lovely. Plants that require a little preparedness, plants that have discrete planting windows. Don’t stress though, you have at least a month to get them in your hands and shove them in the ground, and I guarantee that when September rolls around, you will be thankful that you did.

Broad beans

Last year I did not grow nearly enough broad beans. To be fair, I grew enough for a typical household of three land mammals, but I didn’t reckon on the fact that our toddler would be obsessed by broad beans. The depths of this obsession I find hard to convey. Every single broad bean was plucked by his chubby little hands and eaten so early that the beans were only just visible. I thought I loved eating broad beans, and I do, but I have to say the pleasure of watching his leguminous obsession take hold, watching him sit on the front steps and diligently eat every tiny bean out of every tiny pod, was way better than eating them myself.

I’m aware that I’m probably totally screwing myself over here, and there is a very real likelihood that he will decide that, this year, broad beans are no longer delicious or remotely interesting, but nonetheless, I will be planting a broad bean forest this autumn, just in case.

Broad beans are a totally underrated cool-weather legume crop and they grow so easily in Perth. Towards the end of winter, they form beautiful black and white flowers which change, slowly into bean pods, maturing first at the top of the plant and working their way down to the bottom. I know a lot of people are put off broad beans because so many recipes require that you ‘double shell’ them - removing the beans from the pod and then removing the outer, thicker layer from the shell. It’s a little fiddly, but if you want to avoid it you can just pick your broad beans when they’re younger and you won’t have to worry about it. And, anyway, if your kids eat every single one before you get to it you won’t have to worry about it either.

Not convinced? Here’s a recipe for my absolute favourite broad bean bruschetta, from my cookbook Seasoned (you can grab a copy here, if you like). It’s zesty and delicious and one of my favourite things to cook at the start of spring.

Sweet peas

If you don’t sow sweet pea seeds this autumn, you’re a damn fool. And I’m sorry to be rude, but BUT please believe me when I say these flowers are perhaps the most beautiful, fragrant and wonderful spring blooms on the planet. You just really, truly need them in your life. The seeds are easy to sow direct, and if you pop them near a climbing frame they’ll spend winter climbing up up up towards the sun. And in spring when they start blooming, the more flowers you pick, the more they’ll produce. If you sow seeds this autumn, by spring you run the very real risk of having a vase filled with pink, purple, red and white blooms perpetually sitting on your bedside table, filling the whole room with their fragrance. A sickeningly happy and satisfying season ensues.

Anyway don’t take it from me today, take it from me this time last year, when I wrote an entire, exhaustive guide to this glorious little flower. You can get all the info you need to grow them below.

Daffodils

I’m of the firm opinion that the world would be a better place, and we’d all be a whole lot nicer to each other if everyone just planted a few spring bulbs every autumn. There is nothing as hopeful or life affirming, when the skies are heavy and dark above you, as the tentative first shoots of a daffodil poking their way up, out of the cold soil.

Autumn is not just the time to sow daffodil bulbs, there are SO many incredible spring bulbs that need to go in the ground in autumn if you want spring flowers. Freesias, hyacinths, ranunculi, jonquils, snowdrops, the list is huge and glorious and if you want to descend into a pleasurable pit of spring-bulb obsession, check out the newsletter below. If you don’t have time for all that, just sow some daffodils. They’re happy in pots or in the ground and in August they’ll start forming beautiful little buds that will burst open and fill your garden with happy, buttercup friendliness.

Coriander

In Perth, everyone freaks out about coriander ‘bolting’, which really just means it’s started flowering. I complain about this ‘bolting-panic’ quite often, because coriander blooms are actually one of the most lovely spring flowers (and their great for beneficial insects too). But if you want a nice long window of actually harvesting and eating your coriander before it starts to flower, plant it now. Coriander grows best and is slowest to flower when the weather is cool, so get seeds in this autumn in a nice sunny spot, and harvest through until spring. When the flowers appear, don’t freak out - enjoy them. Leave them to do their thing and wait for the coriander berries (a fancy culinary treat, great in cocktails and curries) and then the coriander seeds (the dried berries) to form. Harvest them, cook the, sow them again next autumn.

Garlic

I have a weird relationship with garlic. In the city, I have to level with you, I am scared to grow it. I don’t think I have enriched my soil enough and I never seem to have the space (or the patience to weed) to do them justice. Down south, in the country, my husband and I have a garlic farm, where we grow (literally) tens of thousands of bulbs, like crazed, stinky maniacs. Wherever you choose to grow your garlic, it needs a good nine months to reach maturity. As a rule of thumb, plant it around Easter and harvest around Christmas. If you’re growing it in the city, make sure you have enriched your soil very well - plenty of manure and organic matter - and keep your patch weeded. Plant each clove about 10cm away from its neighbour, in a matrix (garlic doesn’t like to compete for space and your bulbs will be smaller if you cram them in or allow weeds to enter the bed). They take patience, but they are so worth growing and will make everything you cook taste… for want of a better word…bitchin’.

(On the other hand, if you don’t want to wait nine months to eat pungent, organic garlic, you can grab our very own garlic salt right here, right now).

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Thank you for reading! See you next time for more Lo fi life!

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