Emma Cooper

Over the last few years there has been increasing interest in unusual edible plants. One of the big advantages in having an allotment or a large garden is that it gives you the space to experiment with new tastes without having to sacrifice any old favourites, but some of the exotic specimens can be very tricky to grow.

So if you’d like to branch out and try something new this year, but you want something with a reasonable chance of success (what’s the point, if there’s no harvest at the end?) then here are six relatively unusual plants that should crop well on an allotment.

1. Chinese artichokes (Stachys affinis), often called Crosnes. Jerusalem artichokes are common on allotments – they’re low-maintenance plants that enjoy the space and produce a reliable harvest most years. Chinese artichokes are grown in a similar way (from seed tubers) and can be planted out from November through until April (about 3 inches apart). They’re much smaller plants, growing to only 18 inches tall. If you create a permanent bed then you can leave a few tubers in the ground to grow next year. If you’re rotating them around the plot then it’s useful to know that they’re in the mint family. The tubers are lifted and used in the autumn and winter, and can be eaten raw or in stir-fries.


2. Yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius) is another unusual tuber crop. It can be a bit hard to track down plants, but it’s well worth the effort as you’ll get surprisingly large tubers with very little effort. They’re crisp and sweet and can be eaten raw, or used as a substitute for water chestnuts. Crowns can be dug up before the hard frosts and potted up over winter – if you can keep them frost-free they can be planted out again the following spring. Yacon has beautiful, large and furry leaves and grows to around 3 feet tall. It has yellow flowers, but they appear late and the plant may be cut down by frost before they open fully.


3. Tomatillos (Physalis ixocarpa) are the fruits used in a traditional Mexican salsa. Grown in a very similar way to determinate tomatoes, the mature fruits are either green or purple and come in a papery case. Most successful under cover, they are not as productive as tomatoes – but on the flip side they are not defeated by blight.


4. Inca berries (Physalis peruviana or P. edulis, also known as physalis, cape gooseberries or goldenberries) are a close relative of the tomatillo. Grown in the same way they produce a harvest of small, sweet orange berries that remain in their papery cases and are therefore usually immune to pests. They fall from the plant when they’re ripe, and look very impressive as part of an exotic fruit salad. They’re also nice cooked, though, mixed with more prosaic fruits or turned into jam.


5. Achocha (Cyclanthera pedata or C. brachystachya) is a vigorous climbing plant in the same family as melons and cucumbers, but in terms of care it can be treated more like climbing French beans. It is happy outside once the risk of frost has passed, and needs something for its tendrils to cling onto. Pale flowers that are much loved by hoverflies are followed by green tear-drop fruits. These can be eaten raw and whole when young; older fruits have hard seeds (easily saved for next year) that need to be removed, and are best cooked. The versatile fruits can be used like green peppers, or pickled like gherkins.


6. Hardy kiwis (Actinidia arguta) are good if you have a suitable spot for a perennial climber (against a wall or fence). Fruits are smaller then the kiwis we are used to, but the plants are hardier and the fuzz-free skins mean you can eat the fruits whole. If you only have space for one plant then ‘Issai’ is the self-fertile variety you should look for. As with all perennials, hardy kiwis may take a year or two to become established, but once they do they should be very productive.

Most of these plants are relatively well-known and widely available, but when you step off the beaten track it’s important to remember that not all plants are edible, and that some edible plants have poisonous parts. To avoid any problems, source your plants from reliable suppliers, do your homework, make sure the plant that grows is what you expected, and always try new foods in small amounts at first.

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And if you are interested in growing unusual vegetables, keep an eye out for my forthcoming ebook, IncrEdibles, which is all about unusual edibles and the people who grow them. If you’d like to be notified when the book is available, send a blank email to incredibles-announce+subscribe@googlegroups.com. I won’t use your address for anything else :)

The BBC have a lovely slideshow today showing pictures taken in an experimental garden aiming to discover which flowering plants bees and other pollinators prefer. The project, at the University of Sussex, is in the second of three years and initial results suggest that the best flowers attract more than a hundred times the number of pollinators as the worst.

If it’s honeybees you’re after then plant borage – the study shows it attracts more of them than any other plant. Back in 2005 when I took part in a Garden Organic experiment looking at beneficial insects, I found that phacelia was good for attracting bees, but that borage was better for ladybirds and their larvae.

This new study also backs up the idea that complex flowers attract fewer insects than the simpler varieties, but it’s only concentrating on July and August (apparently the time of year when bees have to travel furthest to forage).

Which plants in your garden attract the most bees and other insects? Are you trying new ones this year?

As its Valentine’s Day today, and the whole world is in the mood for love, I thought I would talk about one of the most enduring and productive relationships a gardener can have. Although plants (and even gardens) may come and go, if you invest in good tools and look after them properly they will be with you throughout your gardening life.

In some families tools are handed down as heirlooms, and have been lovingly used and preserved by many hands. These are tools that were ‘built to last’ and are as useful now as when they were first made. But if you’re not lucky enough to have a green-fingered heritage, or you’re a completely different size to your ancestors, then you may need to invest in new tools.

It’s easy to be seduced by the cheap tools on offer in garden centres and gardening catalogues, as their descriptions make them sound perfect and they are within everyone’s budget. But their performance can be disappointing, and their lives short-lived. Plastic handles can fade and become brittle over time, and I know from experience that cheap trowels can be easily bent. After closely observing my purchasing habits during my early gardening years, Pete has developed a keen hatred for what he calls ‘garden tat’ – cheap, usually plastic or aluminium, tools and sundries that are not fit for purpose and rarely make it through even one growing season. My personal horror stories include an aluminium cold frame that literally kept unscrewing itself, and those plastic ‘garden pegs’ that bend when pushed into the soil. (Do yourself a favour and buy metal tent pegs from the outdoor shop instead – they’re cheaper and longer lasting.)

If you want to have a lasting relationship with your tools then it pays to save up and buy high quality ones, where you can replace handles if necessary and where proper tool maintenance will keep them sharp and useful for many years to come. (If you’re buying secondhand then do be wary at car boot sales, where sadly some of the tools on offer may have been stolen from allotments.) New gardeners don’t need too many tools – a spade and fork if you’re digging, a good trowel and maybe a rake and a hoe. Tools with specialised uses come later, when you’ve mastered the basics.

Ideally you should choose your tools in person, as the choice of weight, grip and handle length are all very personal. Hoes and secateurs need to be kept sharp, so investigate the different sharpening options when you’re buying your tools.

And once you have your tool, treat it like one of the family. Don’t leave it outside in all weathers, clean it and put it back in the shed when you’re finished with it. (Good hygiene is not only better for your tools, it’s better for the plants too as it helps prevent the spread of disease.) If you down tools for the winter then make sure they’re left clean, and oil handles and moving parts. Store them somewhere dry; hand tools can be left pushed into a bucket of oiled sand, which keeps them clean, dry and handy.

A holster is invaluable for good secateurs – it helps prevent you from putting them down and losing them in the garden for days on end. I should get one myself, as I have lost count of the times I have found my secateurs in the compost bin after a particularly strenuous weeding session!

If you’ve found lasting love with a particular gardening tool, then tell me all about it in the comments :) But if you’re still searching for your perfect partner, then have at the Hartley Garden Tools Competition that is running until 1st March and offers you the chance to win either a goody bag of quality gardening tools, or that one tool you’d really like to meet.

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Fungus gnats (or Sciarid flies) are tiny little black flies that live in decaying organic matter. If you keep a compost caddy indoors you may find a cloud of them rise when you raise the lid, but the fat-bodied slightly brown flies are the more disgusting fruit flies. Fungus gnats are more at home in your houseplants, and are problematic during early spring when we’re raising seedlings indoors.

On a human scale, fungus gnats are merely irritating. The females scurry over the surface of the compost, and the males flies off in search of new breeding partners. But they are rubbish at flying and flit aimlessly around the place until they lock on to a target that’s warm and moist and (preferably) producing carbon dioxide. In most houses this means humans, or nice warm cups of tea. They then proceed to fly right into your face or drown themselves into whatever tasty drink you’ve just made yourself. Leave the dregs out overnight and, in the middle of an infestation, you’ll probably be disposing of half a dozen corpses in the morning.

On a seedling scale, they are nastier beasts. The adults pose no threat to plant life, but their larval offspring tend to chomp into plant roots and cause seedlings to wilt and die. I mention them in The Peat-Free Diet.

Pete is currently practicing tolerance, understanding and acceptance as well as his ninja-like reflexes, because the windowsill mushroom kits have provoked a fungus gnat population surge. They always do, I should give up trying. Except the oyster mushroom kits, which don’t involve compost and hence don’t attract the gnats.

With houseplants the solution is careful watering, preferably from below to keep the surface of the compost dry. With seedlings it’s trickier, but their life indoors is usually limited and taking them outside solves most problems and yellow sticky traps control the population in the meantime – position them low over the offending compost for success and keep them away from plant leaves.

There is a biological control – brand name Gnat Off here in the UK – which is marketed to *cough* hydroponic growers. Apparently it is very effective, but it’s not a cheap option; no doubt it’s what the commercial mushroom growers use (iirc there are no pesticides sanctioned for use against fungus gnats on food crops) but for the windowsill mushroom grower it would make things distinctly uneconomic.

My best tip for surviving a fungus gnat infestation is to start collecting the clear plastic lids you get with big pots of yoghurt. They have absolutely no effect against the blasted gnats, but they do keep them from drowning in your drinks ;)

I have mentioned before that I would like to grow hemp in the garden, but am prohibited from doing so by UK drug laws. That and my developing interest in ethnobotany (the intersection of people and plants) has made me more curious about drugs in general – in a purely academic sense!

Pete bought me High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture for my birthday. Written by Mike Jay to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Wellcome Collection last year, the book is an exploration of the use of drugs throughout history and across global cultures – and a truly fascinating read.

The first stage of the book is called ‘A Universal Impulse’, and explores the fact that drug use is just that – animals seek out plants with physiological effects, and we have been doing so since before we could call ourselves human. Think about cats and catnip, reindeer and fly agaric mushrooms, baboons chewing tobacco or various African mammals getting drunk on rotting fruit (which looks hilarious until you’re in a village terrorized by drunken elephants).

The book then goes on to explain that the effects of drugs are only understood in a cultural context – if you smoked tobacco on your own without knowing anything about it, then you would probably find the experience so off-putting that you wouldn’t try it again. Only the cultural support of other smokers (or beer drinkers or whatever) gets us past their idea that we’re being poisoned and on to the stage where it’s supposed to be fun. There’s an interesting anecdote later in the book about a family that thought they were dying after accidentally ingesting magic mushrooms; it seems like the hallucinogenic effects of our native species wasn’t really appreciated until modern times.

High Society travels backward and foreward through time and across continents, looking at drug use in different cultures. It does begin with prehistory and end in the modern era, but it’s not a straightforward timeline in the middle.

‘From apothecary to laboratory’ looks at the development of science and its role in the realm of drugs. From the days of Dioscorides and his first real list of medicinal plants, through to 19th century when the alkaloids of morphine, caffeine, nicotine, codeine, theobromine and cocaine were first produced and rapidly turned into medicinal drugs and commoditized over-the-counter remedies.

Hang on a minute… not all of those things are drugs, are they? How did caffeine, nicotine and theobromine (found in chocolate) make the list? Well, they are mind-altering substances – psychoactive drugs that have an effect on our consciousness. That’s why we’re careful about giving them to children, as any parent who has had to cope with a chocolate-fuelled toddler rampage knows. So if you’re reading this with a cup of tea or coffee in your hand, it’s time to adjust your perspective. Especially as sugar and alcohol are also on the list.

The chemical age brought with it the first synthetic drugs, including LSD and Ecstasy, and now we have new ones emerging all the time – legal ‘highs’ only until anti-drug legislation catches up with the chemistry. And with Prozac and Ritalin commonly prescribed, are we heading for a future where we’re all medicated into optimum mental performance? And where do information junkies (like me!) fit into it all?

The last section of the book examines ‘The Drug Trade’ through the ages, and the less than stellar involvement of Western countries in introducing drugs to different cultures (e.g. Opium to China) for the financial rewards. It charts the arrival, widespread adoption and then prohibition of the various drugs we now consider to be harmful, and the lucrative taxes applied by every government to the ones that it sanctions. And the enormous illegal trade in illicit drugs, one of the top three international markets (along with arms and oil), and organized crime. The final scene is an example of a society falling out of love with a drug – in this case tobacco. The realization of the damaging effects of tobacco on health hasn’t really led to a decrease in the number of smokers, but smoking is now seen as anti-social in many Western countries; smokers have been rebranded as addicts, and smoking has gone downmarket.

For the most part, High Society doesn’t examine the health problems associated with drug use, nor does it dwell on the problems addiction brings to societies. It explains the cultural framework for drug use, and its history. As such it explains how we got to where we are – but it doesn’t suggest a way to extricate ourselves from our current situation (where most forms of ‘recreational’ drug use are demonized), which I still consider to be ludicrous.

Beautifully illustrated throughout, with colour pictures of cultural artifacts, High Society isn’t the least bit dry. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable, and eminently rational, read. The whole topic of drugs has become stigmatized; we need to be better informed to be part of the discussion, and I found this book a good place to start.

Last year I read an article on Treehugger about the Getty Villa herb garden and was intrigued enough to add Gardens and Plants of the Getty Villa to my wishlist – because the Getty Villa is a recreation of a Roman villa, complete with Roman gardens.

I was given the book for Christmas, and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The Introduction explains why the villa was designed and built – drawing on archaeological excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as art and written sources, for both the layout and the planting of the gardens. The climate in southern California is very similar to that of Herculaneum, although a bit more foggy.

Topiary and evergreens were used to give year-round interest outside of the main flowering season. The Romans wouldn’t have had access to the variety of plants that grace modern gardens, but they had begun importing useful plants from around the world – lemons and oranges, cherries from the Pontic region, apricots from Armenia, peaches and damsons from Syria and pomegranates and jujubes from North Africa. They also brought in unusual varieties of common plants, such as a ‘round’ apple variety from Greece.

The Romans, of course, also introduced a lot of useful species into Britain. They brought almonds, walnuts and sweet chestnuts for nut trees; celery, coriander, cucumber, dill, garlic, onions, orache, parsley, radish and turnips were all added to our veg patches by the Romans. They appreciated multipurpose plants, too – shade trees and good bee plants, as well ad medicinal and ritual herbs.

The main section of the book explores each of the four separate gardens around the villa, and is written in the style of a guide book (by Patrick Bowe). There are colour photos (although they are not exceptional) and good descriptions of the planting. At the end of each description there is a section on the plants used, written by Michael D. Dehart (Supervisor for Ground and Gardens at the Villa). The gardening advice given is relevant to the local climate, but there are plenty of species (both useful and ornamental) that would be appropriate elsewhere.

There are notes about trees grown in large pots – in part because the gardens are above an underground parking garage and other structures, but also because the Romans used them. Dwarf strawberry trees, for example, as well as pomegranates and lemons. Olives are featured in the gardens, of course, but the gardeners have chosen a non-fruiting cultivar, to avoid having to clear up the mess when the fruit drops!

Throughout the book there are interesting historical and ethnobotanical notes. White iris (Iris germanica ‘Florentina’) is the source of orris root – its roots are dried and powdered and used in perfumery and some gins. Apparently the roots are also used in Moroccan cuisine, and it looks as though the plants are pretty hardy – they could very well be grown here as an ‘edimental’.

Apparently it was the Romans who first began to pickle unopened caper buds to use as a condiment, and they used dried leaves from the herb Costmary as bookmarks to repel paper-eating insects. I won’t spoil the rest of it, as it’s a thoroughly enjoyable read. And if you ever find yourself in Malibu, apparently you can visit the Getty Villa for free.

Back in September I placed an order with Poyntzfield Herb Nursery, which is located in the north of Scotland. Ordering from them is a little bit different from your usual online shop – you have to enquire whether they have what you want in stock, and whether it’s the right time of year for it to be dispatched, before you can place your order. I always find situations like that a bit intimidating – I feel like my enquiry is going to come across as a dumb question.

Still, I persevered and ordered three plants – wasabi, rakkyo onions and Japanese ginger. You can see a bit of a Japanese theme going on there ;). They arrived safely shortly afterwards.

I vaguely remember the day that I potted them up. I was either in a hurry or having a bad day, and squeezing in planting my new babies before they deteriorated. The Japanese ginger (Zingiber mioga) I potted up and kept on the windowsill. When I planted it, it was an unassuming root cutting, and it stayed that way for quite some time. I began to think it was dead. However, last week I spotted it had sprouted, and today it is about 8 inches tall:

Its spindly nature makes it quite hard to photograph at the moment. If I remember correctly it’s the flower buds and shoots that are eaten, rather than the roots.

The rakkyo (Allium chinense) were potted up and nestled into the corner of a larger container. They’re little pearl onions, and currently look like this:

And I planted the wasabi (Wasabia japonica) in one of the containers on the patio.

This morning it occured to me to go and check on the wasabi – and I looked on the patio and was surprised to see it wasn’t there. I struggled to remember what I’d planted it with, and it turned out that I hadn’t taken any photos of it that might have given me some clues. My wasabi was lost – either intentionally moved and forgotten, or unintentionally turfed out.

Eventually I remembered that I planted the wasabi along with some Malva moschata in a trug, without any drainage – all of the plants in it like having wet feet. But then winter came and at some point it rained quite a bit and the plants had very wet feet indeed and so I took pity on them and replanted them in a large container with some drainage holes. I remembered that much, but couldn’t remember whether the wasabi was replanted at the same time, or whether it had been overlooked and properly lost.

Fortunately a close inspection found it nestling underneath the M. moschata, and it has been properly labelled to avoid any doubt in future. It’s still quite diddy, but hopefully will thrive and become large. If I wanted to harvest the roots for wasabi then I would have to wait at least 2 years and sacrifice the whole plant; I would want to propagate it before then as I only have the one. But apparently you can use the leaves as a punch salad ingredient. Whether or not we will like it remains to be seen!

It’s grey today and not overly warm. There’s not much gardening going on, and not much growing – although the snow drops have come up early due to the odd winter weather we have been having. Plenty of people are getting itchy green fingers and starting to sow seeds, but if you’re worried that it may be too early (what would you do with leggy seedlings in the event of a late frost?) then you may prefer to turn your attentions to houseplants instead.

In episode 65 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden Show I talked about growing your own fresh air – using houseplants to clean up your indoor environment and help prevent ‘sick building syndrome’ that can lead to all kinds of niggling health complaints.

And the Flower Council of Holland have created a new website called Me and My Plant where you can take a quick test and discover which houseplant would be your perfect partner. It’s a bit of fun for a grey afternoon, and I got paired with ‘Peter the Phalaenopsis’, which tickled Pete no end. They’re also giving away copies of the ‘Me and My Plant’ houseplant handbook, which is great if you don’t have the greenest fingers.

It also looks as if you can create an account on the website and be notified when it’s time to water your plant – a handy reminder for people like me who are rubbish at watering. Unfortunately my sign up hasn’t quite gone according to plan, so I can’t let you know how it works at the moment! I am sure it will be fixed soon….

If you do have a look at the site and take the test, do come back and share which plant you have been partnered with! I have been given a Kalanchoe to give away, so I will enter everyone who leaves a comment (and who is a UK resident) into a prize draw at the end of the month. Don’t forget to leave your email address if you want to be in with a chance of winning!

While I was ‘away’ on my Writer’s Retreat, I thought about books I would like other people to write, and from there was gently reminded that my bookshelf is a graveyard of good intentions. There’s no point buying new books if they remain unread!*

And so I have tried to get back into the reading habit. First on the list to finish was a book I started last winter, Out of the Scientist’s Garden, by Richard Stirzaker. Stirzaker is an Australian agricultural scientist, and so his take on gardening is a little different to the ones we normally see. And, from a British perspective, there is far more emphasis on water use than we’re used to, although water is something we can no longer take for granted.

The book is comprised of 21 separate essays, divided into three main sections. In Section one, ‘The View from Our Garden’, Stirzaker uses the familiar environment of the garden to examine the less familiar topic of turning water into food. He talks about the water cycle, different ‘colours’ of water (you may have heard of grey and black water, but how about blue and green?), virtual water and the difference between physical and economic scarcity.

He takes us through a year in the vegetable garden, with the cycles of sowing and harvesting, hungry gap and gluts. In the orchard he introduces the idea of chilling units, essential for healthy crops of some fruits. He talks about pests and diseases, wildlife and the factors involved in flavour. Then he starts to explain some of the differences between horticulture and agriculture, a theme that continues through the book.

In Section 2, ‘A Journey Through the Soil’ we learn that no two soils are the same, and hence although it is possible to produce food with less water it is difficult to do so in agricultural situations where homogeneity is the norm. There’s a lot in this section about the science of irrigation (Stirzaker’s speciality); there’s probably more than an amateur gardener would ever need, or want, to know.

The final section, ‘Feeding Ourselves’, looks at what we actually eat and how we feed our ever-increasing population. There’s an interesting note in chapter 15 – apparently the only Australian native species (animal or vegetable) to ever be successfully domesticated is the macadamia nut.

In chapter 16 there is a discussion of the use of edible perennials, which highlights why they have not been used more in agriculture. There’s the usual stuff about the ease of harvesting, etc, but the book also explains that perennials divert more energy into growth – of root systems, woody stems and defence systems – than annual plants. Although these mean perennials can access more resources, it means their ‘efficiency’ at converting these resources into edible food is lower.

The final chapters look at permaculture and agroforestry, no till systems and why it’s hard to deliver agricultural solutions in developing countries.

In fact, that becomes the final theme of the book – the problems scientists face in developing solutions. It’s easy to ‘solve’ one problem and simply cause another; ecological systems (that both horticulture and agriculture rely on) are extremely complex. There are no portable solutions; what we need to do is ensure that gardeners and farmers – wherever they are – have the training and information they need to make the best use of their local resources.

If you’re interested in the science of gardening – horticulture – and food security issues in general then this is a very informative book. It’s also a little heavy going at times, and interesting but neither inspirational nor immediately useful. One for the reference shelf.

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*Inbetween beginning and finishing this post, I had lunch with Pete. He has also come to the conclusion that there’s no point buying me new books until I have read more of the existing ones. And me with a birthday on the horizon! :(

Pete and I were having a discussion a couple of days ago about how my Writer’s Retreat has been going; we have separately come to the conclusion that it has been a complete disaster. The period since Christmas has been one overwhelmed by grief and loss (and yes, I do know they’re ‘just’ chickens).

Life has changed a lot, but it still goes on. I am reading more – harking back to an earlier period when the first hour or so of my day was reading time, without the need to go outside and see to the chickens.

The picture above is of my office, the room in which I am supposed to write. I took the photo this morning, and the office is in a state of flux, but the although these distinct piles of clutter will be moved on, no doubt others will take their place. The neutral decor is reflected throughout the house – a deliberate decision to make it easier to sell when the time comes, although hardly inspiring.

I have a view out into the garden – again, hardly inspiring on a grey day like today. The room is north facing, and there’s a ring road in the distance that can be quite noisy. The Raptors (the three younger chickens) were also noisy; writing with the window open in the summer became impossible.

Behind my desk is a wall of books. There are some gaps on the shelves as I am having a bit of a clear out. They will gradually be filled; Pete has bought me some new books for my upcoming birthday.

The problem is that I have developed an aversion to my office. I am perfectly happy writing, just not in there. The noisy chickens were part of it; the fact that it has become a bit of a glory hole over the winter isn’t helping, but that at least is easily remedied.

Mind you, once the clutter has been removed it will feel even more sterile. I need a way to inject a bit of life, preferably without spending any money or doing anything too permanent.