The potager's back in business

Not really like coffins at all

It’s just possible that some visitors to this corner of cyberspace may wonder what has happened to the potager – the unkempt wedge of a carpark flower bed that gave me my Schleswig-Holstein moment a couple of years ago.

Well, there were plans, but last autumn, with its soul-destroying grey dampness, rather put paid to them.

But although it was two seasons later than intended, the central scheme has now been realised.

The potager as it existed had a number of problems.

After the housing association had accepted a tender for gardening services from a different company, the flowerbed areas at the back of our small block of flats had been allowed to get into a mess.

In one, weeds had run riot, while a bush that had been growing around a small tree was dying, and rusting bikes, left by long-gone residents, had been left chained to the trellis that formed one border of the patch.

Initially, mine had been a small land grab – enough to put some beans in.

But these things are addictive and, the following year, I increased the size and even managed to produce some very small carrots.

As it was at the start, in 2012

Neighbours then took up the cause and helped clear the entire patch, apart from the tree and one deep, old root from the bush.

And last year, there were a few more very small carrots, one or two miniature turnips, a couple of gigantic courgettes, a few salad leaves and chard that eventually threatened to reach record heights.

But the ground was uneven because of that tree, with roots breaking the surface in a number of places.

The soil is fairly shallow soil, with sand beneath, and that soil is, typically for cities apparently, also very, very clayey – that means it’s very rich, but also very difficult to work and not much cop on the drainage front.

There are now, though, three large raised beds in place, built to fit the space perfectly.

Ian, a local craftsman who has done a number of jobs for us, built them just as I wanted – and then went down to nearby Hackney City Farm and returned with enough well-matured manure to provide a substantial layer at the bottom of each new bed, which was then topped up with soil.

There is, apparently, a whopping two tons of the latter there now – a frankly amazing figure that would never have entered my head when I was planning the little development.

In effect, though, while the area is technically the same, the actual planting space is greater – simply because he has built around and then over roots and unevenness, to create evenness above.

And of course, drainage will be considerably improved.

So we’re back in business.

The first weekend back, I started off by making two trips to Colombia Road flower market – the first with The Other Half to provide extra carrying capacity – coming home with vast amounts of herbs, plus flowers.

Otto exploring slightly later developments

One planter now has those herbs arranged around the outside, with a splash of summer colour in the middle.

Our neighbours seem particularly impressed – even though one of them did apparently suggest to Ian that he could start a new career as a coffin maker.

There’s common thyme and lemon thyme, rosemary, flat leaf parsley, chives, French tarragon, chervil, lovage, common sage and bloody dock sorrel.

We still have oregano on the patio, plus the bay tree, and I’m going to get a really large pot to go there for mint.

But that seems to me like a great herb collection, and the sorrel and sage are already growing at an incredible rate.

And the inclusion of the likes of lovage and chervil are exactly the sort of thing that inspires me to continue this adventure – there is no shop that I know that ever sells such things.

One of the tarragon plants has some leaves that are not happy, but by and large it’s doing okay – and tarragon is notoriously delicate – while the chervil looks to be thriving.

On the herb front, everything else seems to be fine too, although, in spite of regular watering, some of the flowers didn’t take too kindly to the sunshine in the days that followed their being planted out.

This last weekend, I took enjoyed my first harvesting – just a few chives, snipped for a garnish, but bang full of flavour.

And of course, it won’t take long before such things have more than paid for themselves.

If I have to buy chives, for instance, then I have to pay for a bag of (less tasteful) ones at 80p or more, with the chances being that most won’t get used.

This way, I get to just harvest my half dozen chives when I need them, and waste nothing.

And for the winter, I may explore freezing some winter.

The flowers include French marigolds, which apparently help to keep pests away: I’m still trying for the most natural way of gardening possible.

I timed it well – which was a fortunate accident, really – because July seems to be the final month for sowing seeds outside for autumn and winter food crops.

So in the coming days, leeks, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots and fennel will all be sown in the next planter.

Now, this isn’t guaranteed to be a rip-roaring success, but there’s really only one way to find out.

And there’s a great deal of pleasure in doing just that.

Ten little chives

Chives are the smallest members of the edible onion family. Allium schoenoprasum is a perennial that is native to Europe, Asia and North America – and while it’s the baby of the allium family, it’s the only one that is native to both New and Old worlds.

And here’s a bit more edumacation. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes the internet fascinating – and when Wikipedia comes into its own.

What most of us would describe as the stem of a chive is technically called the scape.

A botanical term, it refers to a long internode that forms the basal part or the whole of a penduncle.

Phew!

Other plants with a cape include the Taraxacum. Or the dandelion, as it is far more familiarly known. Actually, I quite like Taraxacum.

How good would it sound to sit outside on a summer's day, sipping a glass of Taraxacum and Arctium lappa?

That’s probably enough of that. Let’s stick with stem, shall we?

In France, chives are one of the fines herbes, which also include tarragon, chervil and/or parsley.

For some of us, of a certain age, The Herbs was also a short-lived (13 episodes) animated children’s series from the late 1960s, which was set in an herb garden and starred the likes of Parsley the lion, Dill the dog and Sage the owl. A spin-off series, centred on Parsley, was later produced.

Written by Michael ‘Paddington Bear’ Bond, there were also chives – 10 of them, and “because there are so many chives, all looking like each other; it makes it even hard to tell, a sister from a brother.”

Their parents were Mr and Mrs Onion and the former was their teacher, in a sort of ex-sergeant major sort of way. The missus was always crying. Well, as an onion you probably would.

My sister, who is younger, was the one who watched. Personally, I’d moved on to stronger stuff by then. Like Blue Peter. And Top Cat.

The green stems, though, are every bit as boring as the indistinguishable animated characters (with no character).

Herb and cartoon alike, they are bland.

Just look at the picture above – could they even look more uninspiring?

Well, that was my thinking. When do you use chives? Well, perhaps occasionally as a garnish for, say, a bowl of leek and potato soup. Because it looks pretty.

But you don’t do such things regularly because, frankly, you can’t ever buy just 10 chives and are never going to use the entire, big bag, which has also cost you the best part of a quid.

So while chives don’t impress me much, they had always been on my list of herbs to plant when I got around to sorting out the garden.

The first time I used any was in a herb omelette at Easter. The chives didn’t particularly stand out, but then they were with several other herbs.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, as I was preparing a simple dinner of white fish, new spuds and some seasonal veg or other, an idea popped into the space between my ears.

Why not try some chive butter?

It had a bit going for it, this idea. It wasn’t difficult to see that it would work with every ingredient I was going to put on the plate.

So I popped into the garden, snipped half a dozen of the stems, and then snipped them into butter that I lad left out to reach a malleable state.

Once that’s done, it’s simply a matter of rolling it up in a little foil and popping it back in the fridge to firm up.

The result was amazing. Light years from bland, this was a serious taste – and it was the perfect accompaniment for such a gentle meal.

This is the benefit of having fresh herbs, harvested when you want them. And it saves money and gives variety.

Since then, I’ve tried parsley and lemon butter, and mint butter.

The former was good – the latter less interesting than I expected. The chive butter has been done twice more already.

Chives produce pretty purple flowers but, like most herbs, you need to get rid of the flower as soon as it appears if you want to benefit from those stems.

Frankly, after this revelation, I can’t see any chive in that pot getting to the point of producing a flower.

Beans don't always mean Heinz

‘March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers.’ Yesterday started with a little fine drizzle. Then the sun came out.

Then it rained a bit more. Then it hailed. Then the thunder came. Then it rained. And then it brightened up. And there was plenty of wind too and, when night fell, the temperature dropped to little above bloody freezing.

Never mind that bit of doggerel – it was as though someone was trying to cram as an entire year’s worth of seasonal weather into a single day.

And not just any old day – but the day on which I began a new part of my gardening project.

It was to be my Schleswig-Holstein moment.

After planting nearly 40 pots in the last two months, I had reached a natural halt. The patio has taken on a really good look: part sheer flowering colour, part food.

As the radishes grow bigger, the spring onions pop their leaves above the compost, baby salad leaves push up to the light and the tomato plants finally need tying, we’re within reach of being able to eat entirely home-grown salad.

And that’s without mentioning the herbs. With such a selection to choose from, I’m now beginning to realise the impact it has on the kitchen.

If I suddenly decide I want a herb butter with dinner, I don’t have to either shrug, because I haven’t got the ingredients, or go out and see if I can buy a big bag of something for a quid or more.

Equally, I now don’t have to think that I won’t do that butter because I’d waste half the rest of the bag.

Thus last week saw my first chive butter – glorious with new potatoes and smoked salmon.

At the weekend, it was a mixed herb sauce – the greens all chunky and blended with some crème fraiche, a little German mustard, a drop of white wine vinegar, salt and freshly ground black pepper, to accompany oven roasted fillet of turbot – a dish that, while not perfect, was far better than the turbot I’d eaten on our last night in Brugge.

A few days earlier, doing Sarah Raven’s garlicky crushed and roasted new potatoes, I opted for sage instead of rosemary – because such options were there and because the sage is growing so much.

The nasturtiums that I planted as small plants, alongside the vine, are now reaching for the sky; the strawberries are tantalisingly visible in green, and even the vine is on the verge of producing actual fruit.

It’s an extraordinary sense of fecundity in such a short time.

Yet, as we always agreed, there is plenty of space for us and the cats to enjoy being outside (if only the weather improves). There’s space for the rotary dryer, for our deckchairs and for the little table and chairs.

So there are limits on what else would fit comfortably into the rest of our little plot.

And thus began the germ of an idea.

All this promise for summer – and nothing for winter. And just as I’ve been enjoying spending time potting and doing other things, little more left to really do at present. I started to wonder whether it would be possible to fit some carrots into the slender strip of earth on the other side of the fencing that borders one side of the garden.

And then I thought again. And I became a tad more ambitious.

Our block has 12 flats. Four of us have very small gardens. Beyond those is a gated, locked car park and communal bin area.

This is broken up, in effect, by two flower beds the shape of fat fingers, and a much larger, rectangular one.

When we moved in, 17 years ago, the housing association had done basic planting everywhere, and employed a gardening team that cam around regularly to do work.

They were good. Then the association put the tender out to contract and gave it to another company for less money. They were considerably less good.

One of our neighbours – now moved on – planted a few herbs in the finger-shaped bed nearest our part of the carpark. Another planted a rose bush. So much care has been paid by the contracted gardeners (who are doubtless on low pay and given no time to do anything more) that a completely dead rosemary bush still sits in the bed (probably eaten to death by the same beetles that killed off my last lot).

The other finger-shaped bed is simply full of box that they shape a bit – when they remember to trim it; neighbours with cars have had them scratched because the stuff hasn’t been trimmed back fully.

The larger, rectangular bed has a small tree in it that produces a profusion of pink blossom in spring, and a hedge around one and a half sides that produces beautiful, cornflower blue flowers.

Two bikes are chained to the fence against the low wall at the furthest extent of the patch, where they’ve been for some considerable time, gathering rust, while half the rest is simply ivy and weeds, extending down from the towering old wall that borders the park. What remained was weeds and stones.

It was, therefore, largely abandoned and unloved. Which seemed rather a shame – and was also very tempting.

I spoke to our closest neighbours – the ones who sit out in the carpark in the summer – and all agreed I should bash on and do what I wanted. I did reject the suggestion from one that I should plant some dope – although a later suggestion of rhubarb may have fallen on more fertile ground.

All this has rather surprised me: finding enough discipline to actually go out and do what needed doing when the weather was inclement, for instance.

I’m surprised at the pleasure I’ve gained and the sense of achievement.

And yesterday, I took our rather battered spade and dug out the first part of that patch.

Reading the recommendations of Alan Titchmarsh on prepping unused soil, I first pulled out any weeds that were flowering, then removed the most obvious stones and other detritus.

Then a trench was dug, carefully placing the removed soil to one side – and getting ride of ever more stones. But it was a delight to see just how many worms were in that soil, so care was needed too.

Once the trench was dug, it was nearly refilled with organic ‘manure’ – not so much what we’d think of by that word, but decayed plant matter.

Then, a second trench was started right next to it, with the best topsoil going on top of that ‘manure’.

And repeat.

Well, in the first and most obvious part of the available space, I dug and prepared three trenches.

Then I looked at my seeds.

I took the bean and pea seeds, sprinkled them with a tiny bit of mineral water (no chlorine) and popped them in a little organic pea and bean food.

That's four lots of beans – plus some peas.

Basil – one of the local cats who inhabit our carpark, and drive our girls crazy – even overcame his concerns about me to think: 'that's a bowl – it must have food in it'.

I had to do a minimal 'shoooing' routine to see him off.

A bamboo cane was drawn along one of the trenches of prepped soil to create a drill, and the seeds were placed at approximately the correct distances, before being lightly covered.

In a second trench, parsnips and red onions went in. The latter were a freebie from Forthergills on my first order ­– and it amused my Prussophile soul to see that the variety was ‘Red Baron’.

And that was it.

I did other chores around the garden ‘proper’ – removing snails, trimming where required, tidying and the tying I mentioned above – and then I was done.

Which was a good thing, given the weather.

It was an enormously satisfying morning – although that of itself doesn’t mean I know how it will turn out.

There’s more to come – probably this weekend. But in the interim, I am feeling positive. Not smug – but really rather proud of what I’ve achieved already, and looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead.

And from what my neighbours have said in the intervening hours, a spot of community gardening may be about to blossom.

Snails, druggy cats and urban garden warfare

Today is just the second day of National Gardening Week and it’s official. I am now at war. And not just me, but The Girls too.

The first attack came when Basil or Reginald or The Cat With No Name – or perhaps it was all three of them in a druggy feline orgy – crept into the garden under cover of dark and raided the newly-planted pot of catnip. Two of the three plants were pretty much destroyed.

And Otto in particular was very, very unimpressed.

The second attack was discovered on Friday evening, when I found a snail in the pot of Moroccan mint.

What the bloody hell was it doing in that pot – and perhaps more annoyingly, how had it got in there in the first place? I mean, honestly: the pot is on pot feet, on a patio, a couple of metres form even the merest hint of a traditional flower bed!

Those questions remain unanswered, but it was hoisted out pretty sharpish to end its days crashing onto the carpark where it hopefully provided nutrition to some local bird.

It was a mark of my increasing irritation that the two snails that I subsequently found at the weekend, attached to a bag of compost, were picked off and thrown into the carpark by hand: the first time I have ever touched a snail.

On Friday evening, slumped in front of the telly, The Other Half switched channels and landed on the start of Gardeners’ World, not a programme I have ever watched. This time, I did – albeit with a sense that while it might be interesting, there would be nothing in it for me.

I was wrong.

Monty Don mentioned such regular tasks as checking under pots to ensure that snails or slugs aren’t climbing into them from below.

The following day, I checked every pot. With the heaviest ones, I ran a length of bamboo underneath to see if anything slimy needed dislodging.

I also made a point of checking under leaves and around plants.

The other attack has come by air. A couple of weeks ago, I’d spotted whitefly on the underside of my sorrel leaves and spritzed them with the organic bug killer I’d picked up at B&Q.

But at the weekend, I found loads on the strawberry plants. The bug spray was called back into action – and I sprayed the next door strawberries too as a preventative measure.

I feel a touch of the Blitz spirit coming on. Mind, I am (almost) in ‘cor blimey guv’ land, where such a spirit must almost still be leaking out of the bricks.

An article I read suggested that another approach is to buy insects that will predate on pests – so ladybirds to feast on your aphids, for instance.

Apparently, you can spray something on the ladybirds to stop them clearing off – for some reason or other, the first thing that sprang to mind was a dilute solution of apricot jam on their tiny insect feet, thus ensuring they continue yomping around your leaves and don’t fly away home.

Would this count as biological warfare?

A Royal Horticultural Society guide to dealing with pests is on the way, while I’ve also read something about companion planting being of help. In the case of protecting strawberries and tomatoes from pesky whitefly, apparently nasturtiums help.

So on Sunday, I’ll be back down to Columbia Road to get more small pots and loads more nasturtiums to place around the berries and toms.

It does beg the question: ‘is it worth it?’ By which I mean simply that, given I have little space in the first place, is it worth such a fuss fighting pests for what can only ever be small crops?

Well, I sowed my first seeds at the weekend too – spring onions and radishes. By the time I get some more salad leaves in, we should be able to keep ourselves in salad basics through the summer.

It’ll be cheaper, less wasteful, fresher and probably tastier. The same can be said of the herbs.

Okay, the strawberries are perhaps rather more of a luxury, but why not? Seasonal, fresh strawberries, eaten straight after picking, could be amazing.

Other things may follow – although I don’t want to cram the garden too full and leave us with no space to move.

But the thought that, in the middle of a city, I could grow things to eat – and to look and smell wonderful – is something that will improve my life and benefit the environment in general, it seems fair to suggest.

Roasted lamb, herbs and a windy garden

The Easter food didn’t stop with fish ‘n’ chips and pie, in case you were wondering – just as the weekend’s gardening didn’t stop with potting three small catnip plants.

For starters, there was the small matter of Sunday’s big dinner to celebrate the arrival of spring.

Roast lamb; there were no two ways about it – it just had to be roast lamb. Never mind the tradition thing: if it isn’t actually my favourite meat, it’s pretty near I and I’m struggling to think of what I’d actually put above it in such a list.

But in my dentally-challenged condition, would I be able to cope?

I had wondered about lamb meatballs or even a kleftiko, but I really did want my lamb to be roasted.

There was one possibility that came to mind, and Bill King – regular reader here and alumni of Darina Allen’s famous Ballymaloe Cookery School – supplied the technical data.

The answer was a long, slow cook to produce meat that was roasted but perfectly tender and still moist.

Bill recommended pre-heating the oven to 230˚C, putting the meat in, immediately reducing the temperature to 160˚C and letting it cook for four hours.

So that’s what I did – in essence.

Since I’ve got a fan oven, I initially checked to see what 230 would equate to, but since it was only about 190˚C, I just whacked the dial up as far as it went and then turned it down to the oven’s equivalent of 160˚C (150˚C) when the joint went in.

I’d picked up a lovely leg from Matthew on Broadway Market on Saturday and, after letting it come back to room temperature, rubbed some mint olive oil into the skin and seasoned it before cooking.

In the event, it didn’t get quite four hours – simply because it didn’t need it, as a little taste test after two and a half hours revealed.

It was served with new potatoes and peas (frozen at this point), both of which were cooked with a few sprigs of mint from the crop in the garden.

The meat was tender and moist, and had produced a glorious jus. Most important of all, it was utterly gorgeous.

And if anything it was almost better the day after, served cold with more new pots and peas. Wonderful.

So a big thanks to Bill.

It wasn’t the only use of fresh cropped herbs this weekend, mind.

Earlier on Monday, I’d carefully snipped sorrel leaves, flat leaf parsley and chives, washed them all – there were greenfly on the underside of all the sorrel leaves – and after chopping finely, added them to an omelette that was inspired by the descriptions of a childhood Easter day lunch in Elisabeth Luard’s European Festival Food.

It was delightfully tasty, with the bitterness of the herbs combining beautifully with the creamy egg. It looked pretty too, and it had the added benefit of offering cause to be very chuffed with my developing herbs.

All in all, it was a very simple Easter in food terms – but enormously satisfying.

And the gardening continued too. Indeed, it proved to be the weekend when I moved out of the comfort zone of pottering around, potting plants in the sunshine to the rather less dilletanteish business of potting plants under chilly cloud and with incipient rain in the air.

I’d mostly brought pretty things on the morning’s visit to Columbia Road, but not entirely.

There was the catnip and then some herbs for humans. In this case, more sage and some rosemary.

The sage was needed because the first lot had developed a sort of mould on the leaves. It had been one of the first things to be planted in the newly revitalised garden and I potted it using a substantial amount of very rich ‘manure’ (plant matter).

Now that had been perfect for the mint, but I suspect it had hampered the drainage for the sage.

This time, after the pot and the crocks were washed thoroughly, the crocks went back in, with some gravel and then followed by lots of sand and only a little compost. Let’s see if that sorts it.

The rosemary had finally been bought after the means to protect it from those shiny beetles had arrived. There was mesh pegs and rubber corners to build a bamboo cage.

Which all sounds wonderful, but isn’t really designed for a single pot, as I rapidly found out.

With help from The Other Half, a rather wobbly cage was improvised.

Unfortunately, by the next morning, it had collapsed. In a woeful comment on our efforts, it couldn't even cope with a spot of traditional March winds and April showers in brief combination.

And so, rather than leave it lying around, I donned a cap and went out into the wet to clear up. The rosemary is probably not under any major beetle threat in this weather, so I’ll look at possible solutions this coming weekend, when considering protecting the catnip.

But one of the things I’ve discovered in recent weeks is that I love potting things with my hands. Oh yes, they get messy and it’s absolute death to manicured nails and a pretty big challenge to my skin, but I really enjoy digging into the compost.

The smell and the feel is just so enjoyable. And doubtless there’s some rather airy fairy sense of being ‘in touch with Mother Earth’ that I could make too, but I’ll resist that temptation.

Oh. And one of the other things I’ve discovered is that box has a smell like cat pee.

And gardening is a learning curve.

So there. Don’t let me hear you saying that this blog isn’t educational.

Easter starts here – but what does it mean?

Of course Easter has really been going on for almost a week, but in reaching Maundy Thursday – as we call ‘Holy Thursday’ in the UK – I found myself wondering just what traditions existed for the day.

Most scholars appear to agree that the English word ‘Maundy’ has come to us through a combination of Middle English and Old French, from the Latin mandatum.

This is the first word of the phrase “Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos”.

You didn't think you were going to find yourself reading Latin here, did you?

Well, in case you can't translate it, it means: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you” and it's from John 13:34.

Now in the Bible, this was about Jesus washing the feet of the disciples and this has been ritualised by certain Christian denominations to see a priest or bishop wash the feet of 12 others during a mass.

On the other hand, some people believe the name of the day comes from the “maundsor baskets” or “maundy purses” of alms that the king of England distributed to certain poor at Whitehall before attending Mass on that day.

Of course, that explains why Brenda goes and hands out a bit of non-legal tender to some people at a church somewhere every Maundy Thursday. And did you know that the Maundy purses that HM gives away include a groat and a half groat?

Which won't help anyone much in these austere times.

Unrelated to such religious connotations is the good old fashioned wayzgoose.

Quite apart from being an absolutely fantabulous word, the wayzgoose started out as an entertainment given by a master printer for his workmen on or around St Bartholemew’s Day, which is 24 August.

That was partly because St Bart was the patron saint of leather workers and, therefore, book binders. It was also the end of summer and the start of the season of working by candlelight.

There is some speculation that the first wayzgoose bash was held in Mainz, Germany, at the Fust-Schöffer shop, after the first Gutenberg Bible had been printed – on 24 August, according to legend.

Later, wayzgoose came to refer to an annual dinner or outing for the staff of a printing works or the printers on a newspaper.

And in terms of the latter, it was often held on Maundy Thursday, since that was a day off because there would be no paper to print for the following day.

Back in the days I worked on a national newspaper, we regularly used to consider hiring a charabanc and going off on an extended pub crawl somewhere by way of marking a wayzgoose. But unfortunately, we never quite got around to it, and I don’t work in such an environment any longer.

But surely there’s some sort of Maundy food traditions?

Well, not really.

Some high-church Christians hold a form of seder – the traditional Jewish meal that starts the Passover – as this was what Jesus was doing at the Last Supper.

According to catholicculture.org, the centrepiece is a white, frosted cake that’s been moulded in the shape of a lamb.

You’ll also have the symbolic foods – matzos in memory of unleavened bread, some wine, bitter herbs, “greens” (parsley or watercress) with salt water to dip both these in, and haroses, a dish of apples, nuts, cinnamon and wine, which is chopped and mixed together to look like a mortar that the Hebrew slaves used.

You might also display the bone from a roasted leg of lamb – but you won’t have eaten any if you’re still strictly observing the Lenten fast. It symbolises the lamb the Israelites apparently sacrificed and ate on their departure from Egypt.

The bitter herbs is reflected in German culinary tradition, which sees either a chervil soup or a dish of eggs in green sauce – the sauce being made from a selection of herbs.

In fact, in Germany, Maunday Thursday is known as Gründonnerstag – ‘Green Thursday’, although the ‘grün’ bit might actually come from the word ‘greinen’, which means ‘to weep’.

But whatever the background, Germans often eat green-colored foods, such as the dishes mentioned above, on Gründonnerstag.

And that’s about it for Europe. Elisabeth Luard, in her European Festival Food doesn’t mention anything else, except an Hungarian paprika soup.

Indeed, for a festival that is preceeded by a month’s fasting, the main event seems pretty thin when it comes to big, set-piece meals to break that fast – apart from the lamb that I mentioned yesterday.

One of the few quirks to mention is that only us Brits apparently break the fast before Easter Sunday itself, with sweet, fruity hot cross buns being eaten before then.

So for the first evening of this short spring break, I don’t think there will be any food with a traditional meaning.

After the heatwave of last week, the temperature has dropped quite dramatically.

So tonight could well be something as warming and comforting as pie.

How does your garden grow?

Sunday was another glorious day. The weather was fabulous – and in our sun trap of a patio garden at least, it must have been 20˚C or near that.

It was as though the Meteorological Office had been playing games with us.

Perhaps the forecast for far cooler, cloudier weather had been a jolly April Fool jape by the chaps and chapesses at the Met?

Whatever the reasons for the continued summer-like conditions, another trip to Columbia Road had been pencilled in for early in the morning and, in the event, took place in far warmer and brighter conditions than anticipated.

Two more pots of flowers made their way into one bag, together with a dramatic red grass to give the garden a bit of biological architecture.

But enough with the frivolous stuff!

The strawberry pot needed more plants, having been woefully underplanted a week before after rather poor advice – although frankly, I should have trusted my own instinct that three plants would not be enough for a traditional strawberry pot.

So the pot is now fully planted, with three Florence, three April and two Elsanta – the latter apparently taste rather good if allowed to ripen properly. And if they're not bought in a supermarket.

We had also decided to get little tomato plants. So we did, buying five baby plants – one orange cherry and two each of two larger, round, red varieties: Alicante and Gardener's Delight.

It’s at this stage that my copies of Tender, Nigel Slater’s rather magnificent (and heavy) two-volume work on growing your own fruit and veg, and then using them, started coming into its own.

A Christmas present from my parents, it provides far more information than the labels that came with the pots. Not that that would actually take much doing. In terms of the tomatoes, the only thing that the label revealed was the name of the variety.

We had a good spot for them, in a corner that gets a good bit of sun, but – like the rest of our little patch – little wind.

Slater says that tomatoes need to be well spaced in the pots (or bed). Oops. Five in one pot?

That problem was solved by putting three in one pot and two in another. In the first, we also popped in a rather fetching and unconventional iron obelisk that we found while hunting for bamboo.

Not only will it provide a vital climbing frame for the fruit, but it looks really quirky, and adds valuable height to the visual look of the corner too.

Slater also came into his own on the next planting job: a vine.

Our flat is one of a small block of 12. At the back, we have a gated carpark and, at the furthest end of that, the communal bins. Next to the bins, facing east and a quite shady corner, a vine has been growing for the 17 years since the block was built.

And amazingly, it’s been producing substantial bunches of fruit – although being near the bins, you never quite fancied eating them.

But with the garden now paved, we decided that one area of fence could be given over to a vine, which we’d plant in a large pot.

True to form, the label that came with the vine had rather bland instructions, with little more concrete information than the name of the variety – Vroege van der Laan. Slater was rather better, citing his own experience. It needs sun and, according to Slater, thrives best if you don't mollycoddle it.

So, only very occasional feeding and don't water too much either. Make it work. Given that, after hoping to be able to eat the occasional grape, his produces 50-80 small bunches a year, that advice would seem to be sensible.

I planted it at the back of a large, plain pot, next to the fence, with masses of gravel at the bottom and then plenty of sand, before adding the compost.

It looked a tad lonely, though, so I put eight nasturtiums around the opposite edge of the pot. They'll provide col,our and more fodder for us.

One of the things we'd decided was that we wouldn't make the mistake of crowding the garden just when we've finally got more space in it than since the day we moved in. Yet now we've got going, it seems that we have far more space than we realised. There's room for a few more ports yet.

That will have to include a chilli bush – and rosemary. For the latter, I've now ordered mesh and pegs and stuff that will protect it from Chrysolina Americana a rather attractive beetle that just adores the stuff.

They apparently also like thyme, but when they invaded the garden two years ago, they ignored the thyme and concentrated on my rosemary, stripping it bare.

That was part of an ordering blitz: new secateurs after the old ones collapsed. This in itself was an educative process – I'd never realised that there are different styles for different jobs. And a guide to basic pruning techniques from the Royal Horticultural Society seemed like a sensible investment too.

A shovel too, as the two small, plastic dustpans I have are utterly inadequate for sweeping up in the garden. And organic tomato food for obvious reasons.

Where we'd bought the obelisk – from Len from Halifax – we'd also found a nice, metal folding table and chairs for far less than we'd expected to pay, so managed to carry them home along with everything else. Cushions for the chairs are also now on order.

A rough weekend calculation, though, has left me particularly cheered. What has been spent on the garden in the last few weeks is less than what has been saved by both of us having given up the tobacco in the last 10 weeks. Which is both a bit of a shocking thought – and also something to make me feel doubly chuffed.

Indeed, looking around the garden now, I'm starting to see the sort of patio garden that I thought would be wonderful, but never managed to get anything like as close to.

It should be productive for the kitchen – but it is also beginning to look really pretty. And I admit to feeling a big flush of pride on Sunday afternoon as I cleared up after the latest potting exercise and then took time to look around at my developing little corner of paradise.

The only thing that I seem to have got seriously wrong, thus far, is in forgetting to get some grass in specifically for the cats to nibble – as Otto reminded me rather effectively on Sunday afternoon.

This will be rectified this weekend. And if they're very, very lucky, I might get them some catnip too.

'Ummm,' says Otto. 'Drugs ...'