If I’m not mistaken, the weather forecast suggests that Sunday might actually feel like a summers day which would be a welcome change..  I don’t mind the rain or the cold, but at this time of year I love eating out and its so much easier to entice everyone outside when the weather is dry and warm.  It’ll be chance to try out our new pot barbeque too which has a clever lid you can plant up for salad or herbs.  It’s a cooking and growing combination I rather like, especially if you’re short of space.

My lettuce has germinated well this year so we have plenty for the next few weeks, but I must remember to keep sowing otherwise it will come to an abrupt end in September.  I like to eke out summer salad for as long as possible otherwise it can seem like a long winter, especially if the summer comes and goes in May.

Having recently returned from a thoroughly enjoyable top bar beekeeping weekend at Embercombe I feel more impassioned than ever that top bar beekeeping should be more popular than it is.  It is an approach that puts the bee first, which for me at least makes complete sense.  The end game of this approach is not to maximise honey production, but to help the bees to forage and reproduce naturally, and in so doing build strong colonies that are better placed to survive into the future.  Harvesting honey is a bonus, not an entitlement.

For me the same applies to growing vegetables.  Its the process rather than the end product that attracts me.  Whilst I love harvesting, particularly when it means making an impromptu salad of beetroot, broad beans, rocket and new potatoes like last night, it is the germinating and nurturing that excites me most.  Seeds poking through the soil, beans spiralling up poles and flowers turning into fruits is payback enough for me.  My father kept bees but never liked honey, so maybe it was the same for him.  I’m sure he would have embraced top bar beekeeping.

Some things always surprise me at this time of year, even though they happen every year.  Rabbits invade the garden, grey clouds appear on the horizon as soon as I get the pot barbeque out and herbs flower.  I don’t know why herbs flowering is such a surprise, but subconsciously I must assume that something so useful shouldn’t also be so beautiful. Rosemary is first.  Fairly modest but very welcome for early foraging bees.  Then it’s the chives, which we don’t use a lot in the kitchen, but they add a wonderful splash of bright pink in May  And now it’s the turn of sage, which we hack away at all through the year to add to squash risotto, pork and calves liver, and yet it still turns out an amazing display of purple that is as popular with the bees as any flowering perennial.  And although I know it now, this time next year I know I’ll be surprised again.

Radishes are a new discovery for me.  Not very radical I know, but when something is new (however old) its always exciting.  I have dabbled with them in the past, but never succeeded.  If I ever managed to harvest them before bolting, they sat in the kitchen looking lovely but untouched.  Usually though they bolted while my back was turned.

This year I have truly found radishes.  Just two varieties, the elongated French breakfast (although despite their surge in popularity they haven’t made it onto our breakfast table) and the round Rudolph.  They have germinated on cue, they have waited patiently to be picked without flowering and they have been welcomed by my family as if they were the latest exotic ingredient from Ottolenghi.

It has meant getting out the dreaded mandolin, the one that sliced the end of my index finger a couple of years ago, but the mandolin will be needed shortly for courgettes anyway.  Shavings of fresh firm radish (they must be fresh and firm otherwise the mandolin will do battle with them and lose) mixed with lemon juice, olive oil, fresh herbs and sumac makes a wonderful pre-dinner nibble.  And so easy too. 

Radishes also come up trumps as a handy snack in the vegetable garden or allotment, with nothing other than fresh air.  Let’s hear it for the radish.