Good enough to eat at RHS Show Cardiff 2012

Plenty of inspiring ideas on display at the RHS Show Cardiff for growers of fruit and vegetables

This may be an early season show, but there are still plenty of inspiring ideas on display at the RHS Show Cardiff for growers of fruit and vegetables, both outside and in the floral marquees.

Rebekah’s Vegetable Seed (which supplies seed of around 600 different vegetable varieties) has produced an exhibit displaying an impressive range of early crops, including various types of asparagus, broad beans and most prominently, tubs of cut-and-come-again salad leaves, which could easily be replicated at home.

Cut-and-come-again salad leaves are quick-to-grow leaves, that take around four weeks from sowing to produce the first crop. Each sowing can be cut four times before resowing. Examples on display include Oriental salad mix - a tasty blend of leaves said to be not too spicy but with a bite – and baby leaf lettuce mix, with six different lettuce varieties, all best cut at around 5cm (2in) high. For a more colourful crop try red mizuna with tasty wine-red foliage.

A Spring Allotment by Pennard Plants of Somerset, shows a range of ways to grow fruit and vegetables and includes a domestic-sized polytunnel. Interesting features include potatoes and herbs grown in recycled, well-cleaned car tyres, and salad leaf underplanting of fruit bushes. Pennard Plants also has a display in one of the Plant Marquees; of particular interest to fruit growers is quince ‘Leskovac’ a dwarf variety developed in Serbia, described as a mini bush and ideal for growing in a large container. It will reach around 1.8m (6ft) high after a few years, and produces masses of culinary fruit following displays of pink blossom.