Vintage veg from Pennard Plants
With the current emphasis on Grow Your Own, RHS Show Cardiff 2010 had its own fruit, herb and vegetable displays all around the showground. From a ‘Dig For Victory’ wheelbarrow in the School’s Wheelbarrow Competition to a mini potager, herb garden and real live greengrocer, ideas and inspiration were all around. But one exhibit in the Floral Marquee took an old fashioned look at homegrown produce.
Pennard Plants staged another of its unique and fascinating Victorian kitchen garden displays, complete with rustic planters, wooden boxes and heaps and heaps of information about vintage vegetables.
Chris Smith runs workshops and classes from his walled kitchen garden in Somerset and is a big fan of the old vegetable varieties that were grown in yesteryear.
"Heritage and Heirloom vegetables were bred for the amateur grower and for great flavours and ease of cultivation. They are still as good today as when they were first grown. Take Chard 'Bright Lights'; it hails from the late 19th century and the brightly coloured stems of pink, red, orange, yellow and white make it a great plant for the flower border, the young leaves are great in salads and the older stems can be stir fried or braised while the leaves can be cooked in the same way as spinach," says Chris.
"Salad Burnet, that’s over 2000 years old and it's still going strong. It’s an all-season herb or salad crop, the young leaves are tangy and fresh with a hint of cucumber, great for a different salad sensation. American Landcress is another great plant to grow for salads, with all the peppery flavours of watercress without the water. It’s a great cut and come again crop, it survived last winter and still kept growing," he says.
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