Gardening the River Cottage way

Owner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s food philosophy has an enduring appeal that seemingly winds the clock back to simpler times when food was grown and sourced close to home, its growth organic, sustainable and seasonal. At RHS Hampton Court 2022, the River Cottage Market Garden illustrated these values and showed how we can cultivate a small patch of land to grow the food we love to eat.

Vegetable beds surround a greenhouse at the heart of the River Cottage Market Garden

How do you start off a no-dig site?

Adam: On a new site we put clean cardboard down to kill off

Perennials are plants that live for multiple years. They come in all shapes and sizes and fill our gardens with colourful flowers and ornamental foliage. Many are hardy and can survive outdoors all year round, while less hardy types need protection over winter. The term herbaceous perennial is used to describe long-lived plants without a permanent woody structure (they die back to ground level each autumn), distinguishing them from trees, shrubs and sub-shrubs.

Can refer to either home-made garden compost or seed/potting compost: • Garden compost is a soil improver made from decomposed plant waste, usually in a compost bin or heap. It is added to soil to improve its fertility, structure and water-holding capacity. Seed or potting composts are used for growing seedlings or plants in containers - a wide range of commercially produced peat-free composts are available, made from a mix of various ingredients, such as loam, composted bark, coir and sand, although you can mix your own.

compost

What methods do you use to care for the soil?

Adam: Keeping the soil nutrient-rich and healthy is key. The main ways in which we help improve our soil are by:

• Producing plenty of organic matter in the form of homemade compost. We use this to

  Mulch is a layer of material, at least 5cm (2in) thick, applied to the soil surface in late autumn to late winter (Nov-Feb). It is used to provide frost protection, improve plant growth by adding nutrients or increasing organic matter content, reducing water loss from the soil, for decorative purposes and suppressing weeds. Examples include well-rotted garden compost and manure, chipped bark, gravel, grit and slate chippings.

  mulch the beds, laying a thick layer of compost after Christmas at the start of the growing season.

• Feeding the soil with different organic crop-specific fertilisers that are made on site.

• Growing green manures over winter,  which help to smother weeds. Their roots prevent soil erosion and collect nitrogen.
  
  
  Green manures feed the soil over winter. 

• Operating a no-dig organic practice, which means we don’t turn over the soil in the veg garden. When you turn the soil, you destroy micro-organisms that we ideally want to breed in the soil. Digging disturbs that habitat and it also brings weed seeds to the surface. Not digging also helps to store carbon in the soil.
   

Why is a compost heap so important? 

Adam: Having a really good compost heap in your garden is absolutely key. Wormeries are great too – the resulting product is like supercharged compost. Many people give up if the compost heap becomes smelly or doesn’t rot down, but it’s all about getting the balance right:

• Compost can potentially attract less-desirable wildlife so don’t have your heap too close to the house or your kitchen, but it needs to be practically sited so you don’t have a long way to walk with material to be composted. If you garden on a slope, put it at the top of the slope so you’re barrowing finished compost downhill to the beds. 

• Get a good mix of green and brown elements in the heap so nitrogen and carbon is balanced. As well as ‘green’ grass

  A method of growing new plants from parts of an existing plant, such as sections of root, stem, leaf or bud. When prepared correctly and planted in the right conditions, they can produce roots and eventually become independent plants. There is a wide range of different methods for taking cuttings, depending on the plant and time of year.

  cuttings and weeds, mix in plenty of ‘brown’ woody stems, paper, straw and dried leaves, as well as kitchen waste.
  
   
  Compost heaps need layers of different types of material and regular turning. 

• Make sure the heap has lots of air in it – turn the contents regularly with a garden fork to get the microbes working, which creates heat. Ideally the heap needs to get hot enough to kill weed seed – which is about 70 degrees. You can also push tubes into the heap so air travels in, then when you remove the tubes, the compost effectively has holes through it, which improves air flow. There are barrel-turning compost systems that let you turn and

  To incorporate air into something. • Compacted soil in lawns can be aerated by spiking it with a garden fork or using a hollow-tined cultivator, to improve drainage and grass growth. Worms also do a good job of aerating soil. • Aerating the contents of a compost bin can aid decomposition – occasionally stir up the ingredients with a garden fork or turn/move them into a new bin.

  aerate the contents regularly.  

• Cover the heap to stop it drying out in summer and keep an eye on it in case it needs watering. If you have a heap sitting too long and not rotting down, feed it with added manure, soil, chicken pellets or comfrey tea. You make this by steeping comfrey leaves in water in a lidded container. It does pong a bit!  

• Decent compost should have a nice earthy smell. We store ours in bins and let it settle. 
   

Can you recommend any interesting plant combinations?

Adam: Fragrant flowers – We’ve started using more flowers in the veg garden over the past couple of years. Anything that is super-strong smelling deters pests from our veg crops, so we dot French marigolds around the garden, plant nasturtiums around the borders and grow fragrant thyme, rosemary and lavender.

Salsify and beans – Salsify is an old root crop that’s gone out of favour but it has a beautiful flower and makes a good companion plant for broad beans. Aphids head for the salsify plants, leaving alone the crop that we want to keep. This method is sometimes called sacrificial planting.

Three sisters – We grow sweetcorn, squash and beans together. Known as the Three Sisters, this combination works well because the sweetcorn supports the beans, the beans stabilise the corn and the shallow-rooted trailing squash plants smother weeds and reduce water evaporation.

‘Three sisters’.

Some flowers are great companion plants to veg crops.

Which plants would you recommend for a beginner veg gardener?

Adam: Salad crops are easy to grow and quick to mature yet relatively expensive to buy and often don’t store particularly well. Eaten fresh from the garden, crisp, tasty salad crops are one of the true delights of veg growing. Lettuce (such as ‘Maureen’, a ‘Little Gem’ type), beetroot, spring onions, radishes, peas and beans all give good results. Brassicas can be tricky because they attract pests, so I’d probably leave these alone.

My main tip for beginner gardeners is don’t over-complicate things and try too many different crops all at once – just grow a few plants of each type of veg and see what works for you.

Get a notebook and keep records of anything you’ve grown and liked so you can tailor what you grow in future years.