Product Description
Late winter 2025 saw 40+days of consecutive rain in many places and that lead to allotments and veggie plots being underwater just when people should have been sowing. As a result, it was one of the latest seasons I can remember in 25 years. Add to that a 'Spring' with hot days and frost at night, and its been pretty difficult but..... lets look forward to your own home grown lettuce saving you money, no airmiles and delicious flavour from this heritage variety as well as Borlotto beans for stews and bean salads that we are offering Delia Online customers to sow during June. Spinach can be sown when you pull up the beans in late summer for an autumn harvest and pumpkins sown in June can be harvested in Oct/Nov for storing over winter. For next Spring, bush tomatoes are amazing in a container for a sunny balcony or the plot alike - juicy enough to eat and meaty enough to cook, a great allrounder.
Each year we seem to be breaking a new climatic record which is very worrying yes, but us gardeners are made of stronger stuff - we have the oldest Horticultural society in the world, the 2nd oldest Botanical Gardens in the world and lets talk plant hunters, Darwin springs to mind! That passion for growing is in our DNA and long may it continue.
Batavia Lettuce – An elegant French variety, late with a large, closed head and rounded, ample crunchy leaves with red lacing. It is similar to a traditional Iceberg lettuce, not to be confused with the mass produced Icebergs found everywhere these days, the Batavia is of good quality and wonderful for a Caesar or a Nicoise all summer and into the autumn and indeed, can be sown from March till July.
Semi Plum Tomato Rio Grande - not only can you eat these fresh, but you can preserve them – passata, freeze them, make sauces, bottle them, ketchups and soup. Preserving those bounties is essential during a crisis to see you through those lean months and of course this is the variety used in tinned tomatoes. Rio Grande is super useful because it is determinate growing up to your knee in height, juicy enough to eat, meaty enough to cook with, thin skin and very few seeds inside the fruit. A good allrounder in the kitchen, great in the ground, on a sunny balcony, in a grow bag or container in spring, easy to grow and tomatoes have to be the ultimate taste of the summer, along with basil.
True Spinach – you can sow iron rich spinach in spring AND in autumn and harvest it in the summer AND again in the winter. You can also freeze cooked spinach for use later in the year and it is full of iron, vitamins and minerals as well as being really easy to grow. Avoid summer sowing as it will bolt and go to seed. My bugbear is supermarket ‘baby leaf’ spinach which appeared overnight almost 10 years ago, it’s a cash crop, grows quickly, mechanically harvested, washed in chlorine solution and sealed in argon gas, it will last a week in the fridge. I get it, true spinach wilts a few days after picking and its not as good for fresh market, but grown at home, the quality is so much better and you are going to use it when you pick it so it’s a no brainer which one you should grow. Sow in Spring for the Summer and in the Autumn for the Winter.
Borlotto Bean of Saluggia – Borlotti are shelling beans that can be frozen, dried or bottled for the winter months. Ideal in stews and soups, they are filling and totally flavoursome and ideal during a crisis when shelves are empty. Sow the whole packet in spring when the weather is warmer so you have more than you can eat fresh, then preserve them. All Borlotto beans come from Northern Italy from the Alps across to the Dolomites which is no accident. Italy is not Naples and the amount of snow and cold means that these humble shelled beans would have been dried to last through the winter along with other summer bounties to sustain and feed your family!
Pumpkin Moscade of Provence – another useful variety to have because Spring sown, you would harvest them late Summer and into the Autumn, Halloween being the classic period, and then they will store somewhere cool dark and airy for much of the winter. Can be roasted, made into delicious soup or boiled, starchy and sweet, they are a wonderful, warming, rustic addition to the winter diet. Again, there was not a supermarket on every street corner 200 years ago like there is now! Things like pumpkins were versatile in the kitchen from soups to sweet Parmesan cheese and pumpkin ravioli. In Italy it would be called ‘Cucina Povera’ or peasant / poor food – simple recipes using very few, but the best ingredients.
From seed to plate, the flavour of homegrown is something no supermarket can match. Discover a Delia Smith recipe for your harvested crop with over 1,400 waiting for you at Delia Online
This lovely concise mix of regional and useful varieties will be welcome in any allotment or vegetable plot and is yours for just £12.50 including a free sowing guide and includes P&P - a saving of £4.44 and also makes a lovely gift.
