Austerity gardening: Dig for luxury

Reading Mr Middleton's completely wonderful guide to wartime austerity gardening is a bit chastening. Admittedly, the current economic outlook is bleak, but the plucky Second World War Brit had to cope with the Blitz, Hitler and imminent malnutrition. And swede for every meal.

These days, plucky Brits are growing veg in greater and greater numbers; and while old-fashioned varieties such as white cabbage and Brussels sprouts are still a mainstay, allotment holders are increasingly busying themselves with luxury crops such as cavolo nero (the black kale beloved of Italian chefs including Giorgio Locatelli), French sorrel and fabulous Communist heritage tomatoes from Eastern Europe. What's more, Franchi Seeds of Italy is the trendiest seed catalogue in town, featuring not just rare Italian veg nurtured by generations of Latin housewives, but also exclusive recipes by the River Café's Rose Gray and Ursula Ferrigno.

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Television's Alys Fowler – head gardener at Gardeners' World's HQ "Berryfields" and author of The Thrifty Gardener – is one of the new breed. Married to an American, she's seen the future; and it's West Coast US-style garden centres that feel more like coffee shops, encouraging trendy young customers to embrace the grow-your-own ethos. "In Portland, where my husband's from, I've been to garden centres that are so achingly hip they look like really cool bars."

But who needs such encouragement when luxury items are no harder to grow than utilitarian cabbage, sprouts or swede. As Middleton and Fowler both agree, luxury crops can be surprisingly simple to tackle. Melons, pumpkins and aubergines will all flourish in a back garden when watered and manured sufficiently; you just need to pray for a hot summer. Asparagus and artichokes never taste better than when cut straight from the garden; and no shop can supply the sweetness of fresh peas that have just been picked.

"Pick your luxury," says Fowler, "then go and find it and get obsessed. I'm obsessed with Japanese vegetables; my thing is to find really obscure cucumbers or the next Taiwanese four-leaf salad. But if artichokes are your thing, become fanatical about them, then have the pleasure of knowing you have something you literally can't buy in a supermarket."

But for Fowler, the luxury comes as much in the way you treat your crops as what you grow. "A posh supermarket may sell you five swiss chard for £2, but the ones you've grown are the most luxurious: you can be really over the top about what you feed them and the conditions you give them.

"Spend your money on seeds," she urges. "Check out the Real Seed Company in Wales [www.realseeds.co.uk], a little family business passionate about everything it does. Or Nicky's Seeds [www.nickys-nursery.co.uk], which only sells things it is passionate about." And don't go thinking you need acres of space; even the smallest plot has the potential to tackle one of the supermarket's costliest and most wasteful items: bagged salad. Reducing consumption of salad in bags saves loads of pounds that can be spent on something more exciting; but the real winners will be your tastebuds.

That's because in a way every fruit and veg becomes a luxury when it's this freshly harvested. Tasting lamb's lettuce just picked from the garden with all its fighty anti-oxidants intact; tasting new potatoes with all the creamy sweetness they have when they've just been dug: they're the kind of luxuries you could get accustomed to.

'The Thrifty Gardener' by Alys Fowler is published by Kyle Cathie at £16.99

The way we were: who needs a lawn anyway?

By HC Middleton

Mr HC Middleton's broadcasts on the BBC Home Service were a central part of the government's Dig for Victory campaign, begun in 1940, to encourage British people to grow their own food during the war. Here are some of his seeds of wisdom on luxury vegetable-growing.

"In happier days we talked of rock gardens, herbaceous borders, verdant lawns; but with the advent of war these rapidly receded into the background to make way for the all-important food crops.

"In these critical times the wise gardener is concentrating his energies on the utility vegetables – potatoes, carrots, onions, parsnips, swedes, artichokes and winter greens, but some of the so-called luxury vegetables can be produced without interfering with the general Dig for Victory plants.

"Take mushrooms; we can't all afford to pay seven shillings a pound for them, so why not have a shot at growing a few? The same for peas – which you can grow in eggshells – and cucumbers, which are likely to be scarce and expensive this year and are grown in much the same way as marrows.

"Apparently, a good many of my listeners have been thinking along these lines, for I have had a lot of letters lately about such things as mushrooms, melons and pumpkins: to say nothing of asparagus, peaches and strawberries.

"One thing I like about wartime gardening is that I have less mowing to do; there isn't much left to mow and hoeing between the vegetable rows is a much more useful occupation.

"These are critical times, but we shall get through them, and the harder we dig for victory the sooner will the roses be with us again."

'Digging for Victory: Wartime Gardening with Mr Middleton' is published by Aurum at £9.99

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