For Delia Smith, the key to producing delicious, healthy food is to use first-class, fresh ingredients, and, where fruit and vegetables are concerned, the ideal way to do that is to grow your own. So Delia had a walled kitchen garden built at her home in Suffolk. By the end of the first season, she enjoyed some fantastic produce, but some crops grew more
successfully than others and Delia wanted to know why. She needed a book that offered the horticultural equivalent of showing her how to boil an egg. But the books she looked at assumed a degree of gardening knowledge she didn't have. So this book, written by Gay Search, is for Delia and anyone interested in good food who wants to try their hand at growing their own.
The book opens with basics: equipment, soil preparation, compost, sowing, planting out. thinning and watering, plus pest and disease control and crop protection. Each month Gay explains what is happening in Delia's kitchen garden, advising how to sow, tend and harvest beans and peas. brassicas and other leafy greens, root vegetables, onions, fruiting vegetables, such as aubergines and tomatoes, and herbs and fIowers. Throughout the pages, Delia introduces delicious seasonal recipes and offers advice on preparing and using fresh produce.
For those with little space, Gay shows how easy it is to grow fruit and vegetables on the patio in pots. She also introduces the square foot garden - a simple idea that can be adapted to any size of plot. With beautiful colour photographs to illustrate every stage, this book will encourage the novice to grow the finest of fresh produce in their very own kitchen garden.
