Now that the sun is shining, Mary Berry’s lunches are taking a new, seasonal direction. ‘In this sort of weather, it’s always salad at lunch, some of it from the garden,’ she says in Roots, a new podcast launched by the Royal Horticultural Society and presented by radio DJ and keen gardener Jo Whiley.
Mary, whose latest book is called My Gardening Life, recently shared her love of gardening with GH. In the second episode of Roots, Jo visits the cook in her garden to talk about the hobby that has started to rival cooking in her affections.
As she showed GH, Mary’s greenhouse opens into a hedged vegetable garden, enabling her to protect young plants before growing them in six brick raised beds. In the podcast, she tells Jo that: ‘In my true dotage, I’ll be able to sit down and sew herbs and admire things as well as actually do things.’
Currently, however, these beds are home to some of her favourite edibles: ‘we grow what we eat, so we’ve got a lot of salad things, there’s one purely down to asparagus and strawberries over there.’ Recently, Mary has begun experimenting with a new vegetable, she tells Jo: ‘I noticed in good supermarkets you can buy something called kalette. I am not a fan of kale. I don’t mind it crispy in a restaurant but I’m not very fond of kale.’
Britt Willoughby Dyer
Mary’s vegetable garden
‘Kalettes are a hybrid between a Brussel sprout and kale,’ explains GH’s food director, Sarah Akhurst. ‘They grow similarly to Brussels on a stalk, but instead of mini cabbages, they grow as little florets of kale leaves. These little mini brassicas are great fun in the kitchen, full of sweet, nutty flavour and really quick to cook as they are less dense than a sprout. I love tossing them in oil and plenty of seasoning and roasting for around 10mins until tender and the leaves just starting to crisp up.’
Mary agrees, and kalette has now earned a place in her vegetable garden: ‘Over the years, I’ve learned that it’s always better to stake before you think you need it. Plants never look as good if you stake them too late on – they look a bit trussed-up and unnatural.’
Petra Richli//Getty Images
If you’re worried about pests, it’s a good idea to cover your crops with netting
In Roots, she shares other methods for protecting her plants, specifically against pests: ‘Already the netting’s over because the birds like this garden, and they pinch things.’ She explains. Slugs and snails, she shares, are deterred by dry stone walls, while she is fortunate that her son is a tree surgeon, so can deliver lots of bark: ‘It really does stop the predators’.
There’s one garden creature she still struggles with, however, though she has learned to tolerate them: ‘I am not a friend of squirrels!’
RHS Roots, a twice-monthly video podcast hosted by DJ Jo Whiley, launched last month and is available on YouTube and other major podcasting platforms
My Gardening Life (DK) by Mary Berry is out now
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