This is a book of ideas of things to grow and make, things that other people will love when harvest time comes, and things that are more interesting, fun to grow, and nicer than the stuff you can find in a supermarket.
It includes simple things like making herb teas, growing edible flowers, and making natural vegetable dyes.
This book came out of support from the Big Lottery Fund for a project called Seeds, Soup and Sarnies that gave the Eden Project a chance to work with local families and communities to explore the benefits of growing and sharing food together.
Growing our own not only gives us good things to enjoy, it encourages us to stay active. Gardening and cooking things together is also a great way to get to know people and make friends.
It is even possible to grow things for sale and make really helpful bits of money to contribute to group activities, buying tools and generally keeping things going.
Our experience of growing is not always perfect though - often you either have a disaster with some crops and bring home nothing but some slug-chewed remnants, or things seem to go too well and you get buried under a glut that you can’t possibly get through.
Swapping, sharing and selling are all brilliant ways of dealing with shortages and gluts, but it works even better if there is a bit of planning ahead. That way everyone isn’t faced with trying to get rid of jars of green tomato chutney at the same time!
Enjoy.
3. This book came out of support from the Big Lottery Fund for a
project called Seeds, Soup and Sarnies that gave the Eden Project a
chance to work with local families and communities to explore the
benefits of growing and sharing food together.
Growing our own not only gives us good things to enjoy, it
encourages us to stay active. Gardening and cooking things
together is also a great way to get to know people and make friends.
It is even possible to grow things for sale and make really helpful
bits of money to contribute to group activities, buying tools and
generally keeping things going.
Our experience of growing is not always perfect though - often you
either have a disaster with some crops and bring home nothing but
some slug-chewed remnants, or things seem to go too well and you
get buried under a glut that you can’t possibly get through.
Swapping, sharing and selling are all brilliant ways of dealing
with shortages and gluts, but it works even better if there is a bit
of planning ahead. That way everyone
isn’t faced with trying to get rid of jars of
green tomato chutney at the same time!
This is a book of ideas of things to grow
and make, things that other people will
love when harvest time comes, and
things that are more interesting, fun to
grow, and nicer than the stuff you can
find in a supermarket.
Enjoy.
Eden Project
1
4. very veggie
who needs to grow carrots
and potatoes when you can
grow stripy?
Stuart Spurring
missyredboots
2
5. raymortim
1 Got a tomato glut?
Don’t just make a brown tomato chutney
like everyone else. Try slow roasting tomato
on a really gentle heat until they are semi-
dried and then put in jars of oil.
2 Green tomato ketchup
Not enough summer sun to ripen your
tomatoes? Trying to think what to do with
them? Thankfully there are lots of options
on the internet, including green tomato
salsa, chutney, cake and green tomato
ketchup!
4 Grow a gourd,
Sow a SQUASH...
...they’re so weird! Gourds
and squashes come in
all sorts of weird and
wonderful shapes and
sizes and they can be
dried, even varnished, and
turned into decorations
that will last for years.
3 Microgreens
If you’re looking for something
that’s quick and easy to grow
and that can happen in the
smallest of spaces, then
microgreens may just be the
thing. There’s a big world of
microgreens outside of cress.
You won’t find them in the
supermarket and they can be
an unusual, healthy addition to
the kids’ lunchbox.
US Department of Agriculture
raymortim
Nurettin Taskaya
Nick Saltmarsh
Scott D. Welch
4 5
6. Erin B
5 Any colour as long
as it
,
s black
One way of adding
variety to your vegetable
growing is to choose a
more unusual colour.
Black gives you black
kale, black tomatoes,
black carrots.
black corn
black kale
black beans
6 Growing for the jar
How about making fresh horseradish?
Very easy to grow and as long as you
know about its appetite to take over your
garden you can plant accordingly – in a
container or somewhere you don’t mind it
spreading. Young plants won’t give much
of a kick but after a few years you will have
perfect stock to make a punchy relish. For a
more unusual mix, combine with beetroot
to make the Russian dish khren.
7 Vegetable marmalades and jams
No need to let the fruits take the stage when it comes
to jam making, there are lots of tasty options with veg.
Sweet ones like carrots and squashes and soft flavoured
ones like courgettes combine well with spices like cloves,
ginger and nutmeg. And why not use up your surplus
tomatoes (technically a fruit but used as a vegetable) in a
tomato and chilli jam?
micromoth
Pamela J. Eisenberg
peachyqueen
Lila Dobbs
6 7
7. Biswarup Ganguly
Jimmie
9 Chutney
You can make chutneys
from just about anything so
they are a great way of using
up surplus vegetables. Try
more varied and unusual
combinations to make your
chutney stand out from the
crowd – beetroot and spice,
pumpkin and ginger …
8 Veggie printing
Solid vegetables like potatoes
and carrots make great printing
blocks and all you need is some
dye and some cloth and away
you go. Tea towels are a great
start then why not branch
out to bags, cards or even a
full veggie picnic set with a
large canvas picnic sheet and
smaller napkins?
10 a touch of
colour
Make more money from what
you sell by growing things that
are eye-catching and can’t be
found in the supermarket. Not
everything that looks unusual is
hard to grow. It can be as simple
as different colours of radish or
carrots for a fun rainbow effect,
and you can find varieties of all
sorts of veg in fancy colours and
shapes.
Stuart Spurring
Masha
storebukkebruse
Max Straeten
8 9
8. 12 Got a marrow
glut?
Turn your marrow glut into an
opportunity for multi-making. The
good news is the internet is full of
ideas for recipes involving marrow
– veggie stock, chocolate courgette
cake, courgette and potato cakes,
marrow fritters, chutney, ginger
marrow jam, Lebanese stuffed
marrow and marrow pickle. You
can even carve them into weird and
wonderful shapes!
11 Surprise sprouts
All sorts of different seeds can be
sprouted to make a great addition to a
salad. Try red onion, purple cabbage
or broccoli seed for eye- catching and
colourful results that are also delicious.
Buy organic seed or order from a
specialist seed supplier (lots on the
internet) so the seeds aren’t coated in
any foul chemicals.
13 Buried treasure
Tubers are great, they are generally easy
to grow and keep well. But there’s more to
tubers than potatoes (as lovely as they are).
Looking for more unusual ideas? How about
the Egyptian Walking Onion that gives you a
combo of spring onions, shallots and onions
all in one plant. Or if potatoes, choose more
unusual varieties like pink fir apples and
earlies which will have a higher value than
your standard potato.
14 Veggie crisps
From the more familiar
potato crisps, to the more
unusual like kale, beetroot
and even courgette sliced
lengthways. Very simple
to make and plenty of
options for making crisps
you wouldn’t find in a
supermarket by adding
alternative combinations of
spices and oils.
pink fir apple
egyptian
walking onion
Vladislav Sabanov
Stuart Spurring
Cyclonebill
Amanda Slater
Julie Gibbons
H. Zell
10 11
9. 15 Variations on a veg bag
There is lots of scope for putting a different
spin on the standard veg bag. Themed
mini veg bags for example. Maybe a bag of
fresh herbs and leaves that are high value
and not always easy to get. Or a make-it
bag with vegetables that can be used for a
specific recipe or cuisine, an Italian selection
perhaps? Or a curry bag?
16 Classy produce
Sometimes you can add value to your
produce by choosing veg that is expensive to
buy, like asparagus, or by picking veg when
it’s young. Courgettes are just young marrows
and squashes picked when young and tender
are a tasty alternative to the full grown ones.
Or why not try something unusual, like a
curly green courgette called Trombocino - the
plant is a climber so it can be grown wherever
there is a bit of wall space.
trombocino
Aurelien Guichard Maena
Nanao Wagatsuma
Nadiatalent
Adam Wyles
12 13
10. Garitzko
Thegreenj
17 Dyeing for a change
Food dyes are fun to experiment with
and can be used for lots of things
- creating striking icing, making
pretty play dough, brewing up magic
potions, colouring wool and fabric
and decorating Easter eggs. What
colours could you make from the veg
plot? Peelings are a fantastic free way
to experiment, try boiling up some
beetroot or carrot skins.
The trick is picking out the winners
from the mass of plants that produce
various underwhelming colours and
there are plenty of links on the internet
to get you going. If you’re feeling more
adventurous you could try growing
Japanese indigo (Polygonum tinctorium)
to sell the processed dye or to make
things from it.
indigo
beetroot
celery
carrot tops
mizuna
pea shoots
18 spectacular salads
luscious leaves
gorgeous greens
There is more to salad than iceberg lettuce.
There are masses of fantastic leaves that are
good to eat and grow, from the Asian varieties
such as mizuna and tatsoi, to the younger
leaves of crop vegetables such as beetroot
and pea shoots and even the bits we often
throw away like carrot tops and celery leaves
- pretty as a garnish at the very least!
Stuart Spurring
Popolon
Jane Stoneham
Jane Stoneham
14 15
11. 19 get with
the beet
Grate them raw for pink
coleslaw, pickle them, add
the colourful baby leaves in
a salad, great for a colourful
curry, sweet enough for
baking a rich dark chocolate
cake. And then there’s the
golden ones, the white
ones, ones with rings and
baby ones. Boiled, roasted,
pickled, there’s no end to
what you can do with them.
20 ...but maybe
not five a day!
Pumpkin pie, carrot cake, rhubarb tea bread, beetroot
brownies, veggies can be part of pudding as well!
You can experiment with root vegetables and squashes,
they’re cheap and add moisture to your baking.
rhubarb
yoghurt cake
mini pumpkin pies carrot cake
Liz West
Dichohecho
Beet man
Downtowngal
Michel Chauvet
Michel Chauvet
Beck
Garry Knight Danielle Scott
Laura
Rezepte-wiki
16 17
12. Flowery
flowers make the world a better
place. bees and butterflies love them.
Some of them are lookers,
others are all about the smell,
some of them even taste good.
Yukiroad
Chamomile
rollingroscoe
18 19
13. 21 Everlasting
flowers
Flowers for drying such as
statice are incredibly easy
to grow, but amazingly long
lasting and useful in all
sorts of ways - bunches and
also as part of decorations
and even jewellery.
Extreme dried
flower arranging!
The Christmas dried
flower garland at Cotehele
in Cornwall. Blimey!
painting
witH petalS
22 Pressed
flowers
This opens up a whole world
of creative gorgeousness and
it’s not limited to flowers,
you can get great effects from
using leaves and buds too.
24 SUCH PRETTY
PAPER!
In Ambalavao, Madagascar,
they press fresh flowers into
handmade paper which
they dry in the sun
23 perfumy POT
POURRI
Dried petals and flowers,
seeds, nuts, even pieces of
bark - add a few drops of an
aromatic oil. Couldn’t be
simpler and a great chance for
the kids to try some different
ideas.
Manfred Heyde
Deng Yingyu
Nick, puritani35
Julie David
Jean-Louis Vandevivère Leonora Enking
Leonora Enking
20 21
14. 26 Festive
flowers
Got a wedding coming up?
Have you thought about how
much the flowers are going
to cost? How about growing
some (or all!) to save money
and add a nice natural touch
to the whole event. Using
home-grown and wild
flowers to decorate wedding
tables, buttonholes and
bridal bouquets is becoming
increasingly popular.
25 Make a cutting garden
Why not go a step further and set up a cutting
garden that can supply flowers and foliage
for all sorts of events and functions, or even
just sell them to your local neighbourhood.
Flowers can sometimes be easier to grow
and more reliable than vegetables and worth
more. Not everything cuts and lasts well but
look on the internet or in a florist for ideas,
or just experiment.
27 Flower
confetti
Confetti made from flower
petals is a lovely alternative
to the traditional paper
and is free of the clear-up
problems as it will quickly
degrade afterwards. You
can use flowers like roses,
delphiniums and hydrangea
to give you combinations of
pinks and blues. Marigolds
and sunflowers are good for
bright orange and will lend
themselves to festivals
like Diwali.
dehydrate your
own flowers
micromoth
Jane Stoneham
Tracey & Doug
22 23
15. OX-EYE FRITTER?
And let's not forget
lovely lavender...
30 Edible flowers
Make your salads the envy of your neighbours
by adding some flowers. There’s a good range
that are safe to munch (always check which
ones are) and they add some lovely flavour
too. Nasturtiums are an easy choice, simple
to grow and free flowering. Make crystallised
flowers for cakes, add flowers to bottles of
vinaigrettes, and small flowers in ice are great
for adding summer sparkle to drinks. Place a
large flower like hibiscus in a glass and use as
a dish for dip. For the more adventurous, the
day lily (Hemerocallis) is a nice edible choice,
good flavour and a garden perennial so it will
come up every year. Others include rose petals
(remove the bitter white bit), rose hips, pansy,
sunflowers. If you search for ‘edible flowers’ on
the internet you will find plenty of ideas.
PANSy SALAD?
flower cupcakes
28 what a lovely
bunch...
Bunches of flowers can be
a lovely gift, a nice addition
to a local produce stall or
the whole focus for selling.
It’s a good plan to choose
ones that are more unusual
or pick your own bunch of
flowers and foliage for flower
arrangements, bouquets for
weddings, local cafés etc.
29...of greens
Its not just flowers that are
good for cutting. Foliage is
important too. If you have a
piece of unused land it can
be a great idea to fill it with
shrubs that are good for
cutting. Holly is special but
slow growing and there are
other plants like Eleagnus
and Euronymus that grow
faster and work well.
Drilnoth
Jack Berry
Dendroica Cerulea
Kakisky
Chamomile
24 25
17. Fruity
sweet and juicy, firm and tart,
berries and cherries, apples and
pears. a summer pudding, a winter
crumble, pies, jams, jellies
and sweets.
give me my five a day!
Bert Kaufmann
Alexandre Dulaunoy
28
18. 31 Berrytastic mixes
Get the best of berry fruits
by choosing some that are a
combination of two or more,
like a loganberry (raspberry and
blackberry cross), jostaberry
(gooseberry and blackcurrant cross)
and tummelberry. Or ones that tend
to be expensive to buy like blueberry,
cranberry and goji berry.
BLUEBERRIES
SUPER TASTY SUPERFOODS!
JOSTABERRIES
GOJI berries
CRANberries
32 Japanese wineberry
Worth a mention in its own right, Japanese
wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius) is related
to the raspberry and even easier to grow. Grow
it like you would a raspberry. It produces
vigorous canes and fruits in the gap between
summer and autumn raspberries. It produces
bright, glistening fruit that can be eaten fresh or
used for preserving and cooking. It grows well in
shade too, what’s not to like?
Alexander Van Loon
Daveeza
Keith Weller
I, Zualio
Dladek
Jamain
30 31
19. 34Fruit curtain
Dried orange slices stitched
together with lines of
invisible nylon thread make
a great fruity curtain or
window decoration.
33 Sorbet
Sorbet is basically fruit juice, sugar
and water mixed together and frozen.
It couldn’t be much easier to make –
puree your fresh fruit with a blender
or by hand, freeze it a bit, beat it a bit,
freeze it a bit, beat it a bit, freeze it.
35 strange fruit
These are the fruits you won’t see
in the shops. Supermarkets steer
clear of fruits that bruise easily
and that means we miss out on
some of the most amazingly
tasty fruits like mulberries and
medlars. With some of these you
won’t get instant results but once
established they need very little
attention and deliver a regular
bounty that can be used for jams,
cordials and more.
white raspberries
marvellous
MEDLArs...
... and mulberries
Benjamin Esham
Beck
Quinn Dombrowski
Eric Schmuttenmaer
Andrew Dunn
32 33
20. 36 Cordial AND MORE
Sugary syrup infused with flowers
and fruits. Drizzle it over warm cakes,
freeze it in ice cube trays for fragrant
cooling spritzers , stick a stick in it
and make your own lollies. Oh, and
it’s basically sorbet waiting to happen.
Oranges, lemons and limes for sure,
elderflower for free,
36a Mix it up. Oranges, lemons
and limes. Blackcurrants, and
elderflowers, absolutely. Rhubarb?
Raspberries? Gooseberries? Beetroot
and Ginger? Sweet and sharp seems to
be the key.
36b Cordial ice cubes for a spritzer
with a slow flavour release.
36c Home-made lollipops.
36d Drizzled over warm cakes,
breads and muffins.
36e Just add cold water…or take
it hot.
36f Pour over ice cream –
everyone has their favourite flavour!
how about white
raspberry cordial?
38 Tisanes
Tisanes have been used around the
world for nearly as long as written
history extends. Documents have been
recovered dating back as early as Ancient
Egypt and Ancient China that discuss the
enjoyment and uses of tisanes.
Tisanes can be made with fresh or dried
flowers, leaves, seeds or roots, generally by
pouring boiling water over the plant parts
and letting them steep for a few minutes.
Some popular versions: mint, lemon balm,
nettle, citrus peel - great for using up the
leftovers after making lemon or orange
cake.
37 Fruit leather
You can make fruit leather
from all sorts of fruits and
it’s a great way of turning
your surplus crop into a
something delicious that
will keep well and that
you can make into gifts
or produce to sell. Think
about more unusual fruits
like fuchsia.
Matthieu Deuté
Selena N.B.H.
rajkumar1220
Julie
kahvikisu
Liz
34 35
21. 39 jelly for
your belly
Of course you can always
make jam, but what about
a jelly infused with herbs
and spices with seeds,
leaves and stems trapped
like prehistoric flies in
amber? Stunning and
stunningly good!
EVERYONE
LOVES
jelly!
Dennis Jarvis
36 37
22. 40 a CLASSY TOUCH
Make your event stand out from the crowd by
using a classier fruit like white strawberries.
41 Fruit tattoos
Add a tattoo to your fruit as a sure way
to make it stand out from the crowd.
This is surprisingly simple to do
and although it’s cheap in terms of
materials, it does require a considerable
amount of time. And timing is crucial.
It works by blocking out the sunlight as
the fruit skin develops its colour so you
need to get the stencils on early enough.
Ideally use a stencil that stretches as
the fruit grows so you can put them on
when the fruit are still quite small.
42 Fruit ON A STICK
Make your ice lollies, sorbets and
ice creams very fancy by adding
fresh fruit slices and juices.
44 i want to grow the best pear in the world
The Merton Pride pear won’t give you the biggest crop but it will deliver the juiciest,
more gorgeous fruit, simply the best you will find, well at least in our humble
opinion. Of course there are others, the point is to choose something different to
the ones you will find in the supermarket. Check which ones need other varieties to
pollinate. If you only have room for one tree you need to choose a self-pollinator.
43 Crabapple
Crabapples are easy to grow,
beautiful and useful too. They can
be planted as pollinators to help
other apples give a good harvest
but the crabapple fruit also makes
fabulous jellies and cordials.
Jane Stoneham
Eliza Adam
Andrew Fogg
crabchick
38 39
24. taSty
Spicy + herby
the language of taste and flavour,
masters and mistresses of spices,
mysteries and secret ingredients for
curries, chutneys, kasundi, pickles,
Ken Cook
Thamizhpparithi Maari
Jane Stoneham
thebittenword
42
25. 45 Herb salt
Salt, herbs and a fancy pot.
Perfect on your lovely new
potatoes. The powerfully
punchy herbs are good for
this: sage, rosemary, fennel,
thyme, or heat things up
with a touch of chili or
pepper.
46 Posh pastes
Pesto is for more than just pasta -
herb butters and savoury spreads,
a swipe of flavour on sandwiches, a
dollop on baked potatoes. Pesto can
be made from more things than basil
- wild rocket, wild garlic or parsley all
work really well.
47 Basil
Expensive to buy, great for
making pesto. If you don’t
want to wait for seeds, try
repotting a few supermarket
basil plants in good potting
compost, and keep them
somewhere warm with
plenty of sun. Feed regularly,
pinch off flowers as soon as
they appear and the plants
should last for months.
Gloria Cabada-Lem
Goldlocki
Paul Goyette
44 45
26. 52 not just a
tea ball
No need to fish around
in your curry for the
stray cardamom. Tea
infusers will help keep
your spices under
control.
48 A whole bunch
of flavour
Bouquet garni – a herby
classic from French Cuisine
used in stews, soups
and sauces. Thyme, bay,
parsley are traditional, but
try rosemary, tarragon,
peppercorns, celery leaves,
onion ... Tie up with string or
pop them in a muslin bag.
You can even use a coffee filter.
51 TISANES AGAIN...
A book in itself! Tisanes are a wonderful
way to make the most of your fresh or
dried leaves, seeds and flowers. Mint,
peppermint, lemon balm, lemon verbena,
ginger, fennel, sage - the list is endless. Just
make sure you identify the plant correctly
and check for possible toxicity. The best
plan is to go out with an experienced
forager, at least to start with.
49 Sweet or Savoury
Bay, fennel, mint, basil...try them with
fruit, not just with meat.
50Infused sugars
Lavender, mint, fennel.
Your pancakes will never
taste ordinary.
bronze fennel
citymama
Jane Stoneham
Hustvedt
663Highland
Tomi Knuutila
46 47
27. 53 Help! My coriander has bolted!
Save the seeds for more coriander next year, for
pickling, infusing or for toasting and grinding.
Ever tried a pinch of ground coriander with coffee?
Interesting new flavour!
LET a bed go to seed...
celery
fennel
caraway
Aniseed
sunflower
poppy
mustard
carrot
Lovely! Lots of fresh
coriander leaves for your
curries, salads and salsas...
...or plant and
sprout again...
...the flowers are pretty...
...fennel will go to seed too...
...but the seeds are the
real prize, packed with
powerful, citrusy flavour...
...there are loads of exotic
spice mixes, you could
grow your own...
...or take it a step further.
This sugar coated spice
mix (mostly fennel seed)
freshens your breath like an
Indian after dinner mint!
H. Zell
H. Zell
H. Zell
Takeaway
TakeawayTheornamentalist
Martyvis
Thamizhpparithi Maari
48 49
28. Dichohecho
55 flavour,
cubed
Keep your surplus fresh herbs
for use all year round by
freezing them. Make sure the
herbs are clean, chop them,
add to an ice cube tray, fill
with water and freeze. That’s
all there is to it.
54 SOS - Save our
sweaters!
Those dastardly clothes moths don’t like
fragrant herbs! Dried herbs work too,
but put them in something porous, like a
muslin bag, or it can get a bit messy.
Or you can soak cotton wool
balls in essential oils such
as lavender, rosemary or
clove. When the balls are
dry scatter them round
wardrobes and drawers.
58 Chew mint,
not gum
As a healthier option, just
pick some (clean!) fresh mint
and chew away.
57 Peppermint and
beyond
Mint is one of the easiest things to
grow and comes in a huge range of
flavours. Peppermint and spearmint
are the obvious ones, but now you
will find flavours like strawberry,
chocolate, pineapple, lemon,
apple and even banana. They are
invasive so people often grow them
in containers. Use them to flavour
drinks and foods, freeze in ice cubes.
56 space savers
Want to keep your fresh herb
supply going beyond the
summer? There are some you
can grow easily on a sunny
windowsill. Chives, parsley,
chervil, mint, basil...
chive flower
Aiwok
Diana House
Jane
Stoneham
Pharaoh Hound
Pauline Moir
50 51
29. Line1
Joy
59 tea with
a twist
Add something a little specialto an everyday drink. Hot milkwith honey and bay, chai teas
with coriander, green tea with
fresh mint.
Miansari66
Arne Hückelheim
David R. Tribble
60 Thugs
Sage, rosemary, fennel, mint.
You just can’t kill them (unless
you forget to water them) and
they certainly pack a powerful
punch. Use them to infuse salt
for roasting and play with them
in dried bouquets. An infusion
of sage leaves can help with
mouth ulcers.
saGE AND APRICOT
BISCUITS
52 53
