Page 43 - Simply Vegetables Autumn 2020

I’d like to try growing blueberries, but apparently the bushes can take some time - maybe a couple of years - to settle, mature and bear fruit. I am quite impatient and like to see results more quickly than that!
I’d like to try some herbs like rosemary
if I can thin down the pots on the patio. I love rosemary and the traditional herbs, like thyme. Hate tarragon though, and not keen on parsley, so a selective few herbs might be good.
I have a small Bramley apple tree, grown from a cutting from the original Bramley apple tree after a reporting job I did on it for ITV in the midlands a few years ago. Also Mummy’s peach tree in a pot. Neither have ever really borne fruit or signs of it, and I am feeding them like mad to hopefully bring some on for next year. They have grown a lot this season but I have mutilated some parts of the peach tree, cutting the wrong branches last year.
Sometimes I work away, UK
or abroad, hosting corporate
awards events and conferences, and might be away for a few days. Arranging plant care can be challenging. I was unaware last year quite what I was letting myself in for as I’d never grown any veg since I was a child with mummy, so last year when I went abroad, I had to wheel all the pea and tomato plants round the front of the house for neighbours to take turns to water - I made netting houses as the birds attacked them more at the front of the house, it was quite involved
- I’m sure it was more complex than sorting out doggie daycare!
I will definitely be trying more peppers in future and would love to have a go at growing cauliflowers.
Will you continue to grow your own and if so what will you do differently?
I think I will always continue to grow my
own in some way, shape or form. It’s very satisfying eating something you’ve grown yourself. When you’re mainly cooking for one also, veg in the fridge can go off so quickly so it’s wonderful to be able to go outside and pick something green and fresh. I will definitely pay more attention to planting more carefully and labelling though next year, maybe buying a new long trough for the peas and planting further apart, they became very entwined with each other this year. I might also think about enriching the compost more. Random comment coming up: I love a bit of potting grit - these days that goes into every tub!
I also didn’t realise about re-cropping / re-sowing seeds. I was so disappointed last year when the pea plants stopped producing, and have not kept on top of re- sowing this year to yield continual cropping, so I’ll be re-planting at different times next year so that I have peas throughout the summer.
What is the best tip you have learned that you would like to pass on to others? Maybe to trust your intuition... and to err on the side of not trying to molly-coddle your plants too much! I am a big waterer. Too much of a waterer. I’ve killed far too many household plants with over-watering. It seems they do better when I treat ‘em mean and don’t give them too much to drink. This is mainly for houseplants, obviously veg need
a lot of moisture and feed once they start taking off, and things like peas don’t like soggy
feet so it’s a difficult balance.
I killed my first wave of peas with overwatering when we had the intense hot, dry spell
in March. And I nearly killed the capsicum by over-watering. My intuition told me I was possibly giving them too much, but I kept going, ‘just in case’. And of course I added the feed to the soil when I shouldn’t have done.
Also I would say that when you get into gardening and growing, you can lose yourself out there for hours, so prepare
to become addicted! I get up in the morning to make a cuppa, but always seem to be side-tracked by the garden, and by the time I’ve watered all the veg and fed the birds, squirrels, hedgehogs and visiting ducks, pruned a few pots here and there, two hours have passed. Sometimes I just feel like a one-woman feeding station for all the flora and fauna in the North West!
Also, just don’t be afraid to experiment and just get something into soil. You’ll soon know if it doesn’t like its environment or not. One thing the garden has taught me is that no matter how much you strive for it, nothing can ever be perfect. It helps me to accept that in all walks of life, as they say, perfection is the enemy of progress. Just get in the garden and try and grow something!
Is growing your own worth the effort?
It is, even if the fruit and veg don’t taste as good as you think they are going to, there is the sheer joy of seeing a tiny speck of green nosing through the granules of soil above the level of the germinating tray and watching
its development. I’ve had so much pleasure this year giving little shoots which I’ve brought on as gifts, and neighbours have traded cuttings as gifts for me helping with lockdown chores for them. I feel so close to Mammy J and my great-grandparents when I’m in the garden scratching around. I hope they’d be proud I’m trying and that they guide my hands. In the garden my soul lights up again, there I truly come to life again and I feel mummy is by my side, guiding me on.
I feel like we are totally back there together, working on the garden again, side-by-side, back in our happy place. There’s a great aura of goodness about gardening. It’s so calming. It’s just fab.
Emma Jesson Bio
Frequently recognised for her sunny “Bye Bye” sign-off, Emma Jesson is one of the longest serving weather presenters at ITV.
She started as a colourful, quirky regular on national breakfast television, and has had her head in the clouds
- and ITV Weather regions – since 1992, also presenting countryside programmes for the network.
Emma’s always had a keen interest in the weather, especially since she hails from the North West where there is rather a lot of it.
She originally trained to be a vet, but side-stepped into TV, and the rest as they say is a paragraph in Wikipedia.
As she made the leap from vet
to met, she found that working with exotic species gave her quite a good grounding for a career in television, she’s taken part in some heart- stopping, daredevil features over
the years – it’s all on the website: emmajesson.com.
She’s done every job behind the camera, and studied journalism, working as a radio reporter, before landing her dream job with ITV Weather.
Somewhat prophetically, her first ever radio report involved covering the hottest day of the year and frying an egg on the pavement – two of her favourite interests, weather and cooking!
Emma’s ‘Racing Weather’ company organises racedays and ladies’ events, and as an accomplished awards
and conference host, and registered celebrant she travels to all parts of the UK and Europe.
Away from the day job, when she’s not scratting around in the garden or the kitchen, this one-woman wildlife feeding station enjoys dinner and a musical, languages and observational comedy, a spot of reformer pilates - and when there’s time - sleeping.
...when you get into gardening and growing, you can lose yourself out there for hours, so prepare to become addicted!
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