Direct Sow In Spring

Chinatown's produce stands offer many items that make only fleeting seasonal appearances, often so brief that many chefs scarcely have time to figure out how to cook them properly before they disappear for another year. One example is water spinach, a common vegetable in Asian cuisine.

Recommended by the N.I.A.B, Turnip ‘Snowball’ is a very popular first-class, globe variety with solid flesh and a juicy, sweet, mild flavour. They are a fast crop, being ready in just five to eight weeks from sowing. With pure white flesh as its name suggests, Snowball is superb for both table and exhibition.

Purple Top Milan is a classic Italian heirloom variety and is still as popular as ever. Highly ornamental, it has smooth creamy-white flat roots with bright purple shoulders and pure white flesh. A strap-leaved variety, quick to mature and early cropping, it is an ideal 'catch crop' between slower growing vegetables.

Turnip ‘Goldana’ is an improved version of the popular turnip Golden Ball. A maincrop variety that produces uniform round golden roots with tender creamy-yellow flesh. They are much sweeter than regular turnips with an excellent flavour. They can be harvested as a mini-veg or left to mature.

Turkish Rocket is a robust, fast-growing plant and a great, herbaceous addition to permaculture projects, it is one of the most hardy and long-lived of all winter salad greens. It is blessedly simple to grow. Easy to raise, never needs weeding or watering and goes on for ever.

Texsel Greens is an unusual vegetable that provides an incredibly tender, smooth-textured salads and sauté greens, this fast growing variety has become a popular choice for use as a cut and come again salad crop. Also known as Garlic Kale, the small delicious leaves have an excellent flavour, a mild combination of spinach and cabbage.

Tatsoi or Rosette Pak Choi is among the most popular of oriental greens and one of the best vegetables to grow in a cool climate. The spoon-shaped, evenly spaced leaves form a plant worthy to be grown for its decorative value alone. Given enough room the plants will form beautiful wide rosettes of regular, concentric circles.

Easy to grow and quick to flower, French Marigold 'Tangerine' blooms reliably throughout the summer with vivid orange flowers that are lifted high atop lush, scented foliage. The plant is famously used in companion planting and for making flower garlands.

These bite-sized delicacies can be eaten raw in salads, lightly steamed for tender whole cobs or sliced length ways and added to stir-fries. Minipop F1' is a sweet and tasty variety which is very easy from seed and does not require pollination to produce delicious mini cobs.

Sweet Cicely is an attractive plant that is a striking component of herb gardens and hedgerows. Growing to around 90cm, umbels of tiny white flowers appear from spring to early summer. Formerly a widely cultivated culinary herb, the fern-like leaves are deeply divided and smell of aniseed when crushed.

Artemisia annua, commonly called Sweet Annie is a graceful annual with tall stems with fine bright green ferny foliage. With sweetly fragrant foliage it has a wide variety of uses both medicinal and for handcrafting but is most often grown for fresh and dried arrangements.

With butter-coloured flesh that is even smoother than butternut squash, this teardrop-shaped squash with an intense, sunset-coloured rind has a pronounced, distinctive chestnut flavour. Averaging 1.5 Kg, they are very early to mature and have superb storage characteristics.