Grow it, cook it

With this in mind, the two women, who have been friends for 35 years, have joined forces to give both cooks and gardeners food for thought in a new book, Delia's Kitchen Garden, a step-by-step guide for beginners who want to grow their own fruit and veg.

This book is not for the advanced gardener - it's more along the lines of Delia's How To Cook series, teaching basic methods for success with any kitchen garden.

But most of the input has come from Gay, with a selection of recipes from her pal. Delia had a walled kitchen garden built at her home in Suffolk and it was then that Gay stepped in.

"Delia lives this mad football life," says Gay of her friend who is a director of Norwich City Football Club. "It takes her away a lot of the time so we were up there regularly working on the garden."

Gay offers the following advice to people who fancy having a bash at growing their own produce:

l Grow what you like to eat. "A lot of people get into vegetable growing and I meet some who don't actually like to eat the produce they grow."

* Grow what tastes best fresh. "There's nothing like the taste of new potatoes which have just been pulled out of the ground, or tomatoes just picked from the vine. Others that reward you for being eaten straight after picking include all the salad leaves, cabbage, radishes and carrots."

* Place your kitchen garden as close to your home as possible. "Delia had the luxury of a kitchen garden at the side of her home, but you can easily have a patio vegetable garden or even a square foot garden, where you create a plot in a simple frame and grow crops in succession all year round. It involves growing a crop in a square foot of soil and you can have as many squares as you have room for."

* Work out how much time you are going to have. "You need to keep on top of the watering and weeding but there are ways around that." These may involve installing automatic watering systems down the rows of crops.

Ideally, the kitchen garden needs plenty of light and some sun. Gay says: "In summer, when you are doing most of your growing, you will generally have a small spot in your garden that gets half a day's sun, and this is probably where you need to put your kitchen garden, although some crops such as spinach do quite well in shade."

Easy-to-grow crops include potatoes, beans and courgettes. "You can start courgettes and beans off on the windowsill and they are very satisfying because you get a lot of plant and they have pretty flowers. Three courgette plants will fill up three square metres.

"Tomatoes aren't difficult. I like varieties like Garden Pearl or Tumbler. Germinate them indoors and only plant them outside when the danger of frost has passed.

"In the early part of the year sow half a row of salad crops each week to get a succession of crops coming through."

Beginners should avoid difficult, fussy crops such as cauliflower.

* Delia's Kitchen Garden, by Gay Search with recipes by Delia Smith, is published by BBC Books, price £20.

BEST OF THE BUNCH

Hypericum (St John's Wort/ Rose of Sharon)

These reliable shrubs provide a welcome display of bright yellow flowers from summer through to the autumn months. For me, the tall growing hypericums which reach 6ft or more are the most rewarding, especially those which flower into October. Among these, H. 'Hidcote' bears a mass of golden flowers well into the autumn. Hypericums are also very easy to grow. They thrive in any garden soil and many of them will do well in shade. When pruning in spring, you can cut back H. Calycinum almost to ground level, while taller varieties will need the top third of their branches off.

GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT

Fresh mint for winter

Mint is probably the easiest herb to grow and I always associate it with high summer and Pimm's on the lawn. But you can have fresh mint through the winter if you take action now.

Dig up a clump from your garden and untangle some of the biggest and healthiest-looking runners. They can be cut with secateurs or just broken off with your hand.

Space out the runners in a tray of potting compost and cover them with an inch (2.5cm) of the compost. Water in well and place the tray either in your porch or greenhouse and before long shoots will be popping up and you will have mint throughout the winter.

THREE WAYS TO

Encourage birds to your garden

1. Create a water supply, either in the form of a bird bath or shallow-sided container on the ground, with a capacity of up to 2in (5cm) of water.

2. Plant species which will give birds a natural food supply of seeds and berries, including berberis, malus, prunus, pyracantha, sorbus, viburnum, holly and Helianthus annuus.

3. Give them some shelter. Many small birds like to shelter in shrubs and hedges, while conifers and evergreen plants give them protection. Alternatively you could put up home-made or shop-bought nesting boxes.

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK

Continue to plant spring-flowering bulbs in the garden and in containers.

Harvest maincrop carrots.

Lift tender perennials such as argyranthemums, fuchsias and pelargoniums before the first frost, to be overwintered indoors.

Scarify the lawn to remove dead moss and grass and spike the soil if it is compacted.

If your lawn is not good, apply an autumn fertiliser to boost root growth.

Top dress established borders with well-rotted compost.

Plant garlic cloves.

Clean barbecues, garden furniture and non-frost-resistant pots and store them for winter.

Finish repotting winter-flowering arum lilies (Zantedeschia aethiopica).

Check ties of climbers and replace as necessary where the shoots are rubbing against supports.

TIME-SAVING TIP

Don't let earwigs ruin your plants. Trap them by placing upturned pots stuffed with hay or straw on canes among plants they commonly attack. Every morning shake out the pots to remove them.

l Brigid Press is awa