Companion Planting

Up to this year, I've always kept my three balconies separate as far as use was concerned. At home the front balcony (the one I look out on and sit on) was for plants in flower, while the back was the herb garden (just outside the kitchen door) and the nursery where I had the seedlings and the cuttings, plus the perennials not currently flowering - chrysanthemums in the spring and summer for instance. Then, my office balcony had a few flowers right in front of the window, but tucked away around the corner (well out of sight of my clients - now why?) was my vegetable garden, with its beans and courgettes and tomatoes.

This year though, I've changed. Nine times out of ten in the past, the veg and the herbs didn't make it - they were decimated by whitefly and red spider mite before they came anywhere near harvest. So this year I've changed tack - I'm companion planting.

The idea behind companion planting is simple. Growing certain plants near others improves the chances of the second group doing well. Why? Several reasons ...

Firstly, some plants will protect others from pests, diseases and environmental factors. So if you pop those in amongst others which are susceptible to those problems, they'll have some degree of protection. So here for example, I've got marigolds next to my tomatoes. Marigolds give off a smell which whitefly can't abide. So in avoiding the marigolds, they'll also have to stay away from the tomatoes. At the same time, I've got peppers planted by the tomatoes. The strong sun hasn't hit here yet this year, but when it does, the tomatoes will shelter them and provide humidity. There's some garlic in there too, as there is around my roses, to repel aphids.

Then there are plants which are supposed to benefit the growth and flavour of others - like basil for tomatoes. That's in there too but it's not quite big enough to see in the photo. A pity that you can't grow mozzarrella - I'd have a complete caprese in one container :)

Some plants will attract beneficial insects. For example, marigolds (yes, they crop up all the time) attract hoverflies , and hoverfly larvae like to munch away on aphids.

And finally, there are the sacrificial plants. This one's sad. You put in something that you know is irresistible to a particular pest, in the hope that it will leave the other plants, which you want to save, alone. There are a couple of nasturtiums tucked in with the roses too to attract aphids.

Why bother? Because every pest that can be deterred with another plant is one that doesn't have to be squirted with some foul, polluting chemical.

It's not all good news of course. Some of the worst pests don't seem to respond to companion planting at all - and, as every summer, my big fear is red spider mite. I've yet to find a plant that will repel it, and all those marigolds are actually going to attract it. And there's always the fear that if you attract them to sacrificial plants, they'll spread. Oh, my poor tomatoes.

And then there are the incompatibles. Just as some plants seem to like being together,and thrive, others seem to hate each other and do badly. Keep your onions away from your peas and beans for example and your tomatoes away from your potatoes. Not always easy if you're gardening in a small space like a balcony.

So what do you grow with what and what should you avoid planting together? You'll find loads of lists on the web - try these Google searches for instance Companion plants and Companion planting. Or if you have a specific plant in mind, just add it to the search box.

But whatever you search for, if you do find a plant that will repel the dreaded RSM, please, please let me know ...

Yummy, yummy - 200 times yummy

I don't usually "do" recipes. But this is a special post. The Balcony Garden reaches 200 posts today, so I thought it was time to do something a bit different.

This winter I discovered Swiss Chard. I can't imagine why I'd never tried it before - I've seen it in the supermarket for years. Perhaps because the heads of chard always looked so big - and as I'm the only person in the family who will eat greens, buying large quantities usually means throwing half the stuff away.

But then I saw it in Germany, while we were there for Christmas. In Germany it's called Mangold. And that reminded me of mandrakes.

Now if you're a Harry Potter fan you'll know that mandrakes are plants which are (in mythology) supposed to shriek when you pull them out of the earth. J K Rowling turns their roots into babies' faces as well. Of course, mandrakes are absolutely not connected to Mangolds except in my mind - which, every time I saw them in the supermarket, kept imagining the root under the base of the plant as a screaming baby.

So in the end I had to try them. And they have quickly zoomed to my number one favourite type of greens. I've not yet got round to planting any, but this article from The Guardian says chard can happily be grown in containers, so they're on my list. Chard likes limey conditions and is tolerant of heat and cold - ideal here. It's also a good container vegetable because you don't have to eat it all in one go. Harvest the outer leaves, and the younger, internal ones will keep on growing to give a second crop, and a third, and a fourth. Again ideal for balcony garden where space is at a premium, and large veg which are only going to provide one meal are sometimes a luxury you can't afford. There are different types of chard - some with red ribs, some with yellow - which I've not yet tried. But the white ribbed version is certainly not to miss.

So - here are a couple of recipes.

First of all, don't worry about having too much. Chard is like spinach. You cook an incredible quantity of raw leaves and they reduce down to a spoonful. And anyway it keeps - it's just as good the next day.

The basic recipe is dead simple. You can eat the whole thing, rib and all, or strip the green leaf from the central white rib. Wash the leaves well, cut them into small bits, and pop them into a saucepan with only a tiny amount of extra water - enough to cover the bottom of the pan but no more. Then add a bit of salt and dribble some good olive oil over the top. Cook over a low heat until the leaves "melt" down.

Like that, they're great as a vegetable to accompany a meat dish or to eat on their own. But for me, the best bit is using up the leftovers the next day as ...

Spaghetti with Gorgonzola and Chard


Gorgonzola Dolce has to be the cheese of the Gods. Don't confuse it with Gorgonzola Piccante, which is the older and much stronger version - similar to other blue cheeses such as Stilton.

Gorgonzola Dolce (dolce means "sweet") is soft and creamy with a mild taste. It's no more than two months old, and when out of the fridge for a while should be soft and runny. I could live on it.


Melted down over a low heat in a pan, then combined with some previously cooked chard, it's a wonderful sauce for spaghetti. (We exaggerated a bit with the cheese in the photo above - don't use half so much.)


And apart from the fact that it tastes wonderful, chard is also good for you. It's high in vitamins K, A and C as well as containing various other vitamins and minerals essential for health (see here for a breakdown).

So - for our 200th anniversary, I haven't baked a cake. But if you want to celebrate with me - try some chard.

Strange stuff, Italian lettuce...

I've been planting my veg. The beans are zooming through, and the zucchini too. The Jerusalem artichokes are doubling in size every day it seems, and the tomatoes are almost ready to be transferred to bigger pots. But it seems I may get more of them than I bargained for. Because I've been planting lettuce too. Here's the seed packet...

And here's the back of the packet - as you can see, it says lattuga - that's Italian for lettuce. And there's a handy cultivation guide. It tells me where and how to sow, whether I should thin out, and so on.



And finally it tells me when I can expect to harvest. And what.

Tomatoes it seems. Strange stuff, Italian lettuce.

You still think I'm exaggerating?

I left them for three days. Just three days. They'd not been doing well. Every time I lifted the leaves hordes of whiteflies would swarm around. They're not a pest that I've ever had before, but then I've never tried growing vegetables either. I didn't want to spray things that I was going to be eating, and found out too late that planting marigolds or nasturtiums with the plants would have helped. But they were bearing up, and I hoped that they might last long enough to give me at least a few courgettes.

And then for three days I couldn't get to my office, where I have my vegetable balcony. The containers are tucked out of sight of the clients. From the office window all you see is some pretty flowers trailing over the balcony railings. but stick your head around the French doors and there they are. Or were.

Just three days. And they hit. Maybe they'd been there before and I'd not noticed, but I went away leaving two relatively healthy looking plants and came back to this.

No, it wasn't just the whitefly, though they clearly weakened the plant. The webbing gives it away.

Red spider mite.

OK, OK we all know I'm obsessed by them. But looking at this, do you really think I'm exaggerating?

You have to promise not to laugh ...

You have to promise not to laugh .... OK? I'm proud. Over the last couple of weeks I've been harvesting my first ever balcony-grown vegetables. Here they are - all six of them.


I said, don't laugh. And anyway they weren't the only ones. We've had another six since then, and there at least six more on the way. OK, OK - we've not quite reached self-sufficiency and the supermarket hasn't gone out of business. But it's a start. And I really was ridiculously proud of myself. They were cooked together with a large portion of self-satisfaction.


The vegetable garden is still coming on, but I'm having a few problems with the sex life of my zucchini (you're not laughing, remember?). They're blooming like mad, but they're the most prudish flowers I've ever come across. They seem to spend most of the time firmly clamped shut, apparently with the same attitude to reproduction as the headmistress of a Victorian girls' school. And then, I can't tell the difference between the male flowers and the females. I'm out there daily with my little paintbrush playing at being a bee - but if the bees know what they're supposed to be doing, I certainly don't. Just spread the pollen around a bit, that's my motto. With any luck sooner or later there'll be a telltale bulge, but if anyone knows of any clear photos on the net which show the difference, do let me know. I've been staring mystified at fuzzy pics which state authoritatively that they show the male or female flower, but they look just the same to me.


Everything else edible has succumbed. The salad leaves collapsed, the oregano turned brown and died, as did the rosemary, and the mint and basil have been devoured by caterpillars. And that's just the vegetable garden. Oh well, the false security of the long, cool spring is obviously over. From now on it's back to hot, sticky pest and disease-ridden summer reality ....

Balcony Beans

So how is the Balcony Kitchen Garden coming on? Well, mixed. The salad leaves have been a bit of a disaster. They were doing well, and then suddenly collapsed - I couldn't work out why. But other things are coming on well. The courgettes are in flower, and the beans are coming on nicely - they're growing visibly each day. Something is attacking the leaves, but doesn't seem to be affecting the beans themselves. So very soon I think we'll be eating our very first home-grown veg.

The herbs are still there too, but I've been fighting constantly against powdery mildew which has attacked both the sage and the rosemary. In Italian it's known as mal bianco, which roughly translates as the White Evil. And that just about sums it up really.

I've been misting the plants three times a day, which has helped - if I miss a couple of sessions it comes back immediately - but I've also had to pick off a lot of the most badly affected leaves, leaving the plants looking a bit straggly. It's now also attacking some of my flowers too, and I'm going to try a mixture of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and oil - which is supposed to work. Am hesitating about trying it on the food plants though - not sure I want my salads dressed so far in advance.

The balcony kitchen garden - sweetcorn included

For me, balcony gardening has always meant flower gardening. And even though each year I have a vision of a non-stop supply of fresh vegetables issuing cornucopiacally from the containers, so far it’s never happened. The nearest I’ve ever got was a feeble attempt at tomatoes, but as I didn’t pinch them out or pollinate by hand they went straggly on me, gave no fruit and in the end succumbed to red spider mite. I did once produce a half grown melon, but I’d planted too late and winter arrived before it was fully grown or ripened.

This year though is going to be different. Back in February I stocked up on seeds, and started buying herbs, and the balcony kitchen garden is now well under way. As I can get herbs from the supermarket at €1 a pot, and needed them immediately to cook with, I stocked up with rosemary, mint, oregano and thyme – all of which have taken well and doubled in size since I got them, despite constant clipping. I also sowed two different types of basil back at the end of last month, but so far have seen nothing. Although we can usually expect temperatures of around 20°C (68°F) in April, the last three weeks have been filthy – cold grey and rainy. The temperature has been averaging around 6° -12°C (43°-54°F), and sometimes lower, so it’s been too cold. There’s no sign of a change at the moment, but presumably it can’t go on for ever ...

But many of the seeds have started to sprout and things like the courgettes and dwarf beans will be transferred to permanent containers this weekend. I hadn’t got round to buying the new containers and potting compost when I wanted to get the seeds in, so I started them off in seed pots. They’ve just sprouted and I’m presuming they’ll transfer. The lettuce is coming on well too. It’s a type with long thin leaves - I shall let it grow as a mass then start thinning out when they become big enough to eat.

And as you can see from the photo, the sweet corn is also coming through. Sweet corn. Yes – maize. You know, that 8 foot high stuff. On the balcony. And I was complaining about lack of space?

I hasten to say that it was not my idea. When my son saw that I’d pulled out a load of vegetable seed packets, he showed just a tiny flicker of enthusiasm for the idea of gardening. Keen to fan the flame, I suggested that he might like to grow something himself. And then added the fatal words : Choose anything you like.

Two seconds later he was rifling through the hamster’s food box and pulling out four kernels of sweet corn. So there we are, sweet corn on the balcony. Oh, and he threw in a few sunflower seeds for good measure.

I'm late with my tomatoes, but I shall be trying again. I’d intended to get some seeds started in the house as far back as January, but never got round to it. The garden centre have promised they’ll have tomato plants in by this weekend, so I shall nip round and buy some. Perhaps I should go for the dwarf varieties. I suspect I’ve already got more than my fair share of large stuff ....

Strange vegetables

Thirty years ago, when I first came to live in Italy, the food you could get here - whether in shops or in restaurants - was 100% Italian. There were no ethnic supermarkets, the main supermarkets stocked only Italian products and though an Indian restaurant did open shortly after I arrived, it closed again about six months later because of lack of custom. Coming from an already cosmopolitan country like Britain, it was rather a shock. (Though nowadays as I pass the McDonalds which dot the city at about a hundred yards from each other, I do sometimes feel somewhat nostalgic).

Needless to say, things have changed and Milan is now as cosmopolitan as anywhere else, with a large migrant population. Plus the fact that increased opportunities for travel have meant that the Milanese too are more open to foreign food. Ethnic restaurants and supermarkets abound, and in the last couple of years even mainstream chains have started to cater for non-Italian tastes. You want yams or fresh coriander? Basmati rice or baked beans? Just pop into your local supermarket.

Recently though I've found a couple of things which are not particularly "ethnic" but which I'd still never come across before. The first were banana shallots. The one in the photo was nearly 7 inches long.



Checking on the Internet it didn't seem to be particularly unusual, so you may be wondering what the fuss is about. But I'd certainly never seen them before. I cooked them in a pasta sauce instead of onions, and roasted. Both ways worked well - they have a nice, mild flavour, but don't really seem much different to ordinary shallots.

The other vegetable though has really got me stumped. The Italian name on the label on the market stall was spigoli - roughly translated as "jutting out corners", which is presumably a reference to the bits in the middle. But an Internet search produced nothing.


I cooked it in a very small quantity of water and oil, not even sure which bit or bits I was supposed to eat. The green bits were nice, but nothing special. Just greens. The white spikes in the middle were a bit bitter, but OK. I'm not sure I'd bother to get it again - there are other greens which I like better. But it was curious. Has anyone ever come across it? Or even grown it?

In Defence of Marrows

A post by Carol of May Dreams Gardens made me laugh the other day. She was bemoaning the fact that she'd forgotten to check her zucchini (courgettes to the British - not to mention the French) and they'd exploded into growth overnight. I grew up having no idea they could be eaten small! In fifties and sixties England they were always left to get huge before we harvested, and for us they were called marrows. I must have been in my late teens before I came across these suspiciously foreign-looking things called courgettes that they ate in France. And it was a long time afterwards that it clicked that they weren't a "new" vegetable, but nothing but baby marrows. I still have a cookbook which I bought in about 1971 when I went to university. It's called The Robert Carrier Cookbook and is a book I still use regularly - his recipes always seem to work, even when it's me doing the cooking. He says : Courgettes, once so hard to come by in Britain in any but the most exotic food departments of the major London stores, are now available in regular supply in shops throughout the country. I suspect that time they were still pretty trendy, however. I doubt you would have found them at our local Co-op.

But however much I like courgettes (especially raw and grated with olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon juice), now when I grow them I always leave some to get big. I love cooking marrows. If you type baked marrow into Google you'll come up with loads of recipes, both vegetarian and otherwise. For all of them you need to cook (or part-cook) the marrow first, and then add the stuffing or topping. Cut off the two ends and then either cut it in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds to make two canoe shaped containers for the filling, or cut it in thick rings and again scoop out the seeds to leave a hole for the filling. Bake it smeared with olive oil and covered in a medium oven (180°C, 350°F or Gas 4) for about thirty to forty minutes - you need the flesh to have become soft but not soggy.

While it's baking, make the filling. One of my favourites is button mushrooms, brown rice and cheese - cook the rice, and at the same time fry the mushrooms in half oil half butter, covered so that the juices don't evaporate. When the rice is cooked, add it to the mushroom pan and reheat uncovered until the juices have been almost absorbed or evaporated. At that point, add the cheese and let it melt into the mixture. What cheese you use will depend on your taste - I like Gorgonzola while my son won't touch it unless I've used processed cheese slices. Fill the marrow halves with it and serve.

Or try marrow peeled and cut into cubes, then baked for 40-50 minutes together with skinned, sliced tomatoes, chopped onion and thinly sliced celery. Smear a casserole dish with olive oil or butter,and put in alternate layers of the vegetables. Add a little salt, sugar and pepper to each layer. Finish with a layer of marrow and a few chunks of butter or a bit of olive oil - enough to soak through the layers, but don't exaggerate. Cover tightly and bake in a medium oven as above for forty or fifty minutes.

Of course, any marrow recipe can be used with courgettes too. And even I would admit that if for the rest of my life I could only eat either cougettes or marrows, I'd choose courgettes. But it's fun to grow them - if you're trying to get your kids involved in gardening, they'll have fun seeing how big they can get. And then, and what's wrong with having something slightly different on the table occasionally?

I'm not growing marrows on the balcony this year, so thanks to citricut for making the photo available under Creative Commons Licence on flickr.