The veg patch

A winding and increasingly effective hornbeam hedge encloses a number of slightly raised beds, a fruit cage, a strawberry patch and a daffodil bed, and although, clearly, much of it isn’t ‘veg’ we refer to it all as the veg patch. The true veg patch within is home to what I think are the finest varieties of the familiar veg - International Kidney potatoes, Barbabietola di Chioggia beetroot, Uchi Kuri squash among them - and those lesser knowns whose flavour I can’t be without, such as salsify, agretti and Romanesco. I’m no slave to rotation, so I don’t assign each plant group to a quarter of the plot and move them around each year, though I tend not to grow the same thing in the same place two years in a row.