As summer is officially upon us, you might be spending more time in your outdoor dining area enjoying picnics and barbecues, depending on the great British weather of course.
It’s a good idea to think carefully about the different plants you place around your outdoor dining area. You’ll want ones that stimulate all the senses and others you can pick off and use on the grill.
Peppers are good fun to have around an outdoor dining area. The standard large fruited varieties are great and are most useful in terms of eating. However, some of you may be braver and like testing the taste buds. If this is the case then have a go at the thinner fruited Hot Chilli Peppers or perhaps the dumpy Cheyenne type, which are excellent for pots. You’ll get better crops in a warm sheltered garden but where its cooler a greenhouse would be useful.
Tomato plants are ideal for the patio too. Although some of the traditional varieties are good, cherry types have a much deeper flavour.
Root crops can also be grown on the patio, especially varieties such as Parceba Carrot, a ball variety that can just be pulled straight from the pot, given a wipe and then popped in the mouth.
It’s also really easy to grow ‘cut and come again’ salad leaves. Our member garden centres stock a range of easy to grow mixed leaf salads, which can be ready in just a few weeks. After you harvest them, they will re-grow from the base.
Don’t forget herbs too. There is nothing better than Lemon Scented Verbena (Lippia citriodora or Aloysia triphylla). The crushed leaves are lemonier than lemon itself. It can be used in cakes, as well as in salads, and, also, on the barbecue as a flavouring
Other herbs such as rosemary are very useful and will look good throughout the year. For something different try the prostrate forms that trail over the edge of pots and along the ground in clumps in a border. Variegated sage like the variety Salvia tricolor are also evergreen and will look ornamental, as well as being useful for cooking.
Herbs such as basil are often used in warmer climes to ward off pesky insects and are also wonderful when used in tomato salads.