ET ISSUE 2136 Saturday 31 March 2001

Country gardener

Elspeth Thompson on plant pots

ONE of the advantages of having a potter for a landlord is that I get to use his beautiful pots. He is one of the old school which believes that the traditional shapes, tried and tested over centuries, are hard to improve on. He lends his signature to a range of Gopsall Pottery designs by leaving sculptural ridges with his fingers during throwing and thumbmarks on the handles, and by naming them after local characters. A wide squat planter with a wiggly edge is known as 'Betty Wiggly' after the woman who works at the local filling station, for instance, and 'Mabel', with a rim crimped like a Cornish pasty, commemorates a long-departed sprightly ex-Wren Mabel Mussett.

The garden was full of these terracotta wares when we arrived in September. Long toms had tumbling tomatoes spilling over the sides, the raised beds had pots of herbs ranged along the edges, and every bamboo cane was crowned with a bell-like cane-top. In midwinter, this liberal sprinkling of terracotta keeps the garden looking well-furnished. Most splendid of all is a range of forcers - for blanching early crops of rhubarb, chicory, sea kale and endive. Those for rhubarb are more than two-feet high, with lids like minarets and handles for lifting, while the other vegetables have bell-like cloches in various sizes. Gopsall Pottery's rhubarb, sea kale, chicory and endive forcers are available from Oakover Plants, Ashford, Kent (inquiries and mail order, 01233 712424), and from Great Dixter in Northiam, East Sussex (01797 253107, no mail order). Prices range from £15 for a ten-inch endive forcer to £112.50 for a splendid 28-inch rhubarb forcer. It is now time those in the vegetable garden were pressed into use.

I've been enjoying crops of witloof chicory, forced in buckets under cloches indoors, right through the winter. Deprived of light and kept in the warm, the parsnip-like roots form fat white chicons in a matter of weeks. Rhubarb and sea kale can be forced and harvested now, although existing rhubarb plants can be forced from January onwards. Cover the crowns with a forcer or plastic bin, shored round with compost or straw to keep in heat and speed up the process. Nothing can beat the pale pink stems of 'Early Champagne', sliced and baked slowly to keep their shape intact. I bought a couple of new crowns from the local farm shop, which I have planted in a sunny, open spot with plenty of well-rotted manure mixed into the soil. The new plants must be left to establish for at least a year, and forcing for early crops can be done only once every two years, so it is good to have several plants on the go.

Sea kale is completely new to me. I have admired the plants, with their thick cabbagey leaves and clouds of white flowers, down on the beach at Dungeness, but have never eaten it, although I'm told it is the new rocket at fashionable London restaurants. The tradition, since sea kale became a delicacy in the 18th century, was for local people to shore up the shingle around the shoots in late winter to deprive them of light, and return a few weeks later to harvest the blanched, celery-like stems and crinkly purplish leaves. It is, of course, not done to uproot plants in the wild, so I tried the local garden centre for 'thongs' - the pencil-thin side-shoots that are removed in the autumn and grown on over winter. You can still get a crop the first year if you feed them with seaweed-based fertiliser and cover with a forcer surrounded by compost or straw.

Impatient to sample its apparently sublime flavour, I sent off for some harvested sea kale. The pallid bundles arrived the next day from Sandy Pattullo of Angus in Scotland (£6 for 8oz, 01307 840303) and we ate them that evening, steamed and served with melted butter and a squeeze of lemon, just like asparagus. With the texture of braised celery, a delicate earthy aftertaste and a pleasant hint of the sea, they were absolutely delicious. I can't wait to establish a crop of my own.

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2001