Johannesburg - Whip up cocktails and other refreshing drinks using fresh produce from your garden.
It’s nearly spring time, party time is on its way and we’re heading into the growing season, so take this opportunity to put in some new plants. Why not create a kitchen garden if you don’t already have one? Just imagine a garden designed for parties crammed with herbs and fruit, all ready for the picking, which can be used to make sublime cocktails and other refreshing beverages.
This selection of easy-to-grow fruits and herbs will have you exchanging gardening gloves for dancing shoes in no time at all.
STRAWBERRIES
Strawberries are a welcome addition on any guest list, especially when served with chilled champagne or blended into an icy daiquiri.
These herbaceous perennials are winter hardy and thrive in full sun, as long as the soil is fertile and well-drained. Grow strawberries in rows or mounds – or in strawberry pots – and treated correctly, your plants should produce an abundance of berries for three to four years. There are different types of strawberries, including the summer-bearing standards, but we’d suggest proven winners such as the ever-bearing varieties, Selecta and Chandler, which produce three harvests from autumn through to summer.
TOMATOES
Another red fruit that’s a party must is the tomato, for what would a Bloody Mary or Virgin Mary be without freshly pressed and chilled tomato juice? Tomatoes enjoy full sun and will benefit from a high-potassium feed every two weeks. Water them often and stake them or secure them to a trellis for support.
CELERY
Of course, if you’re making a traditional Bloody Mary, you’re going to need a celery stick to stir it with. Although many people think celery is a vegetable, it’s actually a herb. This biennial plant is fairly simple to grow. Plant it in moist soil in a sunny position, right next to your tomatoes.
MINT
There’s nothing better than iced tea or Pimms laced with mint on a summer’s day; the herb is an essential ingredient in the mojito, an exotic Cuban cocktail. The most popular and best-known is spearmint or garden mint (Mentha spicata), but there’s a variety of other mint flavours, such as chocolate, apple and pineapple. Mint is easy to grow; plant it in rich, moist soil in partial sun, although it’s not averse to full sun. Keep plants in a pot on a patio or in a container sunk into the ground as mint has a tenacious creeping habit and spreads quickly.
LEMONS
No summer drink is complete without a slice of lemon. Plant these citrus trees in the garden or have one as a feature in a pot in your courtyard. Apart from having a crop of lemons on tap as lemons bear fruit throughout the year in many parts of South Africa, you’ll enjoy the wonderful scent of the blossom. The most popular lemon variety is Eureka, a thin-skinned juicer containing fewer pips than other lemons. Another good choice is Cape rough-skin, which has sweeter juice. As long as the trees are in the sun, are fed three times a year, with rose food or fertiliser and a smidgen of acidic compost and have a good, deep watering, they’ll be happy.
Saturday Star
* Don’t miss Melanie in Gardening 101 on The Home Channel (DStv 176) on Tuesdays at 9pm, with seven repeats throughout the week.