Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?
With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream.
Did you ever make a hole on top to hold the melting flake
Of the creamy, flavoured butter that your mother used to make?

Yes you did, so you did, so did he and so did I.
And the more I think about it, sure, the nearer I’m to cry.
Oh, wasn’t it the happy days when troubles we had not,
And our mothers made Colcannon in the little skillet pot.
Colcannon (The Skillet Pot) Traditional Irish song

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If you ask any gardener with a vegetable plot have they grown onions, nine times out of ten they will reply with a “yes”. Now that onion may have been a bulbing onion, a spring onion (scallion), or even at a stretch they will have grown garlic and made that link to the onion. However ask that same group of gardeners have they grown leeks, and you will be lucky to get one yes reply in ten.

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For the time pressed gardener onion sets are a godsend. Onions seed can take a long time to germinate; it transplants poorly, and needs a long season to attain a kitchen ready bulb size. So it usually makes more sense to grow your onions from sets instead.

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Custom has it that if you are to find a pea pod with nine or more peas in it that you can make a wish for whatever you heart desires. Now with the cold snap that we often experience in spring I’m willing to bet quite a few early seed sowers would have wished for milder weather. Reports filter in to me each spring of over-enthusiastic gardeners who have had their young seedlings totally blackened by a late frost.

Amongst the usual casualties are cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, spring onion, and beetroot, both in the open ground and within unheated glasshouses or polytunnels. All I can say to them is keep the chin up, don’t be downhearted, as it’s early in the growing season, so you’ve plenty of time to set a new batch of seeds. Let peas be one of them, and I can assure you that with a little care you will have a bountiful harvest.

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When is a turnip not a turnip? When it’s a swede, of course.

What we Irish commonly refer to as a turnip is actually a Swedish turnip or swede for short. Go and ask for a turnip in England, Wales, Australia or New Zealand and you will be handed a vegetable somewhere in size between a golf ball and a tennis ball. These are the true “turnips” with white flesh rather than the yellow of our Swedish turnip.

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Sweet corn is mistakenly regarded as a “no-grow” in Ireland. Many gardeners view it as a semi-tropical vegetable, one that requires intense sunlight and heat to crop, not to mention ripen. This is no longer true, and let me show you why.

The traditional varieties of sweet corn took a long time in the sun to mature and because of this were virtually guaranteed to disappoint over the Irish “summer”. This all changed when along came the F1 Hybrid seed varieties, sweet corn created through selective breeding. The F1 Hybrid varieties are early to mature making them much more reliable.

Check them out….

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Broad beans, one of the earliest garden beans to harvest, are a must for all vegetable gardeners. Not only do they produce crops of great benefit to the kitchen, they also add fragrance to the garden through their white-and-black coloured flowers. A staple food of the Roman legionnaire, the powerful Roman army marched on with a belly full of these beans. Maybe you should too.

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The nation is split on parsnips. On one side you have, let’s call them the parsnip-phobes, the group who believe this vegetable to be nothing but the basis for a bland soggy mash. Then on the other side you have the parsnip-philes who view them as a easy grow vegetable, one which will add a warm nutty flavour to stews or conversely bring forth sweetness when roasted.

Where do you stand on the issue? Well, to truly test yourself you should try you hand at growing your own. Once you bring them fresh from garden to table you may see a whole different side to humble parsnip.

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Spring cabbage…. A hardy vegetable that’s an excellent source of Vitamin C and glutamine, an amino acid which has anti-inflammatory properties. Health benefits aside, the image of spring cabbage has been tarnished by the soggy mush served up in school and work canteens. In this guide I hope to banish the soggy cabbage blues as I show you how to cook cabbage correctly, but first let’s look at how to grow it at home.

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Kohlrabi…. high in vitamin C and K, potassium, fibre as well as the antioxidant carotenoids b-carotene and lutein. Kohlrabis flavour varies between nutty (uncooked) and broccoli with a hint of radish (cooked). If you seek unusual tastes and looks then this give this member of the cabbage family a second glance.

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