Grow to eat: some edible crops grow in shade - but be realistic
Owners of small gardens often ask me which vegetables and fruit grow in shade. Many want to tuck “messy veg” away in a dark corner, or think that flowers are difficult to grow in shade, which isn’t true.
My answer: “Compost the sun-loving flowers and swap the beds around,” never goes down well. Horrified faces force me to sound enthusiastic about morello cherry, a sensible shade crop, although boring for all but the biggest cherry compote lover.
If you have no sun at all, grow different flavoured mints from victoriananursery.co.uk; spearmint for cooking, Moroccan for tea and pineapple mint for desserts.
With a few hours of direct or dappled sun in summer (don’t worry about winter) most leafy vegetables are worth a try: lettuce, chard, spinach, rhubarb and leeks are available as plants in nurseries now.
Raspberries in part-shade on my allotment produce a fair amount of fruit while sprouts, kale and beetroot seem to do OK with a few hours of shade, too.
To prove my dedication to the cause, I picked and ate the leaf of a shade-loving hosta to test the flavour; it is an edible ornamental. No wonder slugs and snails love them, it was delicious.
To beat them to it, pick a third of emerging shoots like asparagus in spring, leaving the rest. The fully grown leaf I ate was like crunchy lettuce. In some countries emerging fronds of ferns Matteuccia struthiopteris and Polystichum munitum, are cooked and eaten, too.
Truth is, there are limited options for shade gardeners. Perhaps it’s best to hold on to those home-grown tomato dreams until you find an allotment or a sunnier garden. Use the money and hopes saved to buy veg from local organic suppliers instead.
Find Jack’s blog at jackwallington.com. Follow him on Twitter @jackwallington and Instagram @jackjjw
