The Joy of Gardening and the Almost Forgotten Art of Carrot Storage

Back in London, the start of each spring would see me wander through Tooting Bec Common to our local garden centre to purchase my tomato plants. The chili plants would already be at home, strong and healthy, having been grown from last year's seeds. Come summer, all would be thriving in pots on our sun-drenched and decked back yard.

Hardly an allotment, but great fun nonetheless.

The tradition has been maintained in our first spring back in Sydney. What's different is that here I am without my own seeds and, at least for now, left to experiment with a few varieties of local chilis and tomatoes.

This and that with us fortunate enough to have a decent garden I've claimed a bit for a vege patch. Beans, carrots and a token in-ground tomato, as well as basil, thyme and continental parsley.

You can take the boy out of Europe, as they say.

It might be more expansive, but it hasn't been all plain sailing. First there's the neighbours' cats. Being the softest part of the garden they found it an ideal toilet. The beans were robust enough to take the punishment but the carrots and herbs have suffered.

My sister had the same problem last summer. Taking a leaf from her book I put sticks and small stakes into the ground to stop the cats from squatting.

Sure enough, problem solved.

Next my darling son. A small fence was erected to stop him walking onto the garden and, much to his mother's surprise, it has withstood his shakes and remains upstanding. The only problem is that with so many sticks in the ground on the other side he thinks this is where all sticks belong.

When not picking them up, or replacing the potting mix he has redistributed from around my potted plants, I sometimes consult my gardening book to find out what other, more typical problems might lie ahead.

Green top, fanging, sclerotinia rot. Stuff like that.

My book is Dr D.G. Hessayon's The Vegetable & Herb Expert, purchased a few years ago because it looked like the sort of book every bloke should have, albeit a bit over the top for one with nothing more than half a dozen terracotta pots.

Despite this, and the planting guides following northern hemisphere seasons, it's both handy and a darn good read.

The book is a best seller in Britain and one of 22 'Expert' books the green-thumbed doctor has published since 1958. To quote Dr Brent Elliot, librarian at Britain's Royal Horticultural Society, "the Expert Books have been the biggest innovation in gardening publications since the death of William Robinson in 1938."

That could very well say it all.

That and the life Dr Hessayon continues to breathe life into what I can only imagine is the dying art of carrot storage.

Carrot storage, that is, sans fridge.

It's a trick designed for the British summer and its all-too-often abrupt end which leaves mature carrots unharvested and exposed to the elements.

Using only those which can be picked without damaging the roots, the leaves are cut back to half an inch and the carrots placed in a 'stout box' between layers of sand or dry peat. You have to make sure they don't touch. Then it's simply a case of keeping the box in a dry shed and checking the carrots occasionally to make sure none have started to rot.

Apparently they'll keep this way for five months. If you have a dry shed. Not to mention the curiosity and conviction.