Grow Cook Eat

Broad beans are this year’s first crop to find a home in Grow HQ soil. This is an easy vegetable to grow, as long as you have a resident ladybird, a hose to keep the blackfly at bay, and a beer trap to distract any slugs for good measure.

Trusty heads of iceberg lettuce are set aside to make room for their exotic cousins – mizuna, rocket and mustard greens. Easy to grow in beds and perfect for containers, these cut-and-come-again greens can be harvested multiple times, making them the ideal beginners’ crop.

Mick is feeling cool as a cucumber with his well-rehearsed veg trivia, new polytunnels and boy scout knowledge of cucumber growing. While there’s more to it than the veg grown in earlier episodes, Karen shows how this prolific plant can also be grown outdoors in Container Corner, alongside some miniature cucumelons.

Karen attempts a world first by growing purple sprouting broccoli in a container. Michael puts her initial success down to good fortune and sure enough, trouble awaits.

Michael Kelly and Karen O’Donohoe have an easy run with this week’s star veg – robust and easy to grow, the colourful rainbow chard brings a prolific harvest. Katie Sanderson shows how equally simple it is to cook, wilting it on eggs for a quick and delicious breakfast.

The first fruit to receive the Grow Cook Eat treatment in this third series is everyone’s favourite Summer treat – the strawberry.

The final crop of series three is a double header. Karen agrees to grow celery despite her dislike of it, and also celeriac which she considers the ‘pug’ of the vegetable world – so ugly that it’s cute!