Grow Cook Eat

Michael and Karen focus on a household staple – the onion. Easy to grow and very low maintenance, both red and white varieties are sown in the raised bed with Karen holding back some of the sets for container growing.

Halfway through the series and it’s time to introduce the courgette or as Michael Kelly calls it, ‘The Vegetable of Mass Production’! Easy to grow in beds and containers so long as it is given plenty of milk (you read that right!), one plant can produce up to 40 courgettes. No wonder growers love to give them as presents at harvest time!

In this final programme of the second season, it’s all about the chili pepper, which is very hot, but also very easy to grow. Chef Katie Sanderson puts the presenters’ taste buds to the test with an Indian chilli pickle, tamarind sauce with yoghurt and poppadoms, and Karen O’Donohoe and Michael Kelly can just about stand the heat.

Michael and Karen take a fresh look at the pumpkin and why it’s a fantastic vegetable to grow, cook and eat during the year, rather than just buy, carve and dump at Halloween.

All about the highs and lows of growing a more ambitious vegetable – in Michael and Karen’s case, sweetcorn, and all they can say is third time lucky!

Once a vegetable grown to feed cattle, but now a staple ingredient for juicers everywhere, Kale is the fifth vegetable to feature in this series. This highly nutritious vegetable thrives in both the raised bed and container – despite a pigeon attack that prompts Michael Kelly to cover each of the three varieties sown.

Who knew French Beans were so easy to grow? Michael Kelly says French Beans are one of the most straightforward vegetables to grow – both the climbing green, and dwarf purple varieties, do really well in the glasshouse, raised bed and container.