Broccoli - my first greenhouse, adventures outside the recording studio...

I grew some purple sprouting brocolli. I’ve never grown anything you could eat, apart from a pot of supermarket basil once that sat on the window sill and yielded a rather dismal second crop. Other people do this stuff all the time but growing vegetables is new to me.

There was a fifteen by ten foot patch of weeds with a rotting wooden border, and there was a greenhouse. The dour Protestant in me felt obliged to to put it all to use, the frivolous Catholic in me thought it might be fun, and inherent Catholic and Protestant guilt combined to get me to the garden centre.

I love garden centres - I could spend hours wandering around looking at shrubs and marigolds and geraniums - the sight of terracotta flowerpots and that earthy smell of geraniums awakens something in me, memories of Bill & Ben the Flowerpot Men - my favourite TV programme when I was four or five. I get quite stirred up, but doing anything about it, well, that’s for other people, along with steady jobs, pension plans, central heating, car finance… I can look, I can dream, but when it comes to doing I’m afraid I’m the perennial deer in the headlights.

The ladies who man the local garden centre are very kind and patient. I’d lined a wall in my studio with recycled scaffolding planks and used the offcuts to make raised beds. I needed earth to fill them and something to plant in them. The garden centre woman who helped me gave me a deal. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the compost but the labels have been faded by the sun,’ she explained, ‘so I can give you a third off.’

scaffolding plank panelling and trashy equipment

She keeps giving me deals - I thought it was because I looked down at heel in my gardening outfit, but it doesn’t matter how well dressed I am, there’s always a deal. A watering can, a hose attachment, bags for growing potatoes and other root vegetables… ‘I’ve got a couple of these out the back with weather-damaged packaging - you can have them for twenty-five percent of the original price - there’s nothing wrong with them, and they’re going to be outside anyway, but the boxes are a bit soggy.’

I brought on my parsnips and courgettes in there, nurtured pots of basil until the heat became too much for them and I had to plant them outside. There’s twine and canes and anti-aphid spray - stuff that perhaps I’ll grow into over time.

my first greenhouse…

And outside there’s purple sprouting broccoli. The seedlings looked pretty pathetic for a while, sitting there in the raised bed forty centimetres apart as per the instructions. They started out yellowy and vaguely wilted but I persevered, watered them every day and gave them the occasion silent pep talk. I did some research, bought a frame and some netting to keep birds, butterflies and other broccoli predators off them. (My city born and raised stepdaughter, Amy’s daughter Hazel, thought it was security netting.) I went out there one sunny morning after a heavy rain storm and they’d grown to prehistoric size and lifted their cage off the ground.

And then there were purple flowers. I harvested a few. Amy lightly steamed them and drizzled them with olive oil. A revelation. Brocolli can be disgusting - I could never imagine how it first occurred to anyone to eat it, sour-tasting as it often is and smelling like rotting swamp vegetation. But that’s the supermarket stuff, sprayed with who knows what chemicals, handled by strangers on very low wages, hermetically sealed in shrinkwrap plastic, slowly passing its best on it’s way from polytunnel to container lorry to supermarket shelf.

My broccoli was sweet, tender and fragrant. And there’s a load more out there. I’ve also got potatoes, parsnips, courgettes and onions. I’m busy mixing a new album at the moment but it’s an absolute joy, in between fretting about snare drums, bass guitars and vocal levels, to pop down the garden with a watering can and tend to the vegetables.

I can’t help but think I’ve been missing out for the past seventy years.

summer tour dates