If you're working from home and tired of the crowds at supermarkets, now could be the perfect time to start growing your own food. If you're intimidated, don't be: Grow, Cook, Eat is back for another series, helping people with little or no knowledge of growing their own fruit, veg and herbs but who are charmed by the idea of growing something themselves.
With plant-based diets becoming ever more popular, and consumers' increasing awareness of how far their food has travelled, this brand new 7-part series of Grow, Cook, Eat is landing on our screens at the perfect time.
Presenters Michael Kelly and Karen O’Donohoe will once again show viewers how to grow seven types of vegetables, presenting from Grow HQ in Waterford City, while cook Katie Sanderson turns the homegrown produce into some tasty dishes that will appeal to everyone who enjoys good food – carnivores and vegetarians alike.
Over the course of the series, Michael and Karen will share their expert knowledge on how to successfully plant and grow broad beans, oriental greens, cucumber, broccoli, chard, celeriac/celery, and strawberries, for all shapes and sizes of gardens and containers.
As well as offering plenty of gardening tips, Michael and Karen visit some of the country’s most interesting growers and food producers.
Items featured in this year’s Grow, Cook, Eat series include visits to Fota Wildlife Park in Cork and the Wild Irish Foragers in Offaly, as well as learning how to create a zero-waste community garden. Michael and Karen also discover how producers are growing onions commercially in a changing climate, and how farmers in Wexford are distilling gin from potato waste.
In episode one, broad beans are the focus as this year’s first crop, finding 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.
Karen works on her own container garden to show how much an apartment balcony can produce, before setting off for Fota Wildlife Park to see the surprising homegrown herbs that form a special part of a tiger’s life.
Michael travels to North Dublin to learn about commercial onion growing in a changing climate, before returning to GROW HQ to enjoy Chef Katie Sanderson’s delicious broad beanfeast, served up with ricotta, salsa verde and seedy crackers.
