Miles Collins

Recreating a Bangkok market in the English Countryside..

This year I am working on two seperate themes for my kitchen garden, half of the garden will be modelled on an Anglo-French vegetable herb garden whilst the areas undercover; the polytunnels, greenhouses and hothouse will be used for Asian vegetables, fruits and herbs.

As many of you will know from reading this blog I have set out to grow five of the world’s hottest chillies as well as a number of other species, mainly for research and photographic reasons whilst the others will be of great use in the kitchen.

Asian cuisine is my great love, there isn’t a specific country or style, I love them all. What I especially love is their use of fresh herbs in salads, soups and curries which adds a wonderful fragrance and balance to their dishes and the Vietnamese in particular are great advocates of usng herbs in their cooking.

So this year I am filling the first polytunnel with chilli plants down the central aisle with underplantings of Thai and holy basil, there is a one off plum tomato plant with Italian basil but that’s because I love plum tomatoes and one plant is more than enough to feed me through the summer. I’ve got three types of Asian basil and am hoping to get another Vietnamese coriander plant because my favourite laksa just isn’t the same without it. Coriander for leaf and seed will be planted this weekend, crushed freshly picked coriander seeds are like nothing else on earth, the aroma is incomparable. Dill and mint are two other essentials in South East Asian cooking so they too will go in before long.

On the vegetable front I’ve got amaranth, pak choi, mustard, yard long beans and Chinese celery so watch this space. We are currently enjoying some very warm weather in England at the moment with temperatures in my polytunnels hitting up to 38 degrees C. Anything will grow in that!

Holy Basil.