Radishes in April, Beans by Bonfire: A Season Behind the Car Park at The Oak

There's a moment in late April when the kitchen door at The Oak swings open more often than usual, and it's not for deliveries. It's Margaret, treading a muddy line across the car park with a colander of radishes so fresh they're still cold from the soil.

Most regulars have no idea the pub grows its own. Fair enough — the two plots tucked behind the car park don't look like much from a distance. A bit of netting, some staggered raised beds, a compost heap that Geoff swears is 'nearly ready' and has been for three years. But from April through to the last runner beans hanging on past Bonfire Night, those two scraps of land quietly feed the kitchen.

Meet the Head Gardener (Retired, Volunteer, Boss of Us All)

Margaret took over the plots five years ago, after a career that had nothing to do with horticulture and everything to do with 'wanting something to do of a morning.' She now puts in three or four days a week between March and October, and the arrangement is simple: she grows what she likes, the kitchen cooks what she brings, and nobody argues.

'Well, the chef argues,' she says, snapping the tops off some overwintered spring onions. 'He wanted coriander in April. I told him coriander bolts if you so much as look at it wrong. He's learned.'

The deal seems to work. Last summer the pub's salads — the ones that turn up beside the ploughman's and the fish finger sandwich — were almost entirely homegrown from June onwards. The mint behind the bar has never seen a supermarket punnet. Even the edible flowers that dress the desserts come out of Margaret's cutting patch.

A Year in Two Plots

The season starts earlier than you'd think. Under cloches in late February, Margaret sows the first radishes and sets out chitted potatoes in buckets — 'the car park spuds,' as the kitchen calls them, dug up for the first new-potato specials in May.

By April, the first radishes arrive at the kitchen door, followed by loose-leaf lettuce, spring onions and the hardy herbs: chives, thyme, sage, rosemary. May brings the tender stuff out of the cold frame — courgettes (always too many, every year, without fail), beetroot, and the first of the salad leaves cut as 'pub mix' rather than by variety.

High summer is glut season. Runner beans climb the frame Geoff built from old staging until you can barely see the car park from the far end. Tomatoes — a dozen-odd varieties, most inherited from cuttings passed around the village — ripen faster than the kitchen can BLT them. There are chillies in pots by the south-facing wall, grown purely because one of the darts team asked for hot sauce and someone took it as a challenge.

And then it winds down. Squashes harden off in the autumn sun. The last beans go leathery and get left for seed. By Bonfire Night, Margaret's cutting the final herbs for the winter menu and tucking the beds under manure for the cold months.

Want to Try Pub-to-Plate at Home?

We asked Margaret what she'd tell a beginner with a sunny patch and more enthusiasm than experience. Her advice, lightly edited and heavily peppered with 'love's:

• Start with cut-and-come-again leaves. 'Lettuce from seed is ready in weeks and keeps growing if you pick it right. Nobody fails with salad. Well — almost nobody.'
• Herbs before vegetables. Mint, chives and rosemary earn their keep all year and forgive neglect. Keep mint in its own pot unless you want a garden of nothing but mint.
• Radishes are the confidence booster. Sow them thinly, four weeks and they're done. If they go all leaf and no root, you've sown too thick. Everyone does it the first time.
• Grow what you actually eat. 'There's no glory in a perfect marrow nobody wants. I stopped growing marrows in year two. The kitchen thanked me.'
• Sort your watering. Little and often beats a weekly drowning. Morning, ideally, so the leaves dry off before night.
• Compost, but be patient. 'Geoff's heap will be ready eventually. I've stopped asking.'

Why Bother?

Honest answer: it's not cheaper, once you count the hours. The beans travel forty feet rather than forty miles, but that's not why we do it.

We do it because a salad that was in the ground at ten o'clock tastes like it. Because Margaret's radishes arrive with a bit of story attached, and the chef will tell you whose garden the tomatoes came from if you ask. Because a pub that's stood on this corner since 1821 ought to have a bit of earth under its fingernails.

Come spring, look over the fence by the car park. If a woman in a fetching array of cardigans waves at you, that's Margaret. Tell her the radishes were lovely. She'll pretend not to care. She absolutely will care.