Growing Food

A lettuce is all leaf: you eat the solar panels themselves. A tomato has to build leaves first, then flowers, then fruit packed with sugar, all paid for by light. A potato stores its surplus underground. The part you eat decides what the crop needs most, and how long it takes: radishes in a month, a tomato plant through a whole summer, an apple tree several years before a decent crop.

Start small, with something you'll actually eat, in a spot you'll pass every day: one well-tended container teaches more than an allotment you can't keep up with. Grow known crops from a reliable source, and know which part is edible; some crops have poisonous leaves or stems. Wash produce, your hands and your tools before preparing food; Food Safety Before Flavour covers the kitchen end. Washing removes soil and germs, but it never makes a poisonous plant safe to eat.