Kitchen garden!

This month Martin Fish begins a new series documenting the development of a kitchen garden at Ivy Cottage in Lincolnshire, his and Jill's new home. Plus another tasty recipe from Jill

Being able to harvest our own fruit and vegetables fresh from the garden is something that gives me great enjoyment and Jill loves to cook with the fresh produce. It was being in my grandma's veg plot as a young boy that sparked my interest in gardening and it's probably what led to a career in horticulture when I left school. For all my adult life I've grown fruit and veg and every year I still get a buzz when I pull the first baby carrots, pick ripe berries or cut a crispy cabbage! The hunter-gatherer in me relishes putting food on the table but it's also the enjoyment I get from being out in the garden with my hands in the soil and knowing our home-grown produce has no carbon footprint or air miles! Jill also makes some amazing dishes from it.

Last year a house move from North Yorkshire to Lincolnshire to be closer to family meant leaving behind an established fruit and veg garden. Once we started to plan our new garden, top of the list was somewhere to grow fruit and vegetables. The shape of our new plot wraps around three sides of the cottage, which meant there was no obvious place to site the veg plot. In the end we decided on the front garden, in a corner enclosed by hedges on two sides and a garage wall on the third.