GARDENING AS AN MP. With free time at a premium coupled with constant flitting between Cleethorpes and London means plants have to be left to fend for themselves much of the time. When first elected, I worried about wilting plants and weeds, but after a while I hardened my heart and accepted there'd be casualties. Bye-bye high-maintenance, needy numbers. Hello bulbs and hardy, drought tolerant perennials and a naturalistic look.

I'd love to have an allotment to indulge in the increasing trend of grow your own, but it's not practical. I was reading the other day that waiting lists for allotments in many towns and cities is growing ever longer. It takes me back to the great allotment war of North East Lincolnshire. At a time when all over the country, demand for allotments was growing, the Lib Dems and Tories thought the best way to capitalise on the trend was to go in the opposite direction and get rid of allotments! You couldn't make it up.

Anyway, this year, with credit crunch in mind, I thought I would try my hand a rearing a variety of veg and a selection of herbs. Herbs must have one of the bigger mark-ups in the supermarket and I often baulk at the price.

Thrifty tip 1. Where I stay when I'm in London has lots of residents with Indian and Pakistani backgrounds. Their food shops sell a massive array of spices, at much, much cheaper prices than those tiny jars in supermarkets. So I bought a big packet of dill seeds and another of coriander seeds at a bargain price and sowed them outside. The remainder of the seeds went into the larder. In a few weeks, delicate dill seedlings appeared, followed by the coriander. Gorgeous herbs for just a couple of pence.

This year, I planted a few potatoes, too. I've never grown them before. But couldn't resist a bag of early seed potatoes reduced to a knock-down price - 99p I recall. I chitted them popped them in.

The spuds did remarkably well. They were particularly tasty in a potato salad. I scrubbed the spuds clean boiled them in their skins. Meanwhile, I finely chopped onions, radishes and cornichons and stirred them together in a large bowl with fresh lemon juice, olive oil and lots of my lovely dill. While still warm, I chopped the potatoes into chunks and bowl. The warm spuds seem to absorb all the flavours. .I then finished the salad off with a grating of pepper and a frond of fresh dill. Yum. The salad goes well with fish. Another time, having picked up some reduced smoked salmon, I added this to the recipe above along with a little sour cream. Even yummier.

But I digress...

Back to the garden.

I also bought a large pot of chives for just 15p, down from £2.99. With the leaves starting to yellow and all flopped over the side of the pot, it was a sad specimen. Some watering and a bit of a feed later, the chives perked up. I divided them and now have thriving patches of chives in Cleethorpes and London.

Buoyed up by the resurrected the chives, I decided to hunt out plants reduced to pennies because they look close to death.

Other bargain finds included 12 Little Gem lettuce seedlings. The compost was bone dry and the leaves wilted - 50p was proffered at the till and they were mine. Again, following a restorative drink, the leaves plumped up. Eleven have survived and, thanks to the rainy summer, the hearts have filled out and the leaves are crunchy and juicy.

Thrifty tip 2: When you pick lettuce, don't pull up the whole plant, roots and all. Cut it off just above the lowest leaves. Fresh new foliage will soon sprout giving you some tender baby leaves to be picked in a few weeks giving you two crops from one plant.

Thrift tip 3: Before my lettuces were ready for eating, I'd buy reduced lettuce in the shops. I trim the stem a little and pop the lettuce into a glass of water for a day. As the lettuce absorbs the water, the leaves plump up. This works best on varieties such as Little Gem and Romaine.

Some people (thank you Paul's dad!) generously donated excess seedlings to the McIsaac household. I now have lots of chillies and some tomatoes. I have one large tub planted with a courgette (grown from seed), surrounded by four chilli plants (from Paul's dad) and interspersed with the aforementioned dill and coriander - a sort of veg curry in a plant pot. 

Along with courgette, I've also grown rainbow chard and beetroot from seed. The rainbow chard is so pretty with its white, yellow, orange and red stems with glossy dark green leaves that it would look great in a flower bed.

The gaps in the flower garden - with its drought-tolerant hardy perennials - have been filled with rescue plants. One day on the way to Parliament, I popped into B&Q to investigate how I would rid the London kitchen of ants and mice. But I was distracted by offers on the plants - all down to just 50p. The weather hadn't been wonderful and, without a bit of warming sunshine, people hadn't been buying bedding plants, so B&Q ended up with stock that wasn't moving. The plants hadn't been looked after wither and all the compost was dry. I reckon new stock was on its way and the shop had to free up space. I got large trays of geraniums, mimulus, petunias, busy lizzies, pansies and fuchsias. I think I spent about £6 or £7 for plants.

One plant I've grown from seed this year is morning glory. I'd been told it wasn't an easy plant to grow and it liked warmth. The seeds germinated and the tendrils have crept up a fence and now the pale blue saucer-sized flowers are amazing.

A few years ago, I collected seeds of yellow poppies, red field poppies, nigella and aquilegia and scattered the mix in the garden and left them to it. Now they and other plants self seed and happily come back year after year, along with other self seeders such as honesty. Now there's a plant all politicians should have!

28 July 2009