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 THE FRENCH RESOLUTION FOR GARDENING
French gardening is the way forward this year 
Saturday January 30,2010 IF YOU want to raise your gardening cred a notch or two, mention casually in conversation that you’re going in for a spot of French gardening.
It sounds a tad risqué but the only dirt involved will be on your hands and knees! French gardening is the old-fashioned term for forcing early veg under cloches. It just sounds so much classier, somehow. Why French gardening? Well, the French did it first. Paris was once surrounded by thriving, family-run market gardens which used cloches to produce six or seven crops of vegetables and salads each year, when without protective covers they would have managed only two or three. It wasn’t until Victorian and Edwardian times that the idea caught on here when owners of grand country houses set up elaborate walled gardens, equipped with greenhouses, frames, forcing pits and bell jars (cloches) run by fleets of highly trained gardeners, to stock their dinner tables. Exotic, home-grown, out-of-season, luxury nosh became a must-have for anyone with position or new money and who had ambitions of social climbing. Today it pays any keen kitchen gardener to produce their crops over as much of the year as they can and the very first crops need an early start, under cover, to protect them from the weather. Start now by sorting out your most sheltered, sunny part of the veg plot and digging it over. Work in as much, well-rotted organic matter as you can, along with a dressing of general organic fertiliser and finish off with a thorough raking. Then cover the ground for three to four weeks to warm it up. The traditional way, used by French gardeners and staff in Victorian and Edwardian walled kitchen gardens, was to set out bell jars, like rows of giant jam jars, or tent-shaped, glass cloches. They’re all too expensive today and also unsafe in blowy conditions but a layer of polythene provides a great alternative.
Black is best since it cuts out light, which stops weeds germinating underneath; it doesn’t have to be a continuous sheet, you can save up old compost bags and slit the sides to open them out flat, then overlap them to cover the area. Lay your plastic out over the prepared ground and either bury edges with soil or weight them down with stones so your cover can’t blow around. Wait for a spell of fine weather, several weeks later, to uncover part of the soil and hoe off any weeds (there will be lots if you have used clear polythene), then sow radish, spring onions, lettuce and spinach, using early varieties wherever possible. Cover them with horticultural fleece (lightweight, white, spun synthetic sheets, from garden centres), and again weight the edges. Wait another two to three weeks to sow a second batch, by which time it will be March and you can safely add early turnips, Swiss chard and set out a few early cabbage and cauliflower plants. By the end of March, given reasonably kind weather, you could plant a row or two of the very earliest seed potatoes; sit some in egg boxes indoors now to start sprouting. As your crops grow the plants push up the fleece and it forms its own tent that protects delicate new growth from the worst wind and weather. It also keeps the temperature a few degrees higher than outside, so they grow earlier and faster, more tender and better quality. All of which is very chic. The results of your efforts will start appearing on your lunch and dinner tables from May onwards, when tardier kitchen gardeners have bare larders and shop prices for fresh produce are at their seasonal high. Believe me, it’s worth French gardening – not at all naughty but very nice. 
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