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A taste of Italy

Shrewsbury may not be Sorrento but that doesn't stop Luigi Valducci growing some delicious Mediterranean varieties on his plot
Words and pictures: Sue Stickland

One plotholder at Meole Brace Allotments in Shrewsbury is particularly keen on having warm balmy summers. Luigi Valducci’s vegetables are Italian varieties, grown from seeds and plants from his native country and they despise cool, wet British weather.

“Sometimes the plants say ‘What the hell am I doing here?’’’ he mutters, but he has been gardening on the site for 37 years, so he knows what will flourish and what will struggle. Despite the grey skies that hang over my visit, the approach to his plot already has a continental feel. Urns of pendulous pink fuchsias line the wall, a fig tree overhangs the paving, and marjoram and other Mediterranean herbs are buzzing with bees.

Luigi is passionate about fruit and vegetables, and at the Meole Brace site he has several veg plots, a mini-orchard and two polytunnels full of crops. He also loves to cook – and his wife does too – and the gardening tips that he gives me as we walk around are nearly always linked to culinary ones.

But why after all this time growing in the UK, does he still get most of his seeds and plants from Italy? One reason is the quality and quantity of seed in the packets from Italian companies: “Plentiful seed, big packets, good germination,” says Luigi. “Here you pay £1.20 and get 20 seeds – they are too greedy.”
Above all, however, he appreciates the rich diversity of the Italian vegetables. Every region has its own unique varieties, and many are significantly different to those available in the UK.

Regional varieties

One crop where this wealth of choice is particularly noticeable is chicory. It tends to be an afterthought on British veg plots, but for Luigi it is a staple. He has ones with large voluminous heads, ones with tight white hearts, and open types with strap-like jagged leaves, and their colours range from dark green to almost yellow, some splashed with carmine red.
The different varieties are often named after the area where they originated –‘Rossa di Verona’, ‘Variegata di Lusia’, and so on. Many are sown in late summer to give useful autumn and spring crops, and last year they flourished in the cool wet conditions. Some rows are ready for cutting, some are for overwintering, and some for forcing. Almost equal to the range of types are the number of ways in which they can be used, not just in salads but cooked – steamed and stirred into pasta, or roasted in olive oil and served as a vegetable, for example.

Purple artichokes

Globe artichokes are also a common crop in Italian gardens and markets, and are not just restricted to the hefty green types usually seen in the UK. Luigi grows one large-headed artichoke which is handsomely diffused with purple, but his favourite looks quite different – stocky green plants bearing a profusion of small chunky heads, which he has been harvesting all summer (see opposite).
When young, these small heads are good sliced raw to make a salad. Luigi picks one off, peels away a few tough outer leaves and nibbles it. “Tender right through,” he says “and no fluff.” Globe artichokes are perennial plants, easy to grow, and usually reasonably hardy, but Luigi takes no chances with his Italian types. He protects them over winter with a frame covered in fleece.

Giant cardoons

Closely related to globe artichokes and also valued in Italian recipes are cardoons. In English gardens these are usually seen in flower borders, as towering ornamental perennials with bold foliage and striking flower spikes.

However, they can also be grown as a vegetable for their fleshy leaf stalks, in which case they are treated as an annual. Luigi makes several sowings in May and early June directly outside where they are to grow, and during the summer the plants produce clumps of enormous erect silvery leaves. In November he starts to blanch them by putting a black plastic collar around their stems, drawing the leaves together – like celery, but on a much larger scale.
“They need a bit of frost to help sweeten them, and two to three weeks of blanching,” he advises. Then the resulting succulent white midribs can be used in soups or casseroles, for example.

My attempts at growing cardoons have usually resulted in paltry plants that produce a hard flower stalk in their first summer, before reaching any sort of decent size, but I suspect I have used a variety more suited to herbaceous borders. Luigi uses one from Italy which is particularly ‘Inerme’ (resistant to bolting).

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