Canadian-born romance writer Audrey Flynn lives in Johannesburg and pens steamy novels set in Africa. Her novels tackle sub-themes such as rhino poaching and powerful political families woven into breathless love stories laced with bonking. Cooking is her other passion and, asked to offer a story on her pottager, she couldn’t keep the steamy hyperbole off the keyboard.
To me, a kitchen garden is the savage gypsy lover who waits at the edge of a love story. It’s a place of secret desires and unbridled passions.
In these torrid times my secret pleasure, apart from losing myself in the pages of a steamy romance novel, is to be found among the moist leaves and firm fruits of our kitchen garden. It’s rich, loamy soil full of hidden promise, barely repressed desire and a longing that will only be fulfilled by tossing together a salad of garden-fresh bounty in a rich, creamy dressing.
Wildly alluring, I see a kitchen garden fragrant with edibles, herbs and flowers with bees buzzing in a complex dance of pollination. A fertile patch, bursting with promise in the form of crisp, dew-drenched leaves and ripe fruit eager to be plucked. Caressed by a naked gas flame on a work-worn hob, my homemade tomato sauce bubbles languidly awaiting the merest touch of Basil to reach the point of satisfaction.
Reaching into the secretive folds of a butter lettuce, I tear at the yielding leaves. They will grace a platter with firm cherry tomatoes, finely sliced radish, firm cucumber, finished with a squirt of viscous, peppery olive oil…
I could get lost forever in such daydreams. Having a potager or kitchen garden speaks to me of harmony with nature, a desire to get back to basics. I want to know precisely what is in my food and where it comes from. For most of us though, laying out a proper potager in the classic French baroque style is a bit of a stretch.
You don’t always need a whiff of French aristocrat to satisfy your garden urges though. A plain, no-nonsense plastic pot from the local garden centre will do. There’s enough khaki shorts at some of those to stir the pulse and you can strike up conversations by asking for something at least 20 cm deep. Boxes (pots or baskets) at least 20 cm deep are needed for a decent root system to form. They need to have drainage holes so that the water can run off.
If you’re more of a homebody and don’t want to air your growing urges in public, gardenstuff.co.za has everything you could desire. Both nurseries and online options sell clay or terracotta pots which are pricey, but incredibly sexy.
Plan your garden and place your containers where you want them before filling them with soil. You don’t want this experience to descend into sweaty grunting and shoving, believe me. Pots get heavy when filled with the correct mixture of loam and compost, especially once you’ve watered.
Plants in pots dry out quicker than those thrust deep into open garden soil, so you need to get in there regularly with your hose and ensure a thorough dousing. (Be like the smart people in fiction and not like struggling romance authors, and plan your potager close to a tap.)
As for what to plant, it’s best to tease your fantasy garden to life with something simple. Hot and sweet peppers stir the appetite and they really thrive in containers, with lots of sun. Those chubby little radishes from the salad of my desires are ridiculously easy to cultivate. From seed to harvest takes a mere month.
Aubergines are a good one for the novice. They are well-endowed with deep roots, sow them in pots of 30 to 40 cm depth. Brinjals love our hot climate, and if you live in a frost-free area you can raise them year-round. Spinach and kale with their rigid stalks full of the promise of iron also do well in our sunny climate.
All those shy lettuce with their secret folds make a great crop that needs little care. Place them in a shadier corner, as sun is not kind to their delicate leaves. Beans will need the rigid support of trellises, while beets and onions are all good bets.
No kitchen garden is complete without the ripe, lust-laden promise of tomatoes. Heirloom and big, beefy tomatoes with their long scraggly vines are awkward. Choose smaller varietals like rosa, roma, grape and cherry. They tend to be more fecund too. Tomatoes are so productive that just two thriving pots should see you through summer.
This is a romance after all, so your potager should have some whimsical touches. Flowers add colour, attract pollinators like bees and butterflies. Lavender, marigolds, cornflowers and cosmos will not only look good, they will create a hotbed of pollen-fueled lust. Herbs like basil, coriander, rosemary, thyme and oregano are easy growers that will perfume both garden and kitchen.
One should always take pleasure where one finds it, and mine is definitely found among the pots of my hidden little kitchen garden. Plunging my hands into that verdant soil, I am quickly lost in thoughts of creamy dressings clinging to freshly plucked leaves. The mélange of treats that await in that secret place where I alone venture is always enough to quicken my breath.