Edible garden: Spring feast

Silverbeet is flourishing. Photo / Supplied

Janice Marriott celebrates the early signs of spring's bounty.

Check out the increased activity in your garden now spring has sprung. Those peas you planted some weeks ago should be a few centimetres high, with still-furled leaves. Make sure they have netting, twigs, or string to climb, and also to prevent bird feasts. Plant some sugar snap peas, too, because they are delicious lightly steamed.

Your strawberry plants probably haven't sprouted many new leaves yet. They'll be concentrating on building a good root system that can soak up the spring rains. There's still time to plant more of them.

And check your fruit trees - you should see buds swelling. Some of you will have blossom.

Potatoes that you missed digging out from last year's crop are now in leaf (in my garden they're in surprising places - under the lavender hedge and among the silverbeet). That shows it's time to plant out the newly sprouted tubers. Don't plant them where you grew tomatoes last year, as they can share the same diseases.

Silverbeet is thriving at the moment. Blanch some in boiling water, coat it with olive oil and add toasted pinenuts. Yum.