Laura Brady: What they grow and how they grow it at Wonky Parsnip

Our February talk, coming at the end of the week in which Winter at last tried to turn into Spring, featured the young horticultural entrepreneur Laura Brady, who runs a market garden at Brogdale Farm, near Faversham. A graduate of Harper Adams University at Newport in Shropshire, Laura has gained experience of agriculture and horticulture around the world (she has been firmly bitten by the travel bug). This told her as much about what she did not want to do as what she did. She decided to concentrate on quality rather than yield and set up a gardening business to focus on taste and variety. She began with a plot at Chartham, before transferring to her current farm at Brogdale.

This enterprise, trading under the name Wonky Parsnip (which Laura assured us was chosen simply because it sounded funny and memorable) consists of 15 acres entirely devoted to vegetables; over 150 varieties are grown there. A strong advocate of trying something – anything – to see if it works, she has had some spectacular successes. For instance, Italian beefsteak tomatoes weighing up to 3Kg, and a yield of 500 watermelons in polytunnels – smaller varieties rather than the usual red-fleshed monsters. One acre of her plot is devoted to growing courgettes for restaurants, mainly in London, who demand baby courgettes. These have to be picked early and transported quickly to her customers, which makes for very long days at harvest time. This applies to all such produce: freshness is essential.

She supplies other exotica to restaurants, and some food outlets, in London and Kent, including rainbow carrots – also picked young – edible flowers and the intriguing ‘electric daisies’. Originating in South America, these have no petals (just the yellow middle), an individual flavour and an entirely legal narcotic property: in some places they are used as an anaesthetic against toothache. Laura encouraged us to grow edible flowers not just to eat, but to attract pollinators, especially hoverflies. She also gave us a useful tip when cooking rainbow varieties of vegetables such as carrots, mangetout peas and beetroots, to guard against loss of colour and flavour: leave as much of the tops on as is practicable. She had also observed that deeper-sown plants cope with drought better than those sown nearer the surface.

The immense amount of work involved in running this concern is aided by the use of a small tractor imported from Japan, usually deployed in paddy fields, behind which can be fixed some small-scale seed drills and weeders, from Korea. Wonky Parsnip eschews agri-chemicals in favour of natural pest-controlling organisms, but nothing seems to control the rabbits, which have proved to be a problem and limit what can be grown. Despite such problems, the picture that emerged is of a thriving enterprise with an original and creative ethos. In addition to growing produce, it holds five plant sales a year, including at the Brogdale Fruit Collection’s ‘Hanami’ (Cherry blossom) festival in April.

Laura left us with an invitation to visit Brogdale and one further tip: some sources for the more out of the ordinary plants, of the kind she grows: Premier Seeds, The Real Seed Company and Nicky’s Nursery. And her own web address: thewonkyparsnip.com