While Spring/Summer is no doubt the most prolific planting season for vegetables, winter does present a good opportunity to experiment with different varieties and build up your soil fertility for when Spring pops around.
A couple of my favourite winter crops are fennel and broad beans and they are both ideal for growing at this late stage of the autumn planting season.
Fennel: Fennel yields both a herb and a spice. All plant parts are edible: roots, stalks and leaves, with the spice coming from the dried seeds. As a herb, fennel leaves are used in French and Italian cuisine’s in sauces for fish and in mayonnaise. It's ideal for seasoning pork roasts and spicy sausages. Fennel leaves are a good substitute for dill, for which it can be cross pollinated with. It is picked as 'baby fennel' in winter because of its propensity to seed. Cooking with the root dilutes its spicy aniseed flavour and, believed to be a carminative (gas-relieving and gastrointestinal tract cramp-relieving agent), is a good swap for an onion in most home cooking.
Broad Beans: Broad beans have a long tradition of cultivation in Old World agriculture, being among the most ancient plants in cultivation and also among the easiest to grow. They are still often grown as a cover crop to prevent erosion over winter and because as a legume, they fix nitrogen in the soil which will help your summer crop of tomatoes that are very nitrogen hungry. They are best eaten young; I suggest fried in olive oil with paprika, garlic and fennel.
Broad beans are rich in L-dopa, a substance used medically in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. L-dopa is also a natriuretic agent, which might help in controlling hypertension. Interestingly, some also cite a link between L-dopa production and the human libido!
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