Having grown up on a farm, I can really appreciate the source of our daily ingredients and actively think about the way our food is produced.

You really get a sense of being back to nature when growing your own garden produce and it’s so lovely to be able to make family meals knowing that you have grown and picked your ingredients yourself.

Summer is such a great time of year for producing, light, juicy fruit and vegetables such as yellow and green beans, beetroots, peppers, butternut squash, melons, tomatoes and many more!

Here at Ballyknocken Cookery School we have a large vegetable garden and an exotic herb garden which supplies seasonal home grown ingredients to the guesthouse and cookery school.

We also have a new polytunnel, which is doing wonders especially with this exceptionally warm weather we’ve been having , Mark our head gardener has been kept very busy in there and only has good things to report back!