A Christmas Carrot...

First off, sincere apologies for the lack of posts. What with the natural advancement of the winter season and increased work demands, giving due time and attention to the London Vegetable Garden blog has been a task harder than growing things in pots these bleak months!

There is not a lot happening on the London Vegetable Garden at the moment. I have had some spring onions sat in a pot for a few months now, but progress seems to be terribly slow, which I attribute to the lack of light and warmth. Similarly, I planted some more carrot seeds in September. I learnt from my carrot attempts of the spring / summer that I needed to plant these much more thinly, so proceeded to carefully sow a few in a large pot.

Well, I read recently that carrot leaves need plenty of sunlight and the past few weeks have been very sparse indeed. The carrot plants seem to have come to a stop, with some of them turning slightly yellow, which I would assume equates to a lack of sunlight. With this in mind (and attempting to yield one more flourish for the blog before we go into 2010) I pulled these up this morning.

As you can see, these dwarf carrots still remain very small (I have used my large hand for scale!), however the results are significantly improved. The carrots look a lot healthier than the previous batch and I am attributing this purely to the fact that they have had more room to grow and have not been overcrowded.


I have sampled them and the flavour is extremely intense! I believe that gardening is all about trial and error and building upon the knowledge you have gained. I propose that come spring, I plant carrot seeds thinly once more, but use a pot that is a lot deeper than the current ones. Hopefully this will encourage deeper root growth and swell the carrots more.

Winter Radishes!

As you all know, I have managed to have some success regarding radishes on the London Vegetable Garden balcony. I received a free packet of seeds with one of the various garden magazines I've been perusing to help me on my gardening quest – I forget which one – but was intrigued by the purple variety contained within.

I planted these several weeks back in one of my window boxes. One of the main things I've learnt through the London Vegetable Garden project is that many plants, radishes included, require a decent amount of space, even when space is tight. I was rather less liberal with my seed sowing this time around and have achieved improved results, which is evidenced on the photos contained in this post!

Autumn Crops in Pots...

To lovingly steal a phrase from one of the many people I follow on Twitter, we are now well and truly in the 'bbrrrr' months: Septembbrrrr, Octobbrrr, Novembbrrr, Decembbrrr!

With the weather shifting perceptibly cooler and the evenings drawing in, vegetable gardening changes dynamically. Gone are the long days full of light and warmth, replaced by gloom, gloom and grey – especially if you live in London and your 'garden' is a high-rise balcony!

Although my tomato plants are doggedly hanging in there, they're definitely wilting and becoming less productive – rather like Gordon Brown really. Despite this, the focus of the London Vegetable Garden has now officially turned to winter vegetable gardening. Along with the continual trays of salad leaves growing on my balcony windowsill (which remains very warm in the sunshine), I have three main batches of 'crops in pots'.

The first of these is a pot of spring onions, which (so I've been told on the London Gardeners' Network) are relatively easy to grow:


One of the key things I've learnt from the London Vegetable Garden project has been that when planting in pots, one needs to sow the seeds thinly, so that roots have enough space. I'm hoping that these thin, grass-like shoots will end up forming into tasty spring onions!

The next vegetable pot I have on the go is beetroot:


Again, thin planting has been employed but I fully expect that I will have to transplant these once they get a little bigger.

Finally, I'm having another stab at growing carrots. I planted my first batch of carrot seeds way back in April when I started the London Vegetable Garden. My initial enthusiasm got the better of me and it transpired that I had sown far too many seeds in too small a pot for anything of note to grow.


As you can see, I really have been frugal with my planting this time round, but I hope that the seven shoots I have will carry more success than the initial attempt!

As always, progress will be chronicled here at the London Vegetable Garden blog, as well as on the London Gardeners' Network, which now has well over 100 members!

Bloomin' Marvellous...

Two urban gardeners. Two Cobra Lily bulbs. One London Lily-Off Championship 2009. You know the score – it's Grumblegarden's Charles verus myself. Here's the latest snap of my Cobra Lily, that looks set to flower despite being only six inches in height! Is the London Vegetable Garden set to win the world's first official 'Lily-Off'? Can Charles come back with anything more impressive than my botanical beauty? Stay tuned folks!

Wild Flowers in Wild London...

Whilst the majority of London's floral adornment comes in the form of plastic hanging baskets at train stations and dull, regimented squares, there are some stunning natural 'gardens' hidden throughout the capital.

This weekend, I made the short journey up to Stoke Newington and visited Abney Park Cemetery – a wild, overgrown haven right in the centre of this trendy area. A serene location with a dilapidated church in the middle, this cemetery is seriously unkemptunk, yet remains a beautiful example of a natural London 'garden'. These are some of the photos I took of various wild flowers and plants – the full set can be viewed on Flickr by clicking here. Enjoy!