September Update: What's Going On?

My recent arrival back from a late summer holiday really has marked the end of the summer and the beginning of autumn. The London Vegetable Garden balcony has been very quiet in recent weeks, since I didn't want to grow seedlings and leave these for a week, and many of the summer crops have now gone. So, as I throw myself into my first proper autumn gardening period, what do I have on the go?

The picture above is pretty much it in terms of vegetables at the moment, although I do plan to peruse the garden centre for Chinese leaves and winter vegetables this afternoon. So, for a brief rundown, we have:

Top Left: Butternut Squash plant

This has seen plenty of flowers, but no fruits as yet. The bottom half of the plant is very withered and the leaves seem to have developed leaf mildew while I was on holiday. I'm not holding out much hope for this plant, but for the moment it's hanging in there – just!

Top Right: Spring Onions

Friends on the London Gardeners' Network have told me that spring onions are a great vegetable to grow and easily doable at this time of the year. My spring onion plants seem to be doing well and coming up nicely – I've sown them thinly (one of the biggest lessons I've learnt this year), so am hoping for some great, if only a few, vegetables.

Middle Left: Lollo Rossa and Rocket

One of the easiest and quickest of plants to grow, lettuce leaves have been part and parcel of the London Vegetable Garden since April. The best results have come from leaves planted in a window box, but I've also managed to grow good crops in these shallow trays, of which these are the latest crop.

Middle Right and Bottom Left: Beetroot

I'm not sure how these will turn out, especially now that the nights are getting colder and these beetroot plants are still relatively young. The ones on the middle right of the picture have been planted from seed in this pot; the ones in the bottom left have been transplanted from smaller flowerpots. The ones on the right look stronger, but I'm not holding out much hopes for these guys at the moment!

Bottom Right: Carrots

Now, for those of you that have been with me since the beginning, you'll remember my over-zealous enthusiasm led to a condensed carrot conundrum! I planted far too many seeds and in the end, this killed the carrot crop off. This time, I have literally sown about five dwarf carrot seeds in a pot and already, they seem to be growing much faster. If I can get a couple of good carrots from this experiment, I'll be happy!

So that's it at the moment! I'm planning on looking at winter seed planting this afternoon, so may possibly follow up with another new blog post this afternoon. In the meantime, if anyone has any tips for me and my current selection, please leave a comment on this blog post, or come and join the London Vegetable Garden community over at the London Gardeners Network!

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!