Tomatoes - The Journey Comes to an End pt. II

Undeniably one of the biggest joys on the London Vegetable Garden, the tomato plants have sadly come to the end of their lives. Although they've been waning for a while now, they've still been producing some small cherry tomatoes, but even this growth has now dried up.

So yesterday, with heavy heart, I cleared the balcony of these old plants. When planting these, I added a bottomless flowerpot for each plant on top of the grow bag. When I was pulling these plants up yesterday, it amazed me at just how much roots these tomato plants grew!


Even though these plants were withered and dying, they still gave off the lovely pungent aroma that evokes childhood memories of warm greenhouses – beautiful. Looking back, I believe I wrote in a very early London Vegetable Garden blog post that I believed tomatoes would be the hardest challenge for me and was rather sceptical as to whether I'd manage to grow any. In a lovely twist of irony however, the tomato plants have undoubtedly been the biggest success of the London Vegetable Garden, in terms of yield and quality.

For the many urban gardeners out there, the London Vegetable Garden tomatoes are proof that one doesn't need a greenhouse and an extensive garden to grow a decent amount of tomato fruits! Although a balcony won't afford me the state of self-sufficiency I crave, these high-yielding tomato plants ensured that when in crop, I didn't buy tomatoes from the supermarket for a good six weeks. Not only did this save me money and ensure I didn't have to buy modified, inferior supermarket produce, but it was also an absolute joy looking after these hardy and rewarding plants.

My mind is already on next year – I'm setting myself the challenge of beef tomatoes!

Tomatoes - The Journey Comes to an End...

It was only back in April that I decided to plant a few tomato seeds and blog about the process. Five months on and what started as an interesting project has developed into a full-grown passion, with an abundant crop of sweet tomatoes the fruit of my labours, in every sense of the phrase!

As you all know by now, the London Vegetable Garden is a big (well, little) experiment, that aims to show urban gardeners just how much is possible, even when challenged with a small space in the city. These tomatoes have lived quite happily out on the balcony for months – no greenhouse, cloche or trickery; just a grow bag, a weekly tomato feed, plenty of water and daily attention!

Looking back, I remember saying how hard I thought it would be to grow such a demanding plant, but caring for these tomatoes has been an absolute joy. As they crop starts to slow and trusses dry up, it's clear that my tomato supply is beginning to run out for the year, but the whole process has been incredibly enjoyable.

Several of you have written to me (both here and on the London Gardeners' Network) and have been kind enough to have shared your tomato-growing experiences. Tumbling tomatoes are a clear favourite amongst space restricted London gardeners, along with grow bags on balconies. From my experiments and the experiences you've shared with the London Vegetable Garden community, urban tomato growing is nothing less than a clear winner – gardening that can be enjoyed by any urban city dweller.

A lot of Truss Over Nothing...

Tomatoes – the final frontier. Well, for me at least, they feel well and truly like an alien species at the minute! Having seen these amazing plants grow from tiny seeds over the past three months, I've been encouraged by visible progress each and every week. Now, however, we seem to have come to an abrupt standstill!

Whilst I'm pleased the unbearable heat-wave of a few weeks ago has now passed, this weather unquestionably contributed to the tomatoes coming out and blooming. Whilst I now have an abundance of trusses and plenty of green tomatoes, they remain precisely that – green.

Several gardeners I've spoken to inform me that heat will ripen these fruits. Others have said it simply takes a bit of time and that I should expect a mass-ripening come August time. Either way, these have been the most demanding plants I've grown on the London Vegetable Garden this summer – it would be a huge disappointment to come this far with no reward.

Does anyone have any tips? Is patience a virtue or is there some time-honoured gardening advice to be had from you seasoned tomato experts out there?

Tomato Photo Diary - Flower to Fruit

I thought it'd be quite useful to show you the various stages the tomato plants on the London Vegetable Garden have been going through when flowering. With the plants now well established and several trusses on the go, here is a visual record of how my flowers have grown into fruit.

1) The first stage – trusses form on the plant and flower.


2) The flower starts to shrivel slightly and a tiny tomato fruit can be seen forming behind the flower.


3) The tomato fruit is swelling and establishing itself quite quickly. The flower is very shrivelled up.


4) The flower has now dropped off completely and the tomato fruit is left to swell and grow.

Now, these four photos were all taken on the London Vegetable Garden this morning, with new and old trusses showing different stages of growth accordingly. It has taken a few weeks to go from flowers to tomatoes, so if you currently have an abundance of flowers on your tomato plants but no fruit, don't be disheartened – before too long, you'll have an abundance of tomato crops growing away nicely and ready for a few salads in no time!

The Tomato Plants are Flowering!

It seems hard to believe that the frail little tomato plants I kept inside the balcony windowsill are now the sturdy, thick-stemmed plants that dominate the London Vegetable Garden's tiny landscape, but after all, mighty oaks grow from the tiniest acorns. Whilst I'm not expecting a crop of acorns (that really would be worthy of an investigation from Titchmarsh et al), I really do hope that my hard work will be rewarded with a few edible tomatoes at the very least!

It's now been two and a half months since I planted the tomato seeds and I've included the latest pictures with this update. As you can see, the plants have started growing defined trusses, a few of which have started flowering this week.

In the picture below, you can see inside one of these flowers – I'm hoping that the tiny sliver of yellow we can all see will start growing into a juicy tomato, but this is the first time I've ever attempted to grow tomatoes, so I'm planning on being patient and seeing what transpires over the coming weeks!
I've taken the last picture to show you how tall the plants are getting – they really seem to get thicker and sturdier by the day, which I'm hoping indicates a promising yield. Watch this space for more tomato plant news as it happens!

Tomatoes on the Move...

Seizing on the opportunity to snap up a couple of grow bags retailing in Somerfield for £1.29, I spent the afternoon tending to my multitude of gargantuan tomato plants.

I'm experimenting yet again and in this instance, am putting some tomato plants into grow bags outside on the balcony, with some more remaining inside on the windowsill. I'm still unsure as to how I'm going to construct a 'bed' for the indoors grow bag (to avoid mess inside the flat), so whilst I deliberated over that produce problem, I set to, transplanting three tomato plants into the grow bag outside.

The first step I took, was to take 3 flower pots and cut the bottom out of them:




The intention was to sit these pots on top of holes in the grow bag. Tomato plants can grow further roots out of their stems, so by offering the plants an extra flower pot's worth of compost, I'm hoping that I've given them another incentive to give the London Vegetable Garden some tomato plants this summer, even if it is only a few!

Once I had cut the holes into the flower pots, I wedged these into the openings I'd created on the grow bag:


Following this, I proceeded to lay a bit of compost in the flower pots, transplant the tomato plants into the pots and then cover the stalks up with compost until the pots were full:


As you can see, I've inserted some plant sticks and tied the plants to them for added support. I've given them a good watering, as it's extremely hot and sunny on the London Vegetable Garden today and hopefully, it'll remain warm enough for them going forward now. Rest assured, progress will be monitored and recorded on your favourite London gardening blog!

I've been getting my hands extremely dirty today, but fear not, I haven't been claiming expenses for 'duck islands', toilet seats or mock tudor beams - we have perfectly capable elected representatives for that. Literal dirt rather than political dirt was the order of the day, as I went up to Stoke Newington's weekly farmer's market this morning with my better half.

Inspired by Joanna Blythman's superb book 'Shopped' (review to follow soon) and an extreme hatred of shuffling around a zombie-infested Tesco, I decided to check out alternative ways of purchasing the weekly shop.

For far too long now, UK consumers have been accepting poor quality, unripe fruit and vegetables from supermarkets that are shafting UK suppliers on price. Yet we continue to flock there in our masses, under the illusion - and a false one at that - that supermarket vegetables are cheaper.

Apart from proving an infinitely more pleasurable experience, the visit to the farmer's market yielded some positive results. We managed to buy a selection of cheap, organic produce from the farmers that had harvested them only literally the day before - no sitting in supermarket depots for these vegetables!

As you can see from the picture above, these vegetables look ten times more appealing than supermarket produce and in fact, collectively, cost less - don't believe supermarket lies! From now on, I'm going to try and make a concerted effort to buy the majority of my fruit and veg from the farmer's market.

The Variation of Tomato Plants Under Different Windowsill Pots

In 1868, Charles Darwin published a book entitled ‘The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication’. 141 years later and I’m publishing a blog entry entitled ‘The Variation of Tomato Plants Under Different Windowsill Pots’. I may not be an internationally-renowned naturalist (and I may not have an impressive Darwinian beard), but I have been monitoring the progress of my tomato plants with an impassioned eye that Mr Darwin would surely be proud of.

If you root around in my early blog entries from April, you’ll see that I planted my tomato plants from seed, in a few different seed trays. Since then, I’ve re-potted the majority of these plants into pots, typically one to a pot.

However, I’ve also left one seed tray intact to this day and also planted some instances of 2-3 tomato plants to a pot. I lined the plants up for the photo at the top of this gardening blog entry (they look suspiciously like a tomato identity parade!) and found some interesting results.

Expectedly, the tomato plants that have fared the best are the plants that have been planted one to a pot – illustrated here by the plant on the far right. The leaves are clear, defined and several branches are forming. The tomato plants that have spent their entire six-week life in the seed tray have also fared extremely well – interesting, considering they only have approximately an inch of soil to grow in and their roots must be all fighting for the same small space.

The tomato plants that are faring the worst however (although still growing) are the 2-3 to a pot examples. They have remained very small – roughly half the size of their fruity friends – and don’t seem to be growing very fast at all. It’s interesting, considering that these plants have more compost and room per plant than the ones in the seed trays, yet the latter have continued to fare significantly better.

I’m not sure what all this means from a botanical or a horticultural point of view (shame Charles Darwin isn’t at hand to ask), but what I will say for all amateur gardeners looking to grow tomato plants or vegetables in London or big cities, is that the best results (so far) come from planting a tomato plant in its own individual pot. Now to transport them into grow bags…

April Summary

As we approach the end of April, now seems a good time to summarise exactly where we’re at with the London Vegetable Garden.

It’s been little under a month since I decided to start making use of my balcony and trying to see how many vegetables I could grow. Since then, the idea has really ‘sprung into life’ and I’ve started looking at issues surrounding self-sufficiency, growing vegetables as an answer to financial hardship and also at allotments in London.

As you can see from the picture above, we’re well and truly under way in terms of actual London balcony vegetable growing! This blog has started picking up a regular readership and more people are starting to leave comments. I’d like to thank everyone who reads this blog for their continued support, but we’re far from over yet!

Over the next few months, I’ll be charting the progression of my produce, naturally, and am also set to explore some more areas around gardening, growing your own vegetables and the implications it has on today’s society. If any readers feel they have an interesting area to discuss or would like to see me write about a certain topic, then please don’t hesitate to email me at callumsaunders@yahoo.co.uk

I’m hoping, that in May, the London Vegetable Garden will continue bearing flora and fauna and we’ll hopefully have something edible appearing! April’s been a very interesting month and really seen this project take off, in ways I didn’t ever imagine when I started – let’s hope May is full of more agricultural adventures as I attempt to bring horticultural hope to the people of London!

New arrivals!

So, two weeks down the line and things on the balcony are well underway, highlighted by the impressive size of the newly re-potted runner beans! Now that there is once again a little bit of space back on the balcony windowsill, I’ve made a few new additions to the London Vegetable Garden.

Many of you have emailed in to say that herbs are an easy and space-efficient plant to grow on a balcony or on a sunny kitchen windowsill. I’ve taken this on board and am looking to start a varied herb garden over the next few weeks. The first of these, planted yesterday, is Coriander (Coriandrum Sativum). The packet instructions say that it is enough to grow this in pots on a windowsill, so this is a great way for city gardeners to maximise the variety of produce they can grow whilst economising space.

The second batch of new additions to the London Vegetable Garden this week is French Breakfast Radishes (Raphanus Sativus). The packet states that these are high-yielding crops, ideal for use as a ‘catch-crop’ between slower growing vegetables, so we’ll see if they arrive before the carrots! I’ve planted these in deep pots – as a shallow vegetable, hopefully they’ll have plenty of room to grow.

On a non-vegetable note, my other half is beginning to get concerned at the amount of compost-ridden pots taking over the balcony, so I’ve invested in some more flowers to ensure the balcony retains its aesthetic qualities and keeps her happy – White Foxgloves (Digitalis Purpurea). Progress will be reported here first!

All change on the bean front...

Exactly two weeks to the day and already it’s time to transplant the runner beans! Regular follows of the London Vegetable Garden will know that these beans have been shooting up around two inches per day since they sprouted, so I wanted to get them bedded into pots as soon as possible.

The pictures here show how quickly and densely the roots grow too. Several of you have been emailing in with tips and advice (much appreciated – keep them coming) and suggesting that I should cut a hole in the bottom of the pots and sit them on top of a grow bag, so that the roots can really spread out and dig in.

I’ve put some canes up for the leaves to establish themselves on. Hopefully the plants won’t be too distressed from the move and will now settle down and start winding around the canes.

Tomatoes, Runner Beans & plenty of Cling Film!

Now we come to the last two vegetables I’m trying to grow. Well, I should say vegetables and a fruits, because the humble tomato is technically a member of the fruit family, owing to its seed rather than root-based nature. These plants have to be started off under cover or in a greenhouse, but as this is the London Vegetable Garden / Balcony Project, I’m using cling film covers and keeping them inside the flat in front of the warm window to start off with.

That seasonal favourite of British greenhouses, I’m attempting to grow my ‘Tomato Maskotka’ (Lycoperiscon Iycoperiscum) on a sunny (English weather permitting!) balcony. I really do believe that tomatoes are a quintessential part of any British garden – I can still vividly recollect childhood memories of going into a warm greenhouse and being hit by that (always warm) sweet, tomato-like smell.

I’ve started off by sowing the seeds thinly in three seed trays, covered with cling film. The packet instructions dictate that these seedlings should stay in their trays until they are around 4 inches tall, before being transplanted into a grow bag, which incidentally, I struggled home with on the train last week!

The final variety I planted last week is the hardy Runner Bean. I’m using the ‘Stringless Armstrong’ variety (Phaseolus Coccineus), which is the same variety I managed to grow with (some) success on this very same balcony last year.

The plants shot up to impressive proportions, however the crop didn’t yield a great deal of beans. I’ve been told by friends that this is probably due to planting in compost and the beans not receiving much nourishment, as well as the polluting factor of the train line that runs adjacent to the flat. This year I have planted the seeds in small pots and will transport them to large pots when ready, this time prepared with a mix of grow bag compost and a regular feed.

So now we’ve established all of the vegetables so far. I’ll be referring to the days as numbers going forward, and these all date from the day I planted everything. Therefore, Sunday 5th April is ‘Day 1’ and so forth. The London Vegetable Garden is well and truly underway!