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!

Guerrilla Gardening...

Aside from the obvious environmental benefits of growing your own produce (not to mention the reduction in food waste), one simply can't ignore the aesthetic qualities of gardening. Growing plants and flowers for visual pleasure has been a time-honoured past-time throughout civilisation and one that evokes images of country houses, landscaped gardens and public parks. So how does a bleak pavement in an industrial area fit into this?

Whilst much of Hackney is rapidly being gentrified in preparation for the forthcoming 2012 Olympic games, many parts of it remain bleak, industrial and run-down. In areas such as these, gardening seems an impossibility – or does it?

This week I was pleasantly surprised to notice this large flower bed had suddenly appeared in the middle of the pavement! Guerrilla gardening is becoming much more prevalent in urban areas, due in part to a number of reasons. Fed up with local authorities dragging their heels over planning permission and bureaucratic red tape, many urban city dwellers are taking affirmative action and constructing urban garden displays overnight.

Although guerrilla gardening is not a new concept, its prevalence is certainly increasing. I was genuinely surprised to see this flower display pop up and I think you'll all agree, it makes such a difference to the bleak surroundings. A friend of mine lives in the locale and has already seen neighbours watering the flowers and talking to each other about its sudden appearance.

What a wonderful way to highlight the pleasure people can derive from gardening – and the fact that guerrilla gardening in particular, shows that community spirit is not as dead as we feared.

A Flowering Butternut Squash!

The rise of the butternut squash plant here on the London Vegetable Garden balcony has been staggering! Now standing at around 4 feet tall, the plant produced its first flower yesterday morning, which was promptly joined by another come the evening:

Having talked to fellow gardeners on the London Vegetable Garden Twitter page, it transpires that squash flowers can be very different, with male and female varieties determining whether that flower will produce a squash or not.

As you can see from the pictures, the single stamen suggests that these are male flowers, although I'm no botanist, so please correct me if I'm wrong! Hopefully I'll have some female flowers joining these chaps, which will mean the start of a butternut squash!

Many gardeners have also told me that butternut squash plants are happy to grow along the ground, but due to the London Vegetable Garden's obvious space constraints, I'm training these up a cane. Hopefully, I'll have a squash lower down the plant which I can focus on looking after, as I'm still concerned that this pot is not big enough to bear one, let alone ten, squash plants!


However, I have put mulch on the top of the soil, am giving it plenty of water and adding a liquid vegetable plant feed once a week. It's certainly starting to look positive on the butternut squash front, but the trouble with one plant on a balcony is that if it goes wrong, that's your lot! Let's wait and see what happens...

(Do you have any good squash-growing advice? Are you growing a butternut squash and have some pictures you'd like to share with the London Vegetable Garden community? Visit the London Gardeners' Network!)

The Root of the Matter...

I'm not sure whether this thread bears any interest to followers of the London Vegetable Garden, but for the budding botanists amongst you, here is an update on the spider plant!

The other week, I took clippings from an overgrowing spider plant and while I potted the majority of these cuttings in soil, I left one in a glass of water to see whether it would grow. Well, it's been perfectly happy over the last two weeks and it's been interesting watching it grow some new roots, displayed here:

I plan to keep this plant in the water purely to see how long it keeps growing like this. Watch this space!

Holey Radishes Batman!

Yes indeed; I have holey radishes! A few months ago, I reported that the London Vegetable Garden's first attempt at growing radishes had ended in success, although with a lot of room for improvement.

Having sown some more radish seeds, I was careful to sow these much more thinly this time, as my previous efforts ended up strangling each other and failing to grow properly. Well, this time, the radishes seem to be growing a lot better, however many of the leaves have holes in them:


I'm not sure what it is that's causing these holes, since the London Vegetable Garden's relative height acts as a good deterrent for pests. Are my radishes being attacked by some unseen pest? Will these holes affect their capacity for growth? Will I get any more radishes this year? I'm hoping that I'll have answers to these questions, along with some pictures of crops, very shortly!

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!

Spiders & Cobras...

Aside from balconies and vegetables, I also have a penchant for plants and flowers. Whilst I may not have the space to plan a fanciful garden full of spectacular bloom and wonder, my flat is dotted with pot plants and interesting flowers that offer a pleasant alternative to vegetable gardening.

When my girlfriend and I moved into the flat in April 2008, we purchased a spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum) that has lived quite happily in the bathroom ever since. For months and months the other half harassed me to re-plant it and sort it out, since it was taking up more and more space by the day!

Whilst I was setting about this task however, I thought it worth chronicling the plant's unique growth. As you can see from the picture below, the plant has branched off in a long row, with several discernible 'root lumps' ready for re-planting:


Having cut these apart, I proceeded to re-pot these in various different pots in the hope that we will soon be overrun with new spider plants. I happened to remember reading somewhere that some plants simply need water to survive – please feel free to correct me if wrong! As an experiment (that shall of course be chronicled here on the London Vegetable Garden), I have given one spider plant a new home in a glass of water:

At the time, I didn't have any hormonal root growth powder to hand, so I'm not sure if the 'roots' on these separate plants will take very well – watch this space...

Before I stop writing and start enjoying some of my delicious tomatoes for tea, a quick update on the (in)famous 'Cobra Lily Challenge 2009'. The full story of this gardening challenge can be viewed by clicking here, but regular readers will know that I challenged Grumblemouse of GrumbleGarden fame to a Cobra Lily grow-off; here is my progress so far:

Grumblemouse, it's over to you...

Butternut Squash - a Whole New World!

Arguably the London Vegetable Garden's most thirsty plant, my butternut squash has been enjoying the recent muggy weather and continues to grow exponentially! There are many different things going on in the pot however, so I'm appealing to you, dear readers, for advice and pointers!

The shot below shows the plant in its pot on the London Vegetable Garden balcony:
As you can see, it looks very similar to a courgette plant at the moment – plenty of big leaves that threaten to take over the whole balcony! What is interesting however, is the recent appearance of these 'swirly feelers' – I don't know what else to call them:

As you can see, they're quite interesting – does anyone know what they are? Are they simply looking for a new cane / net to latch onto and grow up?

Finally, we have some bud-like things forming on the stems, as so:


Are these the beginnings of the squashes? As you can see, there's quite a lot going on in this pot – any advice would be most welcome!

Pests Ahoy!

One of the (few) real benefits of high-rise urban gardening is the lack of pests. Many gardeners I've spoken with recently have all bemoaned the rate at which snails, slugs and various garden pests are converging on crops and causing a nuisance of themselves.

Luckily, living away from the ground in urban London means that the only pests I have to deal with on the balcony are horses – as in clothes horses, laden with wet clothes and competing for space alongside plant pots, grow bags and watering cans!

This said, I did see a tiny slug on one of the leaves a few weeks back, which I presume must have been secreted in amongst some recent bedding plants that are brightening up a window box. Whitefly has also been a problem, but again, these pests were imported with some potted herbs that remained in the kitchen; luckily none of the outside plants were infected.

I was looking through my runner beans a few minutes ago when I came across this chap:


I've seen these insects before, but not on the balcony. Can anyone identify this creature and if so, is it a friend or a foe? Is it some form of aphid?

Every Little Helps – Or Does It?

England's shortage of available allotment plots, and quite frankly ludicrous waiting lists, is now a well-documented problem. Although highlighting this issue has led some councils to open up disused building sites and launch garden adoption schemes, it seems that many local authorities, especially in London, have more pressing concerns.

After all, why invest a relatively small amount of money providing new allotment plots that will be tilled for 100 years when you can spend millions and millions of pounds on an Olympic venue that will be dismantled after its one month of use? Irony? Politics? Either way, a very real situation.

Since our elected representatives are struggling to support this campaign for urban gardening space, power is very much in the hands of the people – we've already seen the huge success of the Shoreditch housing estate and their makeshift community allotment. But perhaps there's also an opportunity for private business to get involved, which of course, comes no bigger than Tesco.

The iconic British supermarket / retail behemoth is now planning to offer customers Tesco allotment plots. You do read correctly dear readers – Tesco has applied for planning permission to create thirty allotment plots next to its Southport store in Lancashire. When it comes to getting more allotments created and opened in England, to quote Tesco's infamous mantra, 'Every Little Helps' – but does it? If we look at this issue more closely, as with gardening, there's a lot more going on under the surface.

250 miles away from Southport, in Hadleigh, Suffolk, Tesco is in fact battling to tarmac over a number of allotments in a natural beauty spot to pave the way for a proposed superstore. The 'Bridge Allotments' have been tilled for over fifty years and Tesco is now flexing every corporate muscle to eradicate these plots for its own gain. As Bridge Allotment plot holder Brian Dicks says, “It is complete hypocrisy for Tesco to pretend to be concerned about the need for allotments in Southport.” My thoughts exactly.

As a campaigner for urban gardening space, I'd normally welcome any sort of plot opening. As with all gardeners however, one of the things we crave is authenticity. Tesco may be waxing lyrical about addressing the shortage of allotment problems, but when examined more closely, this is purely a PR stunt. I'd advise gardeners nation-wide to boycott Tesco allotments and expose the truth that is going on behind the scenes, lending any support possible to our gardening friends in Hadleigh.

(For more information on this issue, further articles can be found in the Telegraph and on Click Liverpool.)

Butternut Squash Report...

Although a space-loving vegetable plant, I've decided to have a stab at growing the adventurous butternut squash! It's been growing solidly for a few weeks now and this is the latest stage of its progress:


As you can see, it looks healthy enough, although two of the leaves at the very base of the plant withered and had to be removed. In addition to this, you can see from the picture below that several buds are starting to form, although I'm not sure whether these are more leaves or the start of squashes!


I've added a layer of mulch to the top of the soil, since squash is an extremely thirsty plant and I'm wary of letting it dry out. I've been advised from gardeners on my new website, the London Gardeners' Network, that regular watering is essential for squash plants, so I've been heeding this advice by the watering can-full!

If any readers of the London Vegetable Garden have tips on growing squash and feel they could help me with advice, please leave a comment on this blog post, or alternatively, proffer your tips on the London Gardeners' Network. Update to follow next week!

Overrun with Runners!

In stark contrast to my grand total of two runner beans last summer, this year my preparations on the London Vegetable Garden balcony have reaped a much richer reward. I've blogged about my solid runner bean harvests before now – here is the latest harvest that my girlfriend and I enjoyed this week:


Note the curly one; isn't it refreshing to harvest 'real' vegetables that don't have to conform to stringent supermarket appearance guidelines! I'm harvesting about ten runner beans a week from my balcony at the moment. Does anyone know if they grow to a certain size and then stop, or if you can grow some truly gigantic runner beans?

Radishes - Take Two!

One of the benefits open to London gardeners growing vegetables in pots, is the relatively quick turnaround some varieties afford. When I planted radishes back in April, they sprung up quickly, however my liberal seed sowing meant that many didn't have enough room to grow properly.

Last weekend, encouraged by their fast growing speed, I decided to experiment with radishes on the balcony once again. This time however, I decided to sow them in a highly regimented fashion, to see if this would affect the end results!


As you can see from the picture above, I now have thirteen radish seedlings spread spaciously across two pots. Now whilst a baker's dozen's worth of radishes won't keep me as self-sufficient as Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall down at good old River Cottage, my reasons for growing this second batch are purely experimental.

My initial attempts at growing radishes on the London Vegetable Garden balcony showed that, although a paltry crop, growing these low-maintenance salad vegetables is extremely possible, even with the confines of space and small pots. Now that I've established I planted too many seeds in too small a pot, I'm now attempting to see whether careful, spacious planning will lead to a better specimen of vegetable.

As you can see, they've grown quite quickly after only a week, but it'll take a good six to eight weeks before we can report back on any visible progress, so be sure to watch this space!

Carrots - the end of the road...

My carrots were one of the very first things I planted when I started the London Vegetable Garden back at the beginning of April. The humble carrot is a perennial feature of the traditional English vegetable garden, so needless to say, my enthusiasm got the better of me and I planted these seeds with real relish.

Fast forward three and a half months to today, and although my enthusiasm for growing carrots hasn't dampened, reality has set in. One of the main things I've learnt about growing your own vegetables over the last few months (hindsight is a wonderful thing!), is that they key to successful planting in small spaces is planting thinly.

I planted a large number of carrot seeds into a pot back in April and since then, a mountain of green shoots have sprung up. Over the last month however, growth has come to a real standstill and today I took the decision to end the carrot-growing part of the London Vegetable Garden project. The carrot plants got to the stage where they were so tightly packed together, that they didn't have enough room to grow on. As you can see from the photo below, much of the shoots simply stopped growing at a certain stage:

Nevertheless, this attempt wasn't completely in vain! I did manage to pull out a few, albeit very small, carrots from the pot – as Darwin would argue, these do indeed indicate the 'survival of the fittest'. Whilst I'm the first to admit that this has overall been an unsuccessful attempt to grow carrots, the purpose of the London Vegetable Garden has always been to educate and to see just what is possible. Growing carrots is possible – but be prepared to sow thinly and ideally in a very large and deep pot.

Window Boxes - Your Starting Point!

One of the runaway successes on the London Vegetable Garden has undoubtedly been rocket leaves! The most challenging vegetables have been root vegetables, due to the space they need in-between each individual plant. Leaf vegetables however, have produced much more successful results, due to their ability to flourish in small spaces.

One of the main things I've learnt from three months of running the London Vegetable Garden project is that although planting crops in pots can be a successful method of growing vegetables, these pots need to be big. Failing this, the seeds need to be sown very thinly indeed, which I'll admit was my downfall when it came to the radishes.

Gardeners with actual gardens have the luxury of deep soil and plenty of space. Urban gardeners in London and other UK cities that have only a balcony on which to practice their green-fingered persuasions have a finite depth of soil, usually determined by the size of their pots!

With this in mind then, one of the easiest and low maintenance plants I've managed to grow since April has been salad leaves. I've used a simple window box to plant seeds (those of you that have been following me since the beginning will remember the success I had with rocket), which has proved successful time and time again.

After exhausting the window box of rocket a few weeks ago, I re-planted some rocket and also some lettuce (Lollo Rossa), that came courtesy of the BBC's 'Dig In' free seeds give-away. As you can see from the picture below, this 'mix and match' approach not only offers me a nice variety of salad leaves to eat, but is also much more satisfying from a visual perspective.

Many people argue that vegetable gardening is ugly, preferring to maximise their gardens with colour from various flower displays. However, if well thought-out and carefully planned, a vegetable garden can look every bit as beautiful as a flower garden, as well as providing you with plenty of splendid crops on which to feast – the beautiful colours from the lettuce paying homage to this point.

So if you're feeling inspired but are not sure where to start, I guarantee you that a simple window box, some compost and a few salad seeds will yield impressive results and get you well and truly into growing your own! And if you don't have a window box, why not use an old ice cream tub or an old washing up bowl? Why not give it a go this weekend? I'd love to hear how you all get on!

Weekend Update & French Signage!

Grey cloud is hanging ominously in the air, the tree branches are swaying lightly in the breeze and the birds are being remarkably quiet. Add to this the fact that I have to leave the flat and go shopping at an open-air market this morning, and it seems that rain is well and truly inevitable!

But nevertheless, the London Vegetable Garden sits in a sheltered spot and the continued mild weather has meant that things are still progressing nicely.

I've included some new pictures of the tomato plants. I now have a considerable amount of green tomatoes breaking out in trusses along the three tomato plants in the grow bag. What's interesting to note however, is that these tomatoes always form one at a time, rather than a whole truss together.

The tomato fruit nearest to the stem always seems to be the first fruit to bloom – I presume this is because it's the first recipient of all the water and liquid tomato plant food drawn up through the roots and the stem? Perhaps some of you more learned gardeners can tell me if my horticultural hypothesis is correct or not!

Either way, many of my trusses, although with tomato fruits at different sizes, are all now beginning to flourish. The first tomato fruits started appearing on the 1st July – a convenient date from which to start measuring! It's now Saturday 11th, so the fruits have been out for nearly two weeks; but no signs of turning red just yet!

Talking of signs, two lovely colleagues of mine from work visited the Hampton Court Flower Show this week. They evidently thought that the London Vegetable Garden needed a touch of European glamour to it, so very kindly purchased this sign for me:

I think you'll agree, it adds a much more homely touch to the London Vegetable Garden!

Blooming Asiatic Lilies...

Whilst growing vegetables on the balcony is the primary focus of the London Vegetable Garden, regular readers of this blog will also know that I have various flowers on one side of the balcony. In an attempt to appease my girlfriend, who has noted that our little balcony is being overrun with tomatoes, runner beans and pots of soil, I have made a concerted effort to ensure that my gardening includes botany, as well as horticulture!

A little while ago, I added some Asiatic Lilies to a pot of bedding flowers and their surge in growth has been huge. They were planted as bulbs that had already grown to plants about six inches high. Since then, they have grown to well over a foot in length and have had to be supported by some small canes. Their expanding heads have been threatening to bloom for about a week now and it was this morning that I was met by this beautiful sight:


There's still about twelve more heads waiting to bloom, so I'm hoping for a continuous array of lilies over the next two weeks or so.

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!

Tomato Supports & Tomato Fruits!

Those of you that also follow the London Vegetable Garden on Twitter (click here) will remember that I've been seeking advice regarding my leaning tomato plants. After a wealth of suggestions, it turned out that one of my colleagues at work had some devices that served that very purpose, although none of us have any idea what they're called!

As you can see from the pictures above, these peculiar looking devices are designed to sit underneath a grow bag. Once you have placed them under the grow bag, the two prongs can be pushed together and the cane placed through the middle, like so:

Now in place, these supports have added so much strength to the canes, and thus, my tomato plants. This hot weather has seen them shoot up considerably, which has led them to start pulling the canes down with their weight. Luckily now they look a lot sturdier – as well as taking over the whole of London Vegetable Garden balcony!

The recent hot weather has also been responsible for an exciting discovery I made last night – the very first tomatoes are coming through!

Although small, the fruits are beginning to pop up all over the tomato plant trusses – as of five minutes ago, I can report that I have six tomatoes well on the way. I'm hoping that they grow quickly from green, berry-looking things to big juicy red tomatoes whilst this heat-wave lasts! Hopefully more news to come this week...

Thinning the Crop...

When associated with myself, the topic of thinning usually refers to the sparse amount of hair that resides (or used to) atop my head. Whilst this has led friends and colleagues to label me the 'Bald Gardener' after Jamie Oliver's iconic 'naked chef' moniker, the thinning I'm referring to in this blog post refers strictly to what's growing on my vegetable balcony.

My tomato plants have been growing abundantly due to this spell of very hot weather we're having here in London and on the London Vegetable Garden balcony. However, many stalks at the base of the tomato plant are purely adorned by leaves, with no trusses or flowers on them.

As I stated in my video blog post on thinning tomato plants and removing the suckers, this plant is a very thirsty, demanding plant to grow – any reduction in unnecessary stalks will ensure that water and liquid feed goes straight to the stems that need it the most – the stalks with flowers and tomatoes growing on them.

From simply thinning three tomato plants of unnecessary stalks and leaves, I was left with all of the green vegetation you can see in the picture below:


So, all my watering and plant food was being shared amongst these stalks, when in fact it could have been going straight to the main parts of the plant that are useful and will bear fruit! I've included a photo to show how the tomato plants look now that they are streamlined and ready to concentrate on growing fruit:

Thinning is a useful way to ensure that the maximum water and plant food is absorbed by the tomato plant – especially when you have three hungry plants competing in the same shallow grow bag! Good luck with thinning your plants and be sure to leave a comment on the London Vegetable Garden letting us all know how you're getting on with your tomatoes.