Super Salad!

I've said it before, I'll say it again and I'll keep on saying it – salad leaves are one of the easiest and most rewarding things for any urban gardener to grow! A large proportion of food waste comprises of bags of mushy brown salad leaves that have sat in the fridge and turned to mulch. When growing your own is this easy, those wasteful bags could soon become a thing of the past!
This is the third batch of salad leaves I've grown in this window box on the London Vegetable Garden this summer. Were I not experimenting with all sorts of crops in pots and vegetables, I could have dedicated the whole balcony to salad leaves and even in this small space, have been self-sufficient in terms of salad leaf needs.

In addition to how easy these plants are to grow, they also grow very quickly, making them ideal for people without much space. They also only really need soil, sunlight and watering, so even if you have no outside space whatsoever, an empty ice-cream tub on a windowsill will work just as well.

It's a fantastic feeling eating your own produce; and when it's as easy as lettuce, there's really no excuse for not giving it a go. Great taste, growing satisfaction and it will save you throwing away money each time you dispose of a brown salad bag from the supermarket. Why not give it a go?

For urban growing advice and to see how you could start growing your own salad leaves, come and visit the London Gardeners' Network today!

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!

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...

Don't Strangle Me!

Morning all – just a very quick blog post this morning to kick the weekend off and proffer some green-fingered London vegetable gardening advice. When planting out tomato plants (or any other vegetables / fruits for that matter), many of us tie string or ties around the stem to fix it to a supporting cane.

Now, this is all well and good, but one thing to remember is that plants grow thicker, as well as taller! I was replacing my plant supports with bamboo canes the other evening and came across a piece of string on one of the tomato plants. Now, I thought I'd removed all of these bits of string, so was shocked to see one I'd left!

As you can see from the picture below, the string had indeed been cutting into the stem of the plant as it grew. Luckily I caught this in time, and it has since recovered, but strangling your plants with string and ties is a veritable menace that many amateur gardeners overlook. If you've used (or are planning to use) ties or string, always make sure that you leave some room for growth in the loop and check back regularly.

All Change on the Middle Window Box Front...

Avid followers of the London Vegetable Garden could well be forgiven for thinking my agricultural attentions have been too focussed on flora and fauna in recent weeks. Fear not, as vegetables are very much still the focus of the balcony and this blog, but one of the window boxes has looked rather dilapidated in recent weeks and the time has come to re-do it.

As you can see, I planted ivy in this window box over a year ago. Whilst their longevity is a testament to the hardy nature of the plant, this one really has become too big for the box it's planted in. You can see from the stem size below just how big the plant has come; whilst it would flourish in a garden, planted in the ground, in this window box it really has reached its limit.

It just so happened that when making a (compulsory I might add) visit to Tesco, they had some cheap bedding flowers on offer for £3. I've done well out of supermarkets for cheap gardening paraphernalia recently, including the excellent grow bags I blogged about a few weeks previously.

A pleasant weekend afternoon was spent potting this new plants into the window box, although in terms of outside space, it's proving more and more difficult to manoeuvre out on the balcony! I'm hoping that in a few weeks, we'll have a beautiful floral display acting as a colourful centrepiece of the London Vegetable Garden. Watch this space.