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!

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!

From Seed to Plate - Edible Produce!

It may not be a particularly spectacular harvest, but the London Vegetable Garden has enjoyed its first taste of edible, balcony-grown organic produce! Over the past week, the rocket has looked good enough to eat - so we did precisely that! Accompanied by the other half's exquisite lasagne and accompanying many salads, we've enjoyed a surprising amount of rocket from such a small window box.


They say that giant oaks grow from tiny acorns and I hope that although this humble rocket is a modest start to my project, it's a prelude to exciting vegetables to come. Simply a few window boxes are more than enough for any amateur London gardener to produce some enjoyable results and I'd imagine it's not too late to enjoy some of your own.

In just under two months, I've planted, grown and harvested plenty of tasty rocket. All I used was grow bag compost, a window box and plenty of water. If you're diligent enough to check your rocket plants each night for watering, this really is the maximum extent of your efforts. The window box on my balcony faced inwards, so whilst gaining a lot of sun, had some partial shade too. Good luck growing your own - if anyone else has had a rocket revolution, please comment and share your findings!

Day 45 Balcony Update – Lettuce Begin!

45 days ago, the world was a much more innocent place. The bubonic bacon bandwagon known as swine flu or ‘H1N1’ had yet to rear its ugly head (sniff), MPs were still nonchalantly claiming expenses for troublesome toilet seats and Peter Andre and Katie Price were still manacled together in marital bliss (at least when Max Clifford was in sight). A lot has happened in 45 days, however the event that eclipses all of these snippets of news is the astounding progress of the London Vegetable Garden.

Over the past 6 weeks, I’ve been determined to grow my own organic vegetables from the confines of a dreary London balcony and the resulting crusade has gone further than I ever expected – from mentions in Times gardening blogs and enquiries from London newspaper journalists, this project has grown quicker than my runner beans!

But enough chat – if you want pretentious piffle, my Modern Musings blog is the place to go. Here, I’m checking in with you, my faithful readers, and reporting the current produce progress happening outside the windows of my London flat.


As you can see from the new photos, the most impressive result so far is the rocket. After only 6 weeks, this looks like something you could actually eat! I’m waiting for it to get a bit longer before harvesting it, but it’s doing extremely well in its hanging balcony box – and getting a lot of sun every day.

The radishes look equally impressive, although I pulled a plant out to examine progress the other night and the stalk is simply attached to a root system – I have no idea when the actual radishes start forming, so anyone who can enlighten me, please leave a comment!

The tomato plants are looking sturdier by the day. This weekend, I plan to gamble with leaving a few outside. If that goes successfully, I hope to transfer the tomato plants into a grow bag for their final growing positions – they seem big enough already but once again, any advice from any experienced gardeners is hugely appreciated!

On a final note (and at the cost of sounding like a vegan hippy), I’m really beginning to connect with my plants. The tomato plants are filling the flat with an extremely vivid smell that evokes childhood memories of greenhouses and the progress the whole garden has made over 6 weeks is a visible reminder of the care and effort I’ve been putting in. All gardeners say how satisfying it is to grow your own, and with progress like this, it’s not hard to see why.



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Eats, Shoots and Leaves...

OK, so perhaps ‘eats’ can only refer to the plethora of pigeons that now frequent the London Vegetable Garden balcony, consuming the seed that I try (in vain) to leave for the robins and finches, but shoots and leaves are very much the order of the day – Day 12.

As regular visitors to this blog will be aware, the progress I’ve made on my urban gardening quest has been quite remarkable considering the short timeframe. Aside from the runner beans (whose meteoric growth has been rather astonishing), today has been the first day that simple seedlings have really taken on their own personality and looked like individual plants.

It’s the shape of these leaves that are really starting to stand out now, and despite the small size of my produce playground, the diversity of the leaf shapes on display ensure that visually, the balcony is starting to look an interesting place indeed!

As you can see from the latest pictures (the neighbours surely must think I’m mad by now, crouched over taking pictures of seed trays), the rocket is developing a very rounded leaf shape, which I expect will taper into the usual rocket shape once it’s big enough. The leaves on the runner bean plants are developing at a phenomenal pace as well, growing visibly larger by the day.

What really interests me however, is the very marked, pointed shape of the tomato plants – something I’ve never attempted to grow before. As you know, this is the plant that I’m perhaps most passionate about, since I believe that these will be the most difficult to grow on a London balcony with no greenhouse – the nemesis plant! But even in these early days here on the London Vegetable Garden, they seem to have already taken on their own unique personality.

The Origin of the Species...

Whilst this recent horticultural hobby has indeed made me go ‘a bit Darwinian’, the latest species originating on the London Vegetable Garden is the sturdy runner bean. We’re now on Day 9 of the project and overnight the runner beans became the latest plants to break through the soil and show themselves to the world.

We’re only waiting for the carrots to get started now and then we’ll be fully underway. As an update, the rocket is going great guns at the moment. As many of you will be aware, this Easter Bank Holiday weekend hasn’t had the sunniest of weather, although the temperature has remained quite mild, which seems to have suited the plants very well. The rocket shoots are outside and all are leaning towards the sun (whenever it does periodically appear), so I may move these around to a sunnier spot in the next few days.

The tomato seedlings are also now well on the way. I’m keeping these inside the flat, on the balcony windowsill, to make up for the lack of a greenhouse. Hopefully, by the time they’re big enough to be transplanted into grow bags, the weather will be a lot hotter. Investing in a small cloche (or making one myself) may be an option later on down the line.

We have lift-off!

We do indeed, and we’ve got well and truly underway courtesy of the humble rocket seeds! It’s only Day 6 of the London Vegetable Garden Project, yet already we have signs of life in the soil.

Planted in seed trays, the rocket has started breaking through the shallow compost less than 120 hours since it was planted! I’m hoping that there is enough soil for the rocket to grow nicely. Once I’ve established how long the timeframe is to grow edible rocket leaves from planting, I may see if implementing a ‘crop rotation’ for my salad produce is an effective means of ensuring a regular supply of peppery salad leaves!

Fly me to the moon...

Whilst this rocket won’t ‘fly me to the moon’ (I couldn’t resist!) I am hoping that it will provide me with some salads that are ‘out of this world’. OK, OK, I’ll stop the awful puns, but I would like to introduce the second crop I’m attempting to nurture on my metropolitan mezzanine.

Earlier this week, I planted ‘Rocket Runaway’ (Eruca Sativa), the name hopefully indicating its fast-growing nature. I’ve sowed the rocket seeds in seed trays and I’m hoping that these will yield some nice baby leaves pretty quickly – the instructions on the packet certainly seem to suggest that frequent yields are possible.

As I’m gardening on a balcony rather than in the earth, I’m presuming that I’ll only be able to grow one batch per seed tray, so I’m keen to see how I get on with this first round. I’m hoping to harvest the leaves midway between baby and mature stage, but as the soil isn’t tremendously deep, I’m guessing that I’ll have to harvest these at baby leaf stage.