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!

Where There's a Will, There's a Way...

One of the very (few) real benefits of gardening on an urban balcony, is that high-rise gardeners are not plagued with pests. I've had many a conversation with fellow gardening enthusiasts bemoaning the snails and slugs wreaking havoc on their plots! Well, it seems that nature always finds a way: when clearing the old tomato plants from the London Vegetable Garden yesterday, I came across not one, but two visitors to the balcony. I can only imagine that this tiny slug and his little worm friend arrived in some bedding plants!

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.

Underneath the Soil...

Exactly one month ago, I added radishes to the expanding list of produce being sown enthusiastically on the London Vegetable Garden balcony. 31 days later and the radish leaves have grown to truly impressive portions, so I thought I'd do a little digging to see just how far they have actually grown.

Many gardening blogs, books etc tend to show the reader only what's happening externally, but without testing a few plants, it's hard to see just how far along the organic odyssey we actually are. My rocket is evidently ready to be eaten now (Bank Holiday treat perhaps), but what's going on in pots that haven't shown any demonstrable change in recent weeks?

I gently pulled out one of the radishes from the side of the main radish pot, so as not to disturb any roots around the others. In retrospect, I have now learnt that radishes shouldn't be sown so close together - a concept that's hard to avoid when filled with the enthusiasm of sowing tiny seeds in a huge pot! However I have had helpful comments left on the blog and also on Twitter (@londonveggarden) telling me that the radishes on the London Vegetable Garden may just be planted a little too densely to bear a spectacular crop - we shall just have to wait and see what transpires!

Anyway, I digress. As I said, I've pulled up a radish plant and photographed it to show you how far it has grown after 4 weeks. As you can see from the close-up, a 'radish shape' is clearly visible even at this early stage. Some members of the London Vegetable Garden's Twitter contingent have already told me that once the edible part of the radish starts growing, it grows very quickly indeed, so watch this space!

On a slight tangent, I chanced to pop into Somerfield this evening on my way home from the gym and noticed that they were selling big grow bags for a few pounds. This comes as a welcome surprise, as it means a short walk to the supermarket rather than a long and cumbersome journey to the more expensive (albeit superb) garden centre a short bus ride away. No excuses for the tomatoes not to have a nice new home this weekdend!