Adopt an Elderly Person's Garden!

The campaign to open up more of London’s gardening space is finally gaining momentum it seems. A few weeks ago, the London Vegetable Garden received news that building sites left dormant by the recession are to be turned into temporary allotments (see the article here). Needless to say, this is fantastic news for London gardeners fed up with having nowhere to grow their own vegetables and plants.

London gardeners have further cause to celebrate today however, with Wandsworth council and Age Concern teaming up to unveil a fantastic new London gardening scheme. The premise is simple – adopt an elderly person’s garden and help to maintain it. As well as helping elderly residents to enjoy their garden for longer, it also presents space-challenged London gardeners with a garden to work on.

Age Concern’s Sarah Jackson states that:

“Managing the garden can be a struggle for older people. At the same time, there are many people without access to outdoor space who really want to garden. This scheme will help to bring unused garden space back to life and improve the well-being of everyone involved. We've had a huge response already and are busy vetting volunteers and gardens — it's a bit like a matchmaking service really.”

Obviously, this scheme has been extremely well received by London gardeners desperate for a plot to cultivate, but especially so amongst elderly Londoners, many of whom want to enjoy a nice garden, but aren’t able to maintain it on their own.

As positive as this news is, it also serves to highlight depressing statistics for London gardeners on allotment waiting lists. Wandsworth actioned this scheme in an attempt to ease the 1,500 people that are waiting for its 607 allotment plots. And with Camden and Islington residents facing waiting times of 40 years and 25 years respectively, this story serves to show just how desperate a situation London gardeners find themselves in.

Wandsworth council deserve to be praised – although we’re a long way from giving Londoners the gardening space they deserve, this new scheme shows that local governments are starting to recognise the severity of this problem and are taking small steps to remedy this – long may it continue.

(The article that this blog entry was based upon can be viewed on the Evening Standard website by clicking here.)

My First Crops From Pots!

I hope that Mr Bob Purnell will excuse me from drawing so heavily on his book title for this blog post, but my excitement this morning can't be contained – the London Vegetable Garden has yielded its first radishes!

In hindsight (a wonderful thing, but I'm hoping my mistakes will help you chaps out there), I planted my radish seeds too close together, so many of the plants and leaves have been fighting for a very small space. The resultant crop of radishes has therefore been quite varied, as you can see from the picture below, although amongst those, we do have some decent looking ones!

I've scrubbed up a couple of the radishes I'd be comfortable entering into a competition (well almost) and laid them next to the seed packet, as shown below:

As you can see, although I haven't managed to grow enough radishes to open a stall at a farmer's market (yet), this hopefully illustrates just what can be achieved from the confines of such a small urban vegetable gardening space. I'm really proud with these big radishes – and the fact that they look so similar to the picture on the packet!

Please take this as motivation – which is what this London vegetable gardening blog is all about. Why not try planting some radishes of your own? Simply use a decent sized pot and remember to SOW THINLY! Good luck – I'd love to see everyone's results. After all, if I can achieve this on a London balcony next to a busy, smoky London railway line, your balcony, windowsill or patio can too!

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.

Awash with Colour

Just thought I'd add a quick blog entry showing how the petunias are faring - half of the London Vegetable Garden is currently awash with colour thanks to these bedding plants. I highly recommend keeping your eyes open in supermarkets or garden centres for some bedding petunias. In the space of a few weeks they've grown spectacularly and make a real impact to any balcony or garden. You could even pot them on a windowsill.

The Darling Buds of May (and June...)

It's a well known fact that the banalities of life (such as a job, visiting the doctors, doing the shopping) all detract from valuable gardening time. The aforementioned banalities also consume valuable blogging time, which is why the London Vegetable Garden has been as sparse as my carrot plants in recent weeks - you have my sincere apologies.

But moving on, I've managed to weed some time into my diary to get firmly back on track with recording the progress of my organic odyssey. The recent hot weather has been responsible for a huge surge in growth, with vegetable plants taking over much of the London Vegetable Garden balcony. This has harassed the other half immeasurably, as putting out the clothes horse now requires military precision to avoid squashing tomato plants and radish pots. It gives me however, plenty of new fodder for a blog entry and an update on the London Vegetable Garden!


The plants that have fared the best in the current British heat wave are my runner beans. Two plants died recently, which I fear was my own fault when I removed the bottoms from their pots to place over the grow bags. With these weeded out, along with plenty of water and sunshine, their fortunes have reversed and thay now dominate the balcony wall.


As you can see from the pictures, they are also starting to bud flowers, which indicates that they're well on their way to produce-bearing stage. Although I didn't harvest many actual runner beans last year (OK, three to be precise), I'm hoping that the added compost underneath the pots and the regular feed I'm giving them will see an increased crop this time around. Watch this space for more updates...

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!

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!

No Balcony? Herbs are for ANYONE...

A balcony, despite its confined space, is a luxury that many green-fingered Londoners simply don’t have. Whilst this blog aims to record my progress as I attempt to grow vegetables on my balcony, I’m also trying to promote awareness around green issues and the fact that ANYONE can grow a few things, even if it’s on a windowsill!

Whilst I’ve focused my agricultural attentions on producing a variety of vegetables right here on my London balcony garden, I’ve overlooked one of the simplest and easiest ways to start enjoying growing your own within a small London home – the humble herb garden.

Regular readers will be aware that I’m growing coriander plants from seed (a wonderful addition to any salad), however on the Bank Holiday weekend, I purchased some herb plants to put on the kitchen windowsill.

One of the real attractions to growing herbs (apart from their ability to freshen up any salad or evening meal, straight from pot to plate) is the fact that they are easy to maintain and even a complete beginner can manage them. Simply a sunny ledge and regular watering will ensure that you have a constant crop of fresh seasoning that tastes infinitesimally better than expensive supermarket offerings that wilt before you’ve got them home.

On our kitchen windowsill, we have four pots of herbs growing; curled parsley (Petroselinum crispum), basil (Ocimum basilcum), oregano (Origanum vulgare) and sage (Salvia). I’ve looked on a leading supermarket’s website (one that will remain anonymous, since the London Vegetable Garden is too poor to incur libel costs) and fresh packets of herbs all retail at around 79p, with a ‘short product life’ warning emblazoned next to them.

Let’s say you needed some fresh basil for a mozzarella and tomato pasta salad – why waste 79p when you can have a pot that is as fresh as you can get and will last you months? These particular pots were part of a 4 for £5 offer, meaning that financially, growing your herbs is an extremely viable way to save money whilst enjoying better, fresher organic produce – why would anyone choose not to?!

So if you’re thinking that you’d like to start growing your own, but have no idea where to possibly start, herbs are an ideal, easy and satisfying way to start your foray into growing your own vegetables in little or no space. These pots are available in supermarkets and garden centres, but if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, why not try growing a few from seed – my coriander is showing recognisable leaves after only a few weeks!.

For tips on growing your own herbs, visit the BBC Gardening website by clicking here!

The London Vegetable Garden makes Times Online!

The London Vegetable Garden is picking up followers fast! The Twitter account @londonveggarden now has over 100 followers, one of whom is eminent cook, food writer and TV chef, Celia Brooks Brown!

Celia writes a weekly blog for the Times Online, ‘Urban Farmer’ and in her recent article, references the one and only London Vegetable Garden, showing we have friends in high places indeed!

To read the article, simply click here!

Celia’s website can be found by visiting http://www.celiabrooksbrown.com/ or you can follow her on Twitter: @celiabb

Bank Holiday Update...

Whilst I wouldn’t describe the Homebase Bank Holiday experience as ‘relaxing’, it was a necessary evil that resulted in some enjoyable gardening activity in the London Vegetable Garden this afternoon.

The main job completed today was the (rather complex) task of cutting holes into the runner bean pots and sitting them onto a grow bag. When I disposed of last year’s runner bean attempt, the entire soil was densely packed with roots. In order to give the roots a bit more space this time round, I’ve opened up a grow bag and sat the two pots, sans-base, on top. The roots should hopefully now have a lot more space to grow into, which should have a positive impact upon the harvest – we hope!

Admittedly, removing the bottoms from the pots with beans already in was an extremely difficult task and I’m concerned that I’ve disturbed the plants. However, previous experience has shown me that runner beans are hardy vegetables, so hopefully they haven’t been too badly unsettled. For future reference, this set-up should definitely be implemented the minute the seedlings are big enough to be transplanted from their original seeding positions – I guarantee it will avoid turning into a garden grump, like I did this afternoon as soil and roots went flying everywhere!

Hopefully this work will enable me to maximise my harvest of runner beans, with the added benefit of taking up no extra space. Since the pots are sat on top of the grow bag, the only space used is a few inches of height, so this is definitely a top tip if you wish to grow vegetables on your small balcony or roof garden.

A Budding Bank Holiday...

Along with clogged-up motorways and visiting family members you’d really rather not, the Bank Holiday invariably shifts people’s attentions to the garden once again, even if only for a few hours of mowing or barbequing.

Whilst not a middle-aged dad who’s finally been roped into tidying up the back garden before the mother-in-law comes over, my girlfriend and I do intend to join the legions of harassed husbands at a Homebase later this morning. Keen to make the most of the Bank Holiday weather (which, strangely for England, is actually warm and sunny), I want to spend some time outdoors before I return to the daily commute and eight hours cooped up in front of a computer screen.

The main task I’d like to get sorted is the grow bag base for the runner beans. These vegetables have incredibly fast-growing and extensive root systems and the pots they are currently sat in don’t offer them enough space to grow. One of the London Vegetable Garden’s followers kindly emailed in with some tips, suggesting that a bottomless pot sat on top of a grow bag would reap dividends for the roots and subsequently, the runner bean crop.

Here on the London Vegetable Garden, we do enjoy our flowers too! The pansies that lasted through the winter have now succumbed to fatigue and have joined that big compost heap in the sky – worryingly, I think white fly is partly to blame. With this in mind, I’d also like to sterilise these pots and bed-in some new flowers.

I intend to sit down and record the day’s events later on this evening, but until then leave you with some recent pictures of how the various vegetables are progressing. The radishes are especially impressive!

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!

Lots and lots of pots!

Only yesterday I was enjoying a London marathon basked in glorious sunshine; today I have been out on the balcony getting cold, wet and dirty. The British weather truly is an unpredictable beast, but the London Vegetable Garden marches proudly on whatever Mother Nature throws our way!

I’ve been working in the London Vegetable Garden this morning, as I have this week off work and am escaping to the countryside for a few days. With this in mind, I wanted to make sure that the tomato plants were re-potted before I went. The weather has been very sunny over the previous week, and sat on the balcony windowsill, the tomato plants have been faring extremely well indeed.

Regular readers of the London Vegetable Garden blog will know that I recently re-potted one of my three tomato seed trays into a few pots, choosing to do just one to see how they fared. Well, all plants are doing well, so today I decided to re-pot a second seed tray – this time one seedling to a pot.

Well, with the wind howling against me (and giving the runner beans quite a pounding in the process), I’ve potted these latest tomato seedlings. I now have a mixture of tomato plant ‘options’ going on – those still in seed tray one, the initial re-potted batch (three / four seeds to a pot) and now a crop of one seed per pot plants. With three different options, I’m hoping that at least a few will grow into hardy tomato plants that I can start planting in a grow bag and focusing on. If they all take off, then perhaps the neighbours will be receiving a few plants to start a balcony vegetable-growing project of their own!

Incidentally, I have re-potted some of the rocket today. One of the seed trays looked very packed indeed, so I’ve re-planted the rocket seedlings into a window box that hangs on the balcony. The roots looked very short, so I’m hoping that they haven’t been damaged in the move – we’ll just have to wait and see how well they take!

Vegetables on Twitter!

Unless you've been hiding under a very large rock at the end of your vegetable garden, you'll no doubt be aware of the latest social network craze sweeping the Internet, Twitter! Well, the London Vegetable Garden likes to think that although it's only a balcony, it's up to speed with all the modern gardens, hence it now has its own Twitter account! Simply click on @londonveggarden to start following us on Twitter!

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.

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.

What a difference a day makes...

Whilst I’m keen to stress that this blog won’t be a daily photo gallery recording pots of soil and minute growth spurts, I wanted to add a brief entry for today remarking on the incredible progress of the runner beans in just 24 hours. Still no signs of life on the ol’ carrot front…

Tomatoes off the mark...

A whole 7 days have still yet to elapse since I started out on the organic odyssey that is the London Vegetable Garden project, however we have more signs of life in addition to yesterday’s rocket arrival!

That’s right, more shoots have started showing already and today it’s the turn of the tomato. Now if I’m being honest, I really do believe that my tomatoes will be the most difficult things to grow on my balcony, due to the lack of a greenhouse. I debated about including them in the project for this very reason, however their early appearance has given me renewed vigour and encouragement.

This Bank Holiday Easter weekend has seen some gloomy weather over here in east London, however the temperature has remained relatively mild. I’m hoping that this is good for the plants that are outside on the balcony, namely the carrots. The rocket has shot up considerably since yesterday and I really am interested to see just how quickly I can harvest this variety. Rocket and tomatoes are off the blocks, runner beans and carrots await!

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!