Tomato Maintenance...

Well, here's another first from the London Vegetable Garden – the first video blog / podcast!

As the tomato plants get nearer to their final growth stage, it's important to spend a few minutes looking after them and performing some quick, green-fingered maintenance. Have a look at the one-minute clip below and please feel free to leave some feedback in the comments section. If you like seeing video clips of gardening advice, this could well be a regular feature on the London Vegetable Garden blog. Enjoy!

Radishes Almost There...

Saturday morning on the London Vegetable Garden has brought about great excitement and it's radish-shaped! That's right, whilst I'll readily admit that I planted my radish seeds too thickly to bear a large crop (the benefits of hindsight...), the radishes that have been growing are now looking ready to be harvested.

When growing vegetables, or any plants for that matter, it's always important to regularly check the surface of the soil and clear it of old leaves, dead flower heads etc, as this can decompose and have a detrimental effect upon the health of your vegetables and plants.

As you can see from the picture, the radishes are so leafy now, that it's very hard to see the top of the soil in the plant pot, so imagine my surprise (and delight!) when I checked them this morning to see this:
I'm going to leave them in for another week and then harvest the ones that are poking out of the surface, like these ones. I'm hoping, in addition to fresh radishes in a salad, that the smaller radishes that have struggled will now have some more room to grow – it'll be interesting to see what happens. Ensure you check back regularly to find out what happens when they're pulled out!

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.

A Storm Brewing...

This spell of hot weather has to end sometime (this is Britain after all) and here is
the current view from the London Vegetable Garden balcony:

Most definitely a storm brewing - nature looking menacing, yet hauntingly beautiful at the same time.

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...

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!