Going Potty!

In recent weeks, I have focused both my gardening and blogging attentions on the London Vegetable Garden allotment. However, now is the time to focus once more on growing vegetables 'sans-garden' and demonstrate to all urban gardeners that enjoyment, plants and edible produce can all be had regardless of space.

Following yesterday's vegetable plant purchases, my conscience has deemed it appropriate to spend today on my hands and knees in the kitchen spreading compost everywhere (to the absolute delight of the other half) and at long last planting some vegetables from seed.

Some of these seeds will be transplanted to the allotment when big enough, whilst some of them will remain 'windowsill' plants. After all, the London Vegetable Garden started as a project to see just what can be grown in an urban setting and this year is no different. If anything, the 'home' gardening will be much more of a challenge this year, since I am without even balcony this time!

The seeds I planted up today are as follows:

'Pomodoro' Italian beefsteak tomatoes – 3 pots x 3 seeds per pot

'Lycopersicon Esculentum Tigrella' tomatoes – 1 tray x 16 seeds

'Cucumis Sativus Burpless Tasty Green' cucumbers – 6 pots x 1 seed per pot

'Cucurbita Maxima' courgettes – 4 pots x 1 seed per pot

'Sweet Genovese' basil – 1 pot x 10 seeds (approx)

Now, courgettes were tricky enough on the balcony (my efforts 2 years ago all came down with leaf mildew, despite offering up one paltry courgette) – these vegetables require a lot of space per plant, so like the cucumbers, these are purely being grown for later transplantation to the allotment. The basil is intended purely for the 'kitchen windowsill garden', which will soon be joined by salad leaves and other herbs – watch this space...

As for the tomatoes, half of these will be joining yesterday's allotment arrivals, while I aim to accommodate the remaining half somewhere around the flat. There' are two large bedroom windowsills that could be used to house something – but that something will need plenty of ingenuity!

In the meantime, these pots are being kept in the hallway, in a spot that receives plenty of sun. I will also be covering these pots in cling-film to aid the germination process, but have found that if in a warm and sunny place, this is generally not required.

From past experience, I have found that germination differs from plant to plant, but generally see signs of life within one week to a fortnight. The minute these seeds start sprouting, you can rely on a swift blog post!

If you are looking for tips on growing vegetables on a balcony, in pots on a patio or even on a windowsill, visit the London Vegetable Garden archive! There's a wealth of information and advice to be had following my successes – and failures – last year. Alternatively, why not connect with other urban gardeners at the London Gardeners' Network, where there's a wealth of gardening knowledge to unearth.

Strawberry (& Tomato) Fields Forever?

I have a confession to make. I have just purchased some strawberry and tomato plants from the garden centre. I have not grown these from seed. I am a bad, naughty urban gardener!

OK, so maybe I'm being a little hard on myself. Work constraints have meant that I haven't got my act together and planted any tomatoes from seed so far this year, so I have made the decision to buy a couple of plants to ensure I do at least have something starting to grow at the present time!

Along with a strawberry plant (I had one on the London Vegetable Garden balcony briefly, which promptly died!), I have bought three different types of tomato plants, 'Super Marmande', 'Moneymaker' and 'Golden Sweet'.

I also aim to get some marigolds in next to these tomato plants as a companion (whiteflies hate the smell), but for now am just hoping that these take well in my newly-dug raised bed!

Time To Make The Bed – A Raised One...

In addition to my 'main' 16' by 11' allotment plot, I also have a couple of beds. The smaller of the two has been well documented with the ongoing 'will-the-carrots-grow-or-won't-they' fiasco. The other bed however, roughly 6' by 6', has so far sat dormant.

Inspired by the beautiful weather, I decided to spend the morning digging the soil over and setting up a raised section at the top of this bed. I set to with a fork and began digging over this very tough soil. I pulled out plenty of stones, bits of brick and several broken old bottles (randomly), as well as the following debris which I presume has been laying dormant since last year:
As I was doing all of this, I received several visits from my friendly robin, who sits on the wood of the raised beds, head angled coquettishly, taking his pick of the worms I have freshly dug up! So far, he has eluded my camera, despite his surprising tameness, so unfortunately I cannot introduce you. Anyway, I digress!

I placed a wooden slat where the raised section was to be and fixed this in place with some broken bits of old cane. I emptied half a 50L back of soil-based compost into the newly-made raised bed and mixed this in with the soil.
I then proceeded to empty the rest of the compost on top of the bed to make a fine, rich base for the plants that will soon be making their home there.
Although the carrots have now finally forced their way through the lumpy soil in the other bed, I feel that preparation like today's will ensure a much nicer space for various fruit and vegetables to grow – it certainly looks the part.

Carrots – Never Give up!

In addition to this morning's pleasing potato progress, I was also stunned to see that the carrot seeds I had given up on were poking through the stony, lumpy soil!

Whilst these seedlings aren't in lines as uniform as some of the incredible allotments that surround me, there is a definite order to them and I am so thrilled that they've managed to fight their way through the awful soil.

For future vegetables, I am mixing soil-based compost in with the earth and also making sure it is as fine as possible rather than lumpy and stoney. Nevertheless, these carrots are definitely growing, which allays my fears that they had been planted too shallowly. Unfortunately, you can't really see the lines clearly in any photos, but here are some shots of the baby carrot seedlings:

Potato Progress – Part II

The other morning, I woke up at 6:30am and took off for a pre-work walk along the Thames. Despite being absorbed in a Sherlock Holmes audiobook, I noticed from my vantage point atop Richmond Hill that a lot of the surrounding area was covered in a very light frost.

Now, young potato plants are especially susceptible to frost, so this morning's visit to the allotment was one that contained a fair amount of trepidation; had my baby potato plants survived this week's May frost, or would I arrive to find the first real signs of progress on the allotment halted?

Well luckily, any fears of the latter were immediately allayed when I turned up to this magnificent sight:

I include my hand once again for scale - if you glance at the post from the 4th of May, you'll see that this really is progress!

Nothing to report from the potato growing bags as yet – watch this space...

Biodiverse Balconies - RHS Competition Winners!

Cast your minds back to late March (which, with the current cold snap, is no hard task), and you'll remember that the London Vegetable Garden launched a competition to mark the International Year of Biodiversity.

In conjunction with The RHS, I asked urban gardeners to submit entries showing how they are promoting biodiversity on their balconies, patios, windowsills and gardens. Well, I am pleased to announce that we now have a winner! Congratulations to Charles Olive, who wins a year's free RHS membership – I am positively 'green' with envy (I'll get my coat...)

Charles aptly lives near east London's Columbia Road, home of the famous flower market. Despite being limited to a balcony and front porch, Charles' love of gardening has enabled him to create an incredible unique and artistic balcony that is home to a wide range of wildlife. Here is the winning entry:


“East London isn’t ostensibly the greenest corner of London. Sure we have Victoria Park and London Fields but it’s mostly a concrete jungle interspersed with numerous patches of burnt earth populated by lunching hipsters. I can’t pretend that my horticultural endeavours are prefaced by a quest for biodiversity but as the old adage says ‘There’s no smoke without fire’.

My balcony is about 1m by 2m and I have 25 tulips, 20 bonsai, 12 hyacinths, 3 mini allium, 3 large allium, 3 mini roses, 3 Calocephalus, 2 jasmine, 2 olive trees, 2 heathers, 1 acer, 1 honey suckle, 1 garlic, a rosemary bush, French lavender, White Lavender, an Azelea and a Hosta. I’m currently growing a bumper crop of chives from seed for the summer, not to eat but to flower – the bees LOVE them.”

You can check out Charles' gardening exploits on his excellent Grumblemouse blog – hopefully he'll write up some of his many forthcoming visits to RHS gardens around the country!

Coming a close second was Chris Mann, whose enjoyable blog, 'Elevated Agriculture', is a personal favourite of mine. Well done Chris – you win a family day pass to an RHS garden of your choice.

As with Charles, Chris too is limited in terms of space, yet remains unperturbed by this landscape limitation:

“Biodiversity is probably not the first thing that springs to mind when thinking of balconies, but a few pots of compost, some seeds and a little TLC can work wonders.

Last year saw tomatoes, dynamite lettuce, delight lettuce, spinach, plum tomatoes, chives, mint, basil, 3 types of strawberries, Romital hot chilli pepper and Kuros sweet peppers; which is about as diverse a group of plants as you're likely to find 15 feet in the air on a sheet of galvanised steel.”

You can read the whole of Chris' post on biodiversity by clicking here – do check it out; it really is a first-class gardening blog!

Now, whilst the dishing out of plant-related prizes is rather fun, this competition has had a serious point to it. Globally, biodiversity is in decline and the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) is a collective effort to draw attention to this loss – and a spur to do something about it.

Whilst there is undoubtedly a plethora of things that governments and countries can do to help protect wildlife and the natural environment on a global scale, there is also so much that can be done at a grass roots level (that's my second horrendous pun of the post – I really am getting my coat!).

Charles and Chris may well have won some cracking booty from The RHS, but more importantly, they have shown that we urban gardeners can ALL do something to help reverse this decline and encourage biodiversity – which, most importantly of all, makes winners out of the millions of species of natural life that inhabit this fantastic planet.

The Soil is Saturated...

...with worms!

Even though my days of digging about on the allotment have not yet reached 1 month, I have dug up more worms than I can count! The soil is full of these wonderful creatures and I've no doubt that such an abundance will only do my vegetables a world of good!