Hardly a week goes by without my attention being drawn to yet another request for an allotment from a well-meaning inner London resident hoping to make the most of the good weather and grow his or her own vegetables. The tragedy is though that while inner London is obviously deprived of the space to provide these, outer London probably has enough ... and yet many are fallow. What seemed a good idea last Spring ... led to back ache and then blisters and as the weeks dragged by the eventual acceptance that it had been a bad idea ... for now anyway.
So you're short of space? Well, don't have any space really - what to do? Easy: pop down to your local garden centre or nursery and ask to see their range of miniature fruit and vegetables. There are a wide range of these available and all are suitable for growing in pots, in hanging baskets or troughs for the window ledge.
One of my favourites is to grow spuds in a barrel ... as you top up the soil those growing at the bottom fatten up to be useful as Jacket Potatoes while those at the top are lovely "juliennes" or baby potatoes. Smother with a dob of Cornish butter ... how much more home grown could you get?
And if that sounds like a green revolution at the expense of colour - you're wrong! Consider the idea of "companion planting" - where two seemingly incongruous plants are grown side by side for often mutual benefit. This removes the need for spraying with pesticides and often adds colour to an otherwise monoecious crop. Grove garlic amongst your roses and you'll discourage aphids, or chives and you'll not only increase the perfume of the roses but also reduce the amount of blackspot. Tomatoes love to be surrounded by dward French marigolds which repel both green fly and blackfly (rub the leaves and smell your fingers ...) or add nasturtiums to your broccoli crop to increase colour, repel aphids and provide yet another source of salad.
Looking for colourful plants to put into window ledge vegetable garden? Consider the following: for BASKETS - Nasturtiums (need feeding); Strawberries; miniature Tomatoes; Borage; Carrots and creeping Thyme. For your TUBS AND TROUGHS - any herbs such as Mint, Thyme, Rosemary or the like; miniature Tomatoes; Lettuces; Kale; Borage; Carrots .. in fact pretty much anything will do!
Another novel idea if you have a little more space to plant up is to use a "tonnie" bag - the sort that builders' merchants use to deliver sand and gravel in. Filled with good drainage material at the base and then a rich free draining loam mix - these can be used to grow a wide variety of food plants in close proximity to one another and take out the back ache from bending too much or digging.
So this year - there's no excuse for not growing your own!
