Today our crack team of neighbours delivered growbags to front gardens for our community veg growing project in Finsbury Park -huge thanks to David, Bernd, Matt, Graham and Liesbet.
Next weekend we’ve organised another Cake Sunday , so that participants can meet up over tea and home-made cake and collect seeds for veg growing this year.
We’ve found that both Runner and French beans grow really well in the free municipal compost (thanks North London Waste and Islington council),
and this year we’re giving away purple French beans, ‘Cosse Violette’, and Swiss chard ‘Bright Lights’ for those who have extra space to grow in too.
There’ll also be packets of wildflower seeds for tree pits as these really brighten up our neighbourhood along with the veg and flowers grown in front gardens.
Whilst on our travels we came across this fab suitcase which will make a great mini raised bed. Perfect for some Swiss chard I think! We quickly drilled some holes in the bottom and filled it up with compost ready for planting. It may not last many years, but should see us through this growing season at least.
For more durable (and more storable ) mini raised beds, you could look at these gro-beds from Marshalls. Both suitcase and gro-bed are a great solution if you have no soil, but want to grow veg in your garden, and they’re deep and wide enough to grow a large choice of fruit and veg.
Growing in containers and growbags is going to be a challenge this year as the hosepipe ban starts in the South of England at the beginning of April, but planting in larger pots and containers should reduce the amount of watering that’ll need to be done. If you have the room and the money, it would be worth investing in a water butt which can be situated near your veg and this should make watering somewhat easier if no taps are near to hand. Thames Water have some reasonably priced plastic water butts which they’ll deliver to your door too. (I know this is slightly ironic as they’re one of the companies introducing a water ban-come on Thames Water-get those leaky pipes fixed!)
However, despite this potential extra work, I still think that nothing can beat the sheer delight of growing your own fruit and veg and there’s nothing better than leaning out of your window or popping into the front (or back) garden to collect your dinner too.
Great website full of information love the community spirit you all have,we’ve just started a allotment association up hopeing to get the same effect as your community. Love the ideas of using grow bags and suitcase as raised beds,may use them ideas on my plot I’m still new to this gardening and picking up ideas from all over.
Keep up the good work.
Hi Steve, our veg growing scheme is a great way to get to know your neighbours and I hope you enjoy getting to know others on your allotment site too. Cleve West wrote a lovely book about his allotment and fellow allotmenteers, called ‘Our Plot’-a fab read over Christmas last year.
Good luck with your plot this year-looks immense! Thanks for dropping by. Naomi
I am loving the suitcase idea!
Thanks Veronica! Have a spare one if you want as we found 3 on our journey around Highbury! N x
I love reading your posts about the community spirit in your neighbourhood. Our council doesn’t deliver composted waste instead you have to collect it yourself from a local garden centre, which would be fine if it didn’t stink. I mean really stink. We went along to the garden centre last year to take a look at it and you could smell it a mile off. Someone at the allotments used it on some of the village in bloom beds and it killed the plants. He said it was still giving off loads of heat, so it clearly hadn’t broken down fully.
Love the wildflowers ,what a great idea and that suitcase looks pretty happy to have been found a new role.
Hi WW, we did hire a van (with tail lift!) to go and collect compost, but luckily we had a community payback team to help load our 100 growbags. Last year the compost was freshly delivered when we went to load bags and was very smelly indeed. We’re using the same compost again this year, but it was delivered a couple of weeks ago, so odour and intense heat had both died down (was still warm as we dug into the centre of the heap though!).
Really looking forward to planting up suitcase and on the lookout for a concrete venue to place another, possibly with strawberries….
Wonderful community in this event! I love the idea of wildflower seed in the tree pits. We have a raised veggy bed on our town lot, right on top of our overabundance of concert. It is brick and lined with landscape fabric. I wish out community delivered! You need a truck to get your own.
Look forward to reading more about your veg this season!
I love your raised bed, and I love your compost.
Very envious – I got some of our council’s free compost and It was rubbish (Gwynedd Council, you are named and shamed). But I suppose I could have been unlucky…
Hi Kate, Yes, lucky to have such a great supply of free compost-couldn’t do the project without it. It does dry out fairly quickly though, so in these drought ridden times, waterring is an issue….we’ll see what’s still growing in summer! V.best Naomi
I love this post! Makes me itch to get my peas and lettuce planted!! I wish you happy, soft rains, and a happy Spring garden!
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Thanks Jayne-still waiting for the rain, but water butts now ordered! We’ve had a massively hot spring so far, but think temperatures are about to plummet again. Never a dull moment!