Archive for the ‘Grow Your Own’ Category
New Year Gardening
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012
Happy New Year from all of us at the Balcony Gardener! With it being a brand new year we thought we would start a series of blogs to tie in with the release of Isabelle’s new book for all budding balcony gardeners. Hopefully through the next series of blogs we can help you kickstart your new year gardening resolutions, and help you embark on a fresh start as a balcony gardener.
Here in the first blog we’re going to consider what you need to think of before you even step outside and start gardening. Make sure you check with a qualified architect or structural engineer to check just how much your roof or balcony can take, you don’t want to incur any accidents later, it’s always better to be on the safe side!
Once you’re sure that your outdoor space will work as a garden and will comfortably bear pots and containers, you can then start the fun of planning your garden. It’s helpful to give some thought to the plants that will thrive in your garden, and whilst you don’t need to be too strict on abiding to gardening rules there are a few guidelines that will help your garden blossom:
BE SELECTIVE
Invest in a few larger containers that will create focal points instead of lots of smaller ones. A small space can easily look overcrowded with lots of plants and ornaments.
THINK ABOUT LIGHT
Most outdoor space will have spots that don’t receive enough light, so tailor your planting to the available light. If you have low levels of sunlight pick shade-tolerant plants with lush foliage such as hostas and ivy.
CREATE A BACKDROP
To begin with choose evergreen plants such as box and sweet bay. Lavender is a lovely yearlong green base but won’t flower all the time.
USE ODD NUMBERS
Planting in odd numbers gives the most aesthetically pleasing results, so plant one, three or five plants in a container.
RESTRICT THE COLOUR PALETTE
It can be easy to overdo the number of colours in a planting scheme but this can make it look too busy and overcrowded, so pick a few colours and stick to them.
GROW VEGETABLES AND START WITH HERBS
Herbs are relatively easy to grow in containers and are a great way to start growing your own produce. Mint, chives, parsley and rosemary are good varieties to start with and all grow well in containers. Once you’ve mastered herbs, move onto other crops such as tomatoes, salad onions and carrots.
Hopefully this will give you a few ideas to get started with, next time we’ll look at the essential gardening kit.
Winterise your Garden
Monday, January 2nd, 2012
Image from The Baltimore Sun
Brrrr…… it’s certainly getting chillier and chillier, and whilst we might all be feeling toasty inside wrapped up in our favourite blankets and with a log fire burning, it’s important to take a few moments to think of our garden in the chilly outdoors. Whilst we may not have experienced the snow of last year, there’s still plenty of time for frost to set in and balcony gardeners need to know how to weather the storm.
This is a great time to weed off any dead plants, particularly old tomatoes and climbing plants. To prevent the build up of disease and insect, use this as an opportunity to clean out the dead plants. Start the year afresh!
Be careful of bringing too many plants inside to a dry space – particularly if you have the central heating turned up. Make sure you keep them refreshed with plenty of water and close to a window so they get plenty of natural light.
Image: Red Butte Garden Winter Solstice Celebration, Photographer: Laurie Rubin
If you have a container garden, glass cloches are a great way to protect your plants from the frost and any impending snow. They’re great for small containers in a spot away from wind. Keep containers warm by wrapping them with bubble wrap and brown paper. For those less hardy plants, shrubs and herbs can endure the chilly temperatures under a cold frame. A cold frame is a glass-roofed enclosure built close to the ground used to protect plants, letting the sunlight in the cold frame acts as a mini-greenhouse. Use your cold frame to house your plants and as decorate it with fairy lights for a spot of festive cheer!
Whilst you have a break from watering and taking care of your garden, you can use the time wisely to plan your Spring-time blooms and planting for the New Year!
City Orchard Projects
Monday, October 3rd, 2011
Photograph: The London Orchard Project
Across London there are crops of growing communities, mini-orchards and farms sprouting up in lots of different neighbourhoods. More and more Londoners want to be able to get involved in growing their own produce, and whilst they may not have the actual space they can turn to different sustainability and growing projects across the city. One such organisation is “The London Orchard Project” set up by green experts Carina Dunkerley and Rowena Ganguli in 2009. There are lost orchards across the city, the area around Heathrow airport used to have vast orchards all around and there were small-scale orchards in centre of the Victorian city. Apple varieties lost to the past include London Pippin, Merton Joy and Hounslow Wonder.
Photograph: The London Orchard Project
The group plants community orchards in London’s unused spaces and inner-city parks; across the city there is a shortfall in allotments – the average waiting list is 5 years and in popular areas it peaks at 20 years. The London Orchard Project helps Londoners waiting for their allotments and giving them growing projects close to their homes. They help to promote community production and gives locals the opportunity to eat fruit grown close to home. So far they have planted 23 community orchards of approximately 10 trees each, the trees have included: apples, pears, plums and even apricots and peaches. Once fruit trees have settled in they require very little help and maintenance – perfect for the city-grower!
Photograph: The London Orchard Project
The Hackney Harvest has been a off-shoot of the London Orchard Project, and carefully maps the fruit tree that are tucked away in squares, parks and gardens around Hackney. The group wants to make the most of the fruit the trees produce, ensuring that it doesn’t simply fall to the ground and go to waste. Volunteers spend their Sundays foraging through woods for fallen fruit, and then laden with produce they can enjoy the fruits of their labour. The group encourages recipe sharing and bake-offs!
Photograph: The Hackney Harvest
Both of these groups show just how easy it is to enjoy a taste of the good life in the heart of the city.
The Novice Gardener
Thursday, July 7th, 2011
Before I started working at the Balcony Gardener, I would watch in vain from my top-floor window as my neighbours would tend to their garden and pick their home-grown produce; without any outdoor space and any seeming green-fingered ability my home was bereft of living things. On many attempts my flatmates and I would try keeping plants inside, but more often than not those poor plants would start to wilt in the corner and would eventually be sent to the lofty garden in the sky, like so many before them. My Dad was a keen and busy gardener when I was growing up and I had spent summer holidays helping him re-seed lawns, cut back bushes and making compost so why couldn’t I keep a supermarket basil plant alive in my kitchen?
A few months working with the Balcony Gardener soon opened up my eyes to urban gardening, the idea that you could create a small oases in your limited space and that it could be manageable and easy to look after – very important factors for a now novice gardener like myself. I saw Isabelle’s two beautiful balconies overlooking the London rooftops, within the city she had created two gardening gems that were bountiful, bright, peaceful and vibrant. It was amazing to see how she had created two gardens up in the sky that easily rivaled most people’s backyards. I was introduced to the idea of container gardening, and was looking into different groups such as London based Guerilla Gardening and the New York High Line, organisations like Isabelle that promoted and encouraged urbanites to roll up their sleeves and get gardening. I was well and truly bitten by the green-fingered bug, I wanted to take part! But how? My flat is on the top two floors of a Victorian terrace, our neighbours downstairs have the sole use of the garden and I didn’t think they would appreciate me planting pansies on their lawn. I needed to re-think. Then I realised the whole idea behind balcony gardening is being able to create your own green space however restricted and limited it maybe – it could be in the sky, outside your window, on your roof, there was always the potential to create a green gem. So I looked outside our front door, we had a scruffy communal entrance set back from the road where we kept our bins. Could this be my balcony garden?
I told my parents of my plans, and ever-supportive my Dad gave me a planted pot to start with. I positioned it carefully next to the bins, and admired it every time I arrived home. We then had a mini-heatwave and I forgot to water it for a week, it was on it’s way out. I didn’t want my hopes for a new garden to wilt like so many other plants before, I realised that Isabelle actually had to water and care for her plants for them to thrive. After I carefully pruned the dead leaves, and eventually gave it some water and plant food by a miracle my plant resurrected itself and blossomed. Even though it was one pot sat next to three bins, I was happily calling it my garden. With help from Isabelle I planted some lavender in a vintage bath, and then started to increase my number of pots. I even re-arranged the bins and moved them out of the way, painted our meter boxes green and placed some solar lamps that lit the garden up at night. It’s blooming! No longer the scruffy entrance it once was, the walk to my house is lined with colour and aroma eminates from the mint and lavendar plants. I even managed to re-use a casserole dish that had cracked and planted some geraniums.
Inspired, I even started some plants in the house and they’ve thrived!
As the pictures show, it’s still a work-in progress, I’m experimenting seeing what works and moving things around to see what sits well together.
My next project I’ve set for myself is to start chilli plants from seeds, I’ve been coached well and have started them inside on the window, watch this space – maybe in a few months it’ll be thai red curry everyday for dinner.
Urban Physic Garden
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
Illustration of The Urban Physic Garden, Union Street, London.
If you find yourself close to London Bridge in the next few months, we would wholeheartedly recommend a trip to the Urban Physic Garden created on Union Street. Volunteers have put together a moden-day medicinal garden on what was once derelict ground and have arranged the garden as a collection of hospital wards. Depending on your ailment you can find a natural, herbal remedy from either the dermatology, gastroenterology, cardiology or psychiatry wards. Herbalists are on hand to recommend aloe vera for skin complaints or lavender for soothing any worries of the mind.
There is a great pop-up cafe on site from the Rambling Restaurant, this time housed in an old ambulance showcasing recipes using fresh ingredients from the garden and herb-infused dishes. Throughout July and August there will be a series of talks and workshops to attend in the Operating Theatre with topics ranging from guerilla gardening, the journey from plants to medicine and even an opportunity to create your own pizzas in a wood-fired oven. We’re also looking forward to seeing the roving installations, so far they have planned a ping-pong skip and wooden seesaw.
The garden runs until 15th of August when the site closes and the plants are put up for adoption.
Urban Physic Garden, 100 Union Street, SE1 ON
http://www.physicgarden.org.uk/