Best Urban Farming Projects

Photo: Monocle copyright

A fascinating video full of ideas, plans and insight. Is it possible for us to extrapolate this concept wider, employing it rigorously in our social structures? Can we simply find the resources and skills set to manage this? And will the chavs just kick it to crap and set it on fire? All thoughts welcome…

(Source: bit.ly)

Tips, hints and fears - bring on Winter

Nature, your offspring may have devoured all my French Beans had to offer, yes I fought a running battle with Squirrels to see who could obtain the most fruit (they won) and yes the soil and restraints I provided were weak, but I shall now take you head on and face you at your sternest; Winter.

Winter growing.

I want to see how far I get. It might be a bold move, it might also be irrational but then there is potentially delicious, fresh produce at the end of it so I feel I have nothing to lose.

I’m going to throw in the following:

• Broad Beans (Super Aquadulce)
• Hardy lettuce (Arctic King)
• Purple sprouting broccoli
• Leeks
• Carrots
• Turnips
• Onions (Shakespeare)
• Garlic (Early Wight)

The most interesting bit is that I don’t really have a garden. I have a small section of raised bedding and an odd collection of pots and containers. But then I like a challenge. 

This is the space in front of my house:

(I have many more containers now…)

And this is the rear raised section:

The resources I’m looking to are numerous and each profer a confident passion for year-round sustainability and self preservation. If only to avoid the homogeny of the high street as much as possible. Armed with my war-time rhetoric, my naivety and my hunger I will sally forth to see what my efforts can conjure.

Some great reading on the subject lives here:

• How to Grow Winter and Spring Vegetables http://bbc.in/n75JD2
• Top 10 vegetables to grow over winter - Telegraph http://tgr.ph/nDiqoZ
• Growing Winter Vegetables | iGrowVeg http://bit.ly/oUVzHI
• Hardy winter vegetables / Royal Horticultural Society http://bit.ly/qqMRtY

And no list would be complete without a Guardian post…

• Dan Pearson shows you how to grow winter veg | The Observer http://bit.ly/oaCE9f 

Bring it on I say.

Struggling this season

Photo: Dalston’s Farm:shop

In an attempt to live by what I preach, I have been attempting to grow as much produce in and around my quite small north London home as possible.

Each attempt is a test and a lesson. I seem to fail much more than I triumph. But those victories are sweet: I haven’t had to buy Cucumbers all summer and the Beetroots we an incredible, delicious success against mites and pests.

Have you found it tough? I’m frequently sifting through the wonderful Ministry of Food book and trying to get tips from any source that seems to know what it is talking about. 

At the beginning of the season, I set out full of bravado and ambition with the design firmly in mind: lots of raising beds made from items salvaged from skips, fruit and veg overflowing the edges, helping shade itself, the continuous London rain doing it’s job and me reaping the benefits.

Although it never works out like that (of course my idealised, twee expectation were far-fetched but I kind of knew that from the outset…) It has been fascinating to see what works and what doesn’t; I’m pretty much giving up on Tomatoes from here on (well cherry ones at least).

It’s all experience, and just adds to the credence of helping me to know what I’m talking about. I know that each year it will improve and things like the fruit bushes will only prosper with age but I want them NOW goddam it!

There has been a lot of noise lately of the fact that over 1/4 of people are now supposedly growing their own. Are you? If I take my road as an example, there are probably 5 or 6 houses out of 50 that have something growing (that I can tell - most only have front garden that face south). 

What I want to discover is how do I help make this number 30 out of 50? What is it that will get more people to consider home-growing? There was an article in the Daily Mail that talked up the GYO movement but then got rather pessimistic with a lot of the comments stating how it was actually probably cheaper to go to the Supermarket, and how you could never actually make an impact on your meals from what meagre things you can grow yourself (both points I disagree with and my daily lunch is vindication of this stance).

It’s all the other reason on top of these highly functional, tangible factors; the fact that it lightens your reliance on the massive Supermarket chains, that it has no carbon footprint compared to the store bought, imported goods and that the freshness cannot be rivaled. Take that Mail readers!

Do we need to make veg sexy and cool to get more people into it? Do we need a change in the law somewhere to heavily encourage it? 

I’m planning to use Connected Roots to bring home grown produce to more people at a greater frequency so that the benefits stand up and slap people round the face.

So to finish, here are some of my peas, what a mini-victory they were!

Simply does it.

If the average sized garden (733sqm) was given over to fruit and vegetable growing, householders could grow 98 per cent of all the fruit and vegetables they consume each year.

The aim of Connected Roots is to develop a level of self-sufficiency in the UK not seen since the end of World War 2. With Connected Roots people in cities with limited space, can concentrate on a select few vegetables grow these abundantly and then swap with others doing them same - diversity of society ensures that people will differentiate what they grow and so people can trade to generate whole meals amongst a single street.

The other aspect to the project is to drive an urban growing movement through cities in the UK. Over half the world’s population now live in cities and this puts a significant strain on the production of the countryside. If people took to urban gardening in large numbers we could develop a healthier, more sustainable community easily. This is why we have started Connected Roots.

Start UK is an initiative to create greater sustainability. They have created a simple how-to guide for start out gardeners, with advice on simple produce and care. Read it here. Guides like this are invaluable and Connected Roots will be looking to deliver content like this as it develops - with videos and audio content leading the way.