April Update

Spring is sprung, in sort of a damp way, and the garden is thriving. I have nascent figs on my fig tree, the grape vines have come back to life and all around the garden, things are sprouting that I intended to sprout. I love this time of year - I'm always shocked that things are doing what they're supposed to and the miracle of food from the ground might be likely to happen again.

Not pictured - all the things that've been eaten by slugs/birds already.

One thing which hasn't gone to plan is to start relying solely on my own produce from May, which was part of the original terms of the challenge. The plan was to plant seedlings early and use the sunlamp to give them a headstart, which hasn't worked as well as I would've liked. I hoped for cabbage and carrots to tide me over, but the January carrots are very spindly still and the cabbages are still more promise than reality and while we could survive by just not eating any vegetables for a month and having loads of pasta, I feel that would be somewhat against the spirit of the rules!

Next May, I will have the overwintered cabbages, carrots, cauliflower and kale to feed us with, as well as a freezer's full of stored veg, so I've decided to push the challenge back to run from June to June instead.

That looks a lot more likely to happen - the first set of seedlings that I grew have mostly survived the transfer into the ground. I started with 3 broccoli, 3 cabbages, 7 cauliflowers and 3 brussels sprouts. Of those, only 3 cauliflowers and 1 brussels are pronounced dead yet, which is a pretty good hit rate for me.

If anyone's playing along at home, the best advice I ever received was to use bell cloches to protect vulnerable seedlings - these are basically miniature greenhouses which you place over the seedling so that light can get in, but cold winds and predators can't get in until the plant is big enough to look after itself. I've managed to make my own, shockingly enough out of empty Diet Coke bottles and they're doing a really good job of keeping my future meals alive.

A surviving cauliflower

The next exciting stage is when they stop looking like leafy things that may or may not die and start looking like miniature food. Hopefully, that'll be in the next few weeks.

PJW

How to play along at home, part 2 - Carrots

When I was writing up about the vertical garden, one of the comments that I got about it was that it was a brilliant idea, but completely impossible for that person to copy. I launched in with my patented zeal of the converted to point out that it was simple, easy and fun, only to get the response that they were in a first floor flat and they didn't think it would go down well if they strapped the plastic bottles to somebody else's wall.

Never deterred, I decided to try some experiments to see just how small and cheap an indoor space one could grow vegetables in, to see whether I could lure them in via another route. Which leads us to:

Five reasons to grow carrots at home:
1) They require almost no space, not a huge amount of light and are very forgiving plants
2) They taste loads better than supermarket carrots.
3) They cost £0.69 for a packet of 500 seeds in Homebase/Sainsburys/Aldi.
4) Store bought carrots go manky very quickly - if you grow your own, they'll keep for months just in the ground.
5) You can grow a range of funky colours, which are healthier for you than just eating monochrome carrots. This year, I'm growing red, orange and purple carrots and have had to talk myself out of white, yellow and marbled ones too.

Not pictured - Any photoshopping. That's actually what they look like.

Carrots grow vertically, so they're excellent for gardening in small spaces. All they need is space for the root to grow down and form the long carrotty-root that's the eating bit. Usually, I grow them in plastic plant pots outside, and if you've got a garden, that's what I'd recommend. You can get a 40cm pot in Sainsburys for £3.50 at the moment, which is enough for around 25-30 carrots at a time (you can replant every time you pull one, so you get a constant supply).

However, for those who haven't a garden or haven't the space, or just fancy a small-scale tinker, the best pot is to recycle a plastic container. I'm experimenting with a 2l plastic coke bottle and a 4 pint plastic milk bottle.

Obviously the first step is to cut the top off to leave an open pot. Stab some reasonably-sized water holes in the sides near the bottom with scissors or a sharp knife and then fill with compost (£2.50 from Sainsburys for a small bag).

Carrots grow from tiny seeds, which is the one thing against them for a novice gardener - they're fiddly little bastards.

Most guides to growing carrots say to sprinkle them lightly over the area where they're supposed to be growing and then thin the seedlings out when they come up, which is to say to pull up any seedlings that are growing too close together. However, I don't like doing that for a few reasons: it's more work, I'm paranoid about pulling up the wrong one and ruining it and I feel crap about putting my efforts into making too many things grow and then killing the spares.

So I follow an alternate route, which is to plant one seed for each intended carrot. This has the major advantage of allowing me to space the carrots perfectly, so that I don't end up with stunted, overcrowded carrots. However, it does mean that if a seed fails to germinate, then that spot doesn't get a carrot as there's no redundancy built it. That's not a huge problem though, as I can just put another carrot seed into that empty space when I see it's not coming up and get that carrot a few weeks later.

In the coke bottle, I planted three seeds in a triangle shape and in the milk bottle I planted four in a square. They need to be about 3-4cm from each other - picture the fully fledged carrot that you plan to get out of this and make sure it's got room enough to grow to that size without bumping into its neighbours.

Then cover with a very thin layer of compost and water thoroughly. Carrots need quite a bit of water to grow (being roots and all) and inside carrots obviously don't get the benefit of rainfall to help them along. The best and easiest way to water inside carrots is from the bottom. Put your ersatz pots on a vaguely sunny windowsill in old Chinese takeaway boxes which you fill with water. The holes you stabbed in the bottom will allow water to be drawn up into the dirt (as long as they're underwater, obviously) and the roots will reach down to get it, resulting in nice big carrots. Keep filling up the takeaway box until the water stops disappearing and then just keep it topped up when you notice it's dropped below the water holes.

Now all that's left is to wait for your carrots to grow. They take anywhere from 2 to 4 months, depending on the variety and also how good the conditions are - the more sunlight the better. You can pull them early for baby carrots or wait longer for bigger ones, but waiting for monster ones will lose you some flavour. The green fuzzy bit on top does give you a bit of a clue to how big the root will be, but sometimes you can get massive leaves and a pathetic carrot only for the spindly leaves next to it to be hiding a huge carrot. It's pot luck and you won't know till you pull one up, which is part of the fun.

PJW

PS. There are still some free strawberries going if anyone wants some. I thinned out the bed a little bit more today and now have 13 spare!