It’s a bit of a waste, and it doesn’t help you to get much variety into what you’re growing, and variety is half the fun. To partly counteract this, I sometimes swap a few seeds and bulbs with other small gardeners via websites here and there, although it’s a rather piecemeal process. It got me thinking about how great it would be to get all my swaps done in one go next year so I could get straight on with the sowing and growing, and how other urban gardeners were probably in the same position.

So I’ve decided to arrange a swap shop for urban gardeners in early 2012, before the growing season starts. I’ve picked Sunday the 5th of February, the weekend before Valentine’s Day, which will give growers enough time to start off the earliest seedlings. The location isn’t decided yet, but it will be a central London location where people can drop in after lunch to chat and swap. Probably a cafe or a pub where we can book a booth or table.

Who’s invited? Anyone who wants to grow edible plants:

• On a windowsill (even if it’s only a couple of pots of herbs)
• In window boxes
• In pots on a patio or fire escape
• In a small garden
• On an urban allotment

If you’re an experienced gardener, why not stick around for a chat and a drink or two, and pass on your tips and skills to the newer gardeners. I’ll bring along a few small envelopes too, in case people want to split up larger packets between several swappers.

There will be more announcements nearer the time about location and the plants on offer, but for the time being can I get a rough idea of how many people might be interested in joining in? Leave a quick message in the comments below or drop me a quick email at penny @ pennygolightly dotcom.

It was mainly down to two things. Firstly I didn’t plant out some of the tomato seedlings until July so they didn’t all get the chance to get up to speed. Secondly the summer didn’t have enough sun until it was kind of too late.

I did eventually get most of these stubbornly green tomatoes to ripen, so here are a few tips if you find yourself with the same problem.

If your green tomatoes are still on the plant, there are two main things you can do:

1. Move tomatoes in pots or growbags so they’re in the sunniest and warmest spot in the garden.

2. If your tomatoes are cordon tomatoes (also called vine tomatoes, or indeterminate tomatoes) rather than bushy/determinate tomatoes, you might need to limit their growth so they put their efforts into growing and ripening fruit instead of growing lots more leaves and stems. Nip out sideshoots with your thumb and forefinger when you see them starting to form, and also ‘stop’ the plant (usually done in August) once it’s formed for or five trusses (bunches of tomato flowers) by nipping out the top of the main vine.

If the green tomatoes are fully formed but they just won’t ripen, you can remove some of them from the plant to ripen separately. There are a couple of things to try, but avoid putting them all in a closed greenhouse on a sunny day as they’re more likely to cook and rot than go red.

Things to try if they’re already picked:

1. Pop them onto a windowsill and check them every couple of days.

2. Put them into a drawer/cardboard box/paper bag with a ripening banana. It gives off a gas that’s supposed to kick start the ripening process.

You might still end up with a few that stay stubbornly green. If that happens, cook them up. You can make fried green tomatoes, green tomato salsa (look for recipes that use tomatillos and use green toms plus a pinch of sugar), or green tomato and date chutney.

And of course there’s next year to think about.

Next year I’ll remember not to choose everything from the late ripening category. I’ll plant at least a couple of varieties that naturally ripen mid-season, and at least one tomato that does well in relatively cold weather. You can easily find this information out by looking at online seed catalogues from the big manufacturers.

After reading around the subject a bit, I think I’ll avoid the ones that ripen incredibly early though as they sound kind of watery and flavourless. If it isn’t tasty, it isn’t making the list.

Do you have any handy tomato tips to add?

For starters I was convinced there would be no aubergines, then this happened:

The big butternut squash ripened, but it somehow got bruised so I had to cut it down and cook the undamaged bit. There were lots of small fruits that never made it to the flowering stage, then the plant decided to throw out seven healthy looking buds – I knew there was no hope of them all ripening, one would be a miracle at this stage, so I nipped four of them out last month and hand pollinated the remaining three to see if anything grew.

The Japanese onion squash (red kuri) had the same problem of fruit buds going yellow and not opening, so only one pumpkin grew on each vine. I’ve cut them today and put them on a windowsill indoors to start the ripening process, where the skin thickens and the flavour sweetens.

Both buckets of beans were still flowering in late September, but I think we’ve had the last proper serving out of them now.

The courgettes are still going, although they’ve had a bit of downy mildew (more about this another time). I’m hoping we might get one more to grow into a marrow, but we’ll see.

The crookneck squash plants are doing well…

… so are the cucumbers, after some hand pollination to make up for their well-hidden female flowers and lack of male flowers.

The tomatoes are still a law unto themselves, so I’ve had to cut some of the fruit and put it in the sunniest spot of the garden to see if more of it will ripen. Unfortunately it does look like blight has set in to a couple of plants in the last three or four days, but our neighbours have had it for several weeks already so all things considered maybe we had a good run here compared to most.

I’ll be writing about autumn garden tasks and planting soon, and catching up with the windowsill kitchen garden too. Might have to do a short series about garden pests and diseases as well, if there’s time.

How’s your garden growing? Are you thinking ahead to next year yet?

Yes, it’s a garden round-up. Woo! Due to a six-month hiatus I’ve missed being able to log a whole growing season, which is seriously rubbish, but I do have a few pictures from the middle of August so garden fans can have a quick nosey at what was happening in high summer. Of course, high summer is a term you can only use loosely, but we’ll come to that later.

First up, most of my outdoor herbs:

We have par-cel (a leaf celery I’ll grow again next year), chervil, oregano, Moroccan mint (for tea, bought as a seedling), chives, a revived rosemary, marjoram, sage, thyme and coriander. I grew lots of fancy varieties last year, but this time around I stuck to the things we eat the most of, resulting in quicker garden prep and less waste. Didn’t bother with sorrel this year as the local snails attack it like crazy.

One strange success story was this butternut squash. They were beyond pathetic last year, but for some reason I decided to chuck the last spare seed into some leftover compost, thinking nothing would happen and I’d have a pot free for salad leaves. It grew like crazy and if you look at the top left of the pic there’s a healthy butternut hanging from the vine.

This shot of the decking shows cucumber, gartenperle and tigerella tomatoes, Greenbush courgette, Jay-BeanZ (the pot of runner beans with rocket around its feet), a red kuri climbing winter squash (aka Japanese onion squash or uchiki kuri), yellow pear tomatoes, and sweet peppers. Disco Biscuit the cat has taken a few moments out of her hectic schedule to have a quick disco nap in the sun too.

The windbreak behind the beans is made up of old opened-out hessian shopping bags, and the metal band around the top of the bean poles is from a broken old barrel (I saw this done on a posh frame the previous summer and thought it looked great so I made a lo-fi freebie version out of salvage).

The beans did very well in July then stopped producing, unlike their namesake, so I added a top dressing of compost and watered with half-strength tomato food (they make their own nitrogen so ordinary plant food isn’t needed) and they staged a successful cane-topping comeback. Music to my plate. The courgette has fed us well too, living on a mixture of last year’s chopped up tomato and potato leaves and stems, some growmore pellets and a bit of compost.

I’ve tried to make the garden as low maintenance as possible, so there’s lettuce around bigger plant stems and black plastic sheeting to keep in moisture, plus old two-litre plastic  milk cartons with pinholes in the bottom half-sunk into most of the plant pots to make watering easier, less frequent and less wasteful (reduces evaporation and is less likely to cause loss of plants to ‘damping off’).

Here’s Beanyonce, Jay-BeanZ’s girlfriend. If you look closely you’ll see she has a halo. She has lettuce around her feet too, and salad burnet. This pot contains fine french beans (Blue Lake variety, to J-B’s Scarlet Emperor runners), and a few borlotto beans. She also went a bit useless in late July but was revived with the same tonic of compost and tomato food. Last year’s beans were almost done in by blackfly but this year there were almost none, probably due to a lack of ants ‘farming’ the little blighters. There have been minor attacks by tiny snails, but these are easily removed and relocated.

First time I’ve grown vine tomatoes in this garden. This Marmande beefsteak plant (donated by lovely Natasha De Vil) has gone beserk. I’ve ‘stopped’ it by nipping out the top of the main stem but haven’t been all that ruthless with every side shoot. A couple ripened in July (nyom) but the rest are sitting there looking glossy and stubbornly green so I’ve resorted to picking the biggest ones and bringing them indoors to sit on a sunny windowsill. Lots of other people seem to be having similar problems this year.

A Gardener’s Delight tomato grew very strongly and made lots of fruit, but again is refusing to ripen. Might start a petition to have it renamed Gardener’s Peeve.

The Marketmore outdoor cucumbers are making about one a fortnight, and they just need a good scrub to remove the spines rather than a traditional peeling. I’ll grow at least four of these next year, they’re so tasty.

This Minibell is a dwarf cherry tomato, supposed to grow 8 to 10 inches high. It’s two feet high and rising and has at least 100 toms on it at the moment, so it’s a very happy plant. Many thanks to Matt H who swapped it for pepper plants.

These are Yellow Pear heirloom tomatoes. They’ve been the only consistent ripeners this year, and look and taste beautiful. Will grow them again next year.

This weirdie is a yellow crookneck summer squash plant. Turns out they’re easy to grow in pots, and give you funny-shaped nutty-flavoured fruits. I’ll grow them again too since they’re so tasty.

I grew some sweet peppers outdoors and in the mini-greenhouse, and was surprised that the most flowers and fruit came from the outdoor plants. Normally it’s supposed to be the other way around as they prefer to be warm and sheltered. You don’t get many but they have great flavour. Growing a couple of different types of aubergine in the greenhouse too, but they are annoyingly finnicky and not a sign of any fruit yet. Probably won’t grow them again next year.

To make the most of the small space there’s cut-and-come-again salad in hanging baskets along with edible flowers (nasturtiums shown here).

Other plants not shown: spring onions, Shimonita onions, basil in with all tomatoes to prevent whitefly, Autumn cabbages, mangetout peas, Early Onward peas, mixed radishes, Paris Market stubby carrots, baby White Spear parsnips, vegetable fennel, wild flowers, lamb’s lettuce, and purple and white sprouting broccoli. I’ll write about the windowsill garden another time if there are any takers.

So, gardeners, over to you. What have you been growing this year?

Lots of overwintering herbs, salads and greens are sprouting away in the mini greenhouse, which is doing its job really well, and will eventually provide some overspill space for any windowsill plants that get too big for their boots in late Spring.

Today I’ve been digging, lugging bags of compost around and doing one batch of planting. Late February seems to be a good time around here for planting Early Onward and Sugarsnap peas, including a few extra ones to eat as pea shoots in March and April salads.

These have both been grown in pots, and I’ve sown a variety of different radish seeds in between the peas as a catch crop, plus some winter-hardy lettuces to add ‘living mulch’ and help keep the soil moist. The three different plants are traditionally thought to grow happily together, and my gardening experience last year seemed to bear this out.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on the budget for the year, and it’s going OK so far:

• The £10 for seeds has all gone now. If I need anything else it’s going to involve bartering or swapping. Or asking nicely for a few Sunshine F1 kabocha squash seeds for my birthday – hint hint, Beau. Subtle, huh? *cough*

• My £20 compost budget has gone too. I managed to find a special offer on some nice peat-free organic compost at Harrod Horticultural, plus a voucher code and some cashback. Managed to get 250 litres of the good stuff, very pleased.

• The remaining £10 for ‘general garden stuff’ has had £4 spent so far. I used £2 to get some extra-long garden canes so I could grow French, runner and borlotto beans on wigwams, and a few extra to train climbing squash plants up. Another £2 went on some heavy duty weed fabric. This is partly to keep weeds down in the raised beds, but mainly it’s a last ditch attempt to stop M-Cat digging every living thing in the ground up (and crapping on it as the final insult).

• What’s left? There’s only £6 to go for the rest of the growing season. I have plenty of pots, bird-scarers and supports, so all that’s really needed is a little fertiliser and some tomato food. Nipping out later to get a packet of Growmore granules from Poundland. Rock and roll. Woo.

I’m going for a very low maintenance, high-yield bunch of crops this year, and have been looking into all sorts of ways to stop the soil in pots drying out. I now have various water reservoirs, recycled heavy duty plastic soil covers and living mulches sorted out, and am looking forward to lots of healthy eating and not too much associated faffing about.

Edited to add: now spent the last few quid on some Growmore to rake into the soil and prepare it for planting in a few weeks, plus enough vegetable and tomato feed to last until the Autumn. Hoping to keep the garden pesticide free, and will be planting some of the three packets of wildlife-friendly seeds I’ve kindly been given to encourage lots of pollination and natural pest control.

Are you growing your own this year? What are you growing? Do you have any tips for low maintenance (but cheap) gardening? Please let me know!

Since it’s only February I’m not getting ahead of myself, and am mostly growing plants that are likely to stay on the sill throughout the summer. This includes:

• Sweet peppers (traffic light mix from last year)
• Aubergines (Black Beauty from last year, and some free mini-aubergine seeds kindly donated by @Amberlaw via the magic of twitter)
• Chilis (Cayenne and Hungarian Hot wax saved from last year, Serrano seeds pilfered from Wahaca at the weekend, and early Jalapenos where I went kerrrazy and bought some new seeds)

Apart from the Jalapeno seeds there’s been no real outlay. I mixed some leftover peat-free compost with sand to make potting compost, and I have pots and propagators to re-use from last year. Very thrifty so far.

Tomatoes can wait until next month, as the sunlight isn’t strong enough yet and I don’t want to end up with a load of spindly, leggy plants. There will probably be enough room for two of the cordon types if I rig up some canes and cables for them to grow up, and if they get too big for their boots then it’ll be easy enough to pinch out the ends of the vines.

The end effect is going to be like a mini greenhouse by the summer. Can’t wait.

Are you growing any food on your windowsill this Spring? Tell me all about it please.

There was a little competition to see whether anyone could work out what had caused the mess below. This particular pest is a problem in January, February and March on brassicas, and in the Spring they like to attack pea plants as well.

… and the answer was pigeons. More specifically one very cheeky wood pigeon that is now so fat it can hardly fly, the greedy B. Here’s some more of his handiwork.

So, one birdy seems to have made short work of some of the sprouting broccoli and the last sprout top. I was amazed he had the nerve seeing as we have two free range cats, one of which is a good little hunter. Well, birdy’s smarter than you might think, because he swoops into the garden in the morning while the kitties are inside having their breakfast.

I’m not fretting too much though. First of all he doesn’t seem to be inviting his mates over, and secondly he hasn’t attacked the main growing points of most of the plants he’s pecked. Also, he seems to have gone for the weedier plants and has mostly left the big strong ones alone.

The RHS website suggests that you can shoot pigeons, but that isn’t practical or safe in a tiny garden and besides it seems cruel and pointless – other birds would fly in to replace him soon enough. I was rather hoping that my cats would scare most birds away but they seem to have spent most of February asleep indoors instead.

So it seems that prevention is better than cure. In future I will be guarding my brassicas more carefully, and maybe also my peas. One of the best things you can do is to use netting, but unfortunately one of the cats insists on getting tangled up in anything like that whenever I try to use it.

I’ve had to improvise with what’s lying around, including bubble wrap and string for the smaller plants (looks terrible but seems to work).

At the suggestion of Alys Fowler I’ve also used some upturned hanging baskets to protect the growing points, and this seems to be working too. What I like best about this is that the green wires and green twine don’t show up so much, less of the ‘municipal tip chic’ look.

It was time to bring in the last of the sprouts at the weekend, so I left the non-useable remains of the sprout top out for the pigeon to peck at in the hope that this will take his mind off the other plants.

One more thing I would say is if you suspect pigeon damage, take action quickly, in case they come back en masse later. A hungry flock of winter pigeons can strip your plants back to the stems in a few minutes. Prevention is better than cure and you can’t rely on nearby cats to keep the pests away in cold weather.

So there you have it – cheap and easy ways to stop wood pigeons eating your cabbages, broccoli and pea plants.

Do you have any other advice about how to keep wood pigeons out of your garden and stop them eating your crops? Please tell me all about it!

Many problems can be overcome by chucking expensive chemicals at them, but it isn’t a guaranteed fix and you wouldn’t necessarily want to eat your veggies afterwards.

Let’s start with a little ‘murder mystery’, shall we? Look at the picture below and guess what disease or creature caused this damage to this sprouting broccoli plant.

Competition: The first correct ‘Diagnosis Murder’ answer left in the comments section below will win a mini-collection of vegetable seeds suitable for growing in a small garden. (UK entrants only). The answer will be revealed on Friday morning so you’ll need to be quick.

The garden has been very productive for the most part, but there have been problems with animals of all sizes:

• pets (not all of them mine)
• ants
• blackfly and other aphids
• slugs and snails
• foxes
• assorted birds
• butterflies and moths
• beet leaf miners
• wasps

Amazingly there was no carrot root fly, but that’s probably because I did some companion planting and stuck to the rules about thinning and harvesting. I’ll write about those on another occasion.

Plus there have been problems with diseases, mainly:

• Downy mildew
• Rust
• Mosaic virus
• General stem rot

The one thing I was most worried about was blight, but the area I live in escaped somehow so we ended up with strong and healthy tomato and potato plants. That could have been because we had some long hot stretches over the summer, or it could have been blind luck.

I’ll be writing about all kinds of garden pests and diseases – and how to cheaply stop them destroying all your crops – over the next few weeks, as the gardening year starts to take shape. On Friday I’ll begin by tackling our mystery ‘friend’ from the crime scene above.

Have you had problems with any garden pests or diseases? Did you manage to deal with them without using harsh chemicals? Any tips for other growers?

I’ll be growing as many veggies and herbs as I can again this year. Flavour is the most important factor, but I’m also looking at getting as much value for money as possible and keeping the whole thing within budget.

This year’s food gardening budget is being set at a total of £40. That’s £10 for seeds, £20 for new compost and £10 for everything else. A budget’s definitely necessary as you can easily get carried away and spend a small fortune in garden centres or online shops, ask any gardener what happens when they start looking at those tempting catalogues filled with new-season packs of seeds…

The available growing space currently isn’t big enough to completely supply the household with veggies and salad all year round, so I’ve decided not to grow potatoes, maize and onions this year. They take up too much room (or compost) and they’re pretty cheap to buy, so the space is being given to other ingredients that give a higher yield and/or cost more in the shops.

I think I’ll get the best value this year from:

• Herbs: parsley, coriander, mint, Italian and Thai basil, wild garlic, chives, chervil, lemongrass and a few others
• Salad veg: lettuce, rocket, spring onions, radicchio, land cress, radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes etc
• Greens: pak choi, mizuna, mini cabbages, kale, kohl rabi
• Legumes: sugar snap peas, early/late peas, French beans, borlotto beans
• Others: mini carrots and parsnips, Florence fennel, chillis, sweet peppers, green and yellow courgettes, winter squash

The seeds budget has pretty much been spent, but if I can get hold of some runner beans for free then I’ll grow them as well. Got me some tomato and sweetcorn seeds to swap, so let’s see.

Last year had a real element of trial and error, but the experience has helped me to learn more about the microclimate and other limitations of gardening in this spot. I’ll be taking action against some pests and diseases so that I can still grow most of my favourite things, but it’s also time to admit defeat against some problems. Garden pests and diseases are many and varied, so I’ll write about them another time.

For the moment, let’s just say that it’s not viable to grow the following on the tiny plot, for reasons of space, cost, or susceptibility to local pests/diseases:

• Most root vegetables
• Broad beans
• Calabrese
• Maincrop spinach and chard
• Permanent plants (asparagus, rhubarb, globe artichokes)
• Most slow growing plants (cauliflower, big brassicas)
• Fruit trees and bushes

But that still leaves a lot of sowing and growing to be getting on with once the weather starts to warm up.

Are you growing your own this year? What are you planning to grow?

First up, there’s one stick of Brussels left. That’s about six helpings of sprouts (nice halved and added to stir fries), and a full sprout top to cook as spinach/cabbage.

Next, we have the monstrous sprouting broccoli, purple and white varieties. It’s still a little early for them to start making their tasty bits, but I’ll start cutting them off as soon as they appear so the plants start to make more.

There’s also a little Spring cabbage and curly kale, and a few straggly Spring onions…

This growbag contains some unusual winter-variety carrots. I was given a free packet of these seeds in the Autumn and they’ve grown quietly and slowly over the winter. We’ve eaten some of the thinnings already, and the proper carrots should be ready in a few weeks. Quite good timing to fill the ‘hungry gap’ in the middle of Spring.

The mini greenhouse contains some winter sowings of chard, spinach, Arctic King and Tom Thumb lettuce, parsley, coriander, chicory and a few others. With hindsight I should have got these going as soon as I cleared out the greenhouse in the Autumn, to get the seedlings more established before the winter hit. They will be ready in a few weeks, it’ll just take a while longer for them to get going.

The surviving herbs (pic above) are thyme, sage, rosemary, chives, chervil, oregano and peppermint. There is some cold damage but I think it’ll be OK. They just need some dead leaves removing.

On the windowsill indoors we have winter sowings of parsley and coriander, plus a very healthy Sweet Genovese basil that’s survived since last Summer. The cat ate most of my baby lemongrass plant last week, but I hope it might somehow revive itself. Once again, bad kitty, bad.

And last of all we have a cayenne pepper plant, still making me hot chillis. One day M-Cat is going to eat one of these by accident, and I don’t think I’ll be entirely sympathetic when it happens.

In the next few days I’ll be writing about dealing with garden pests on a budget (and/or organically), and working out my wish list for this year’s planting plan. My seeds and new plants budget is strictly capped at £10, but that should be plenty I reckon. Let’s see.

Do you have any kitchen garden plants growing? Has anything survived the harsh winter where you live? Plant-saving tips and any garden gossip welcome!