• North London -The Regents Park, Inner Circle NW1
• West London – Hammersmith Community Gardens Association Phoenix Farm W12 & Ravenscourt Park Greenhouses W6
• East London - Growing Communities, Allen Gardens, N16
• South London - The London Wildlife Trust – Centre for Wildlife Gardening in Peckham SE15

http://www.capitalgrowth.org/big_idea/

On Monday 23 January, Real Bread Campaign ambassador and star of Channel 4′s The Fabulous Baker Brothers, Tom Herbert sows the Bake Your Lawn challenge for schools around Britain: grow your own loaf!

If you’re a teacher or work in a community youth group, read on for details of how to get hold of a handful of organic wheat and the free grassroots guide on how to grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it.

http://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/bake_your_lawn/

• Garden Plans: Quickly produce garden plans and change the layout
• Growing information: Just click for full details of how to grow each plant
• Spacing and Crop Families: Clearly shown by the coloured area around each vegetable
• Personalised Planting Chart: Print a chart showing how many of each plant you require and when to sow, plant out and harvest them
• Reminder Emails: Reminds you what needs sowing and planting out in your garden (optional)
• Easy Crop Rotation: Plan next year’s garden and it shows you where to avoid planting each vegetable

http://www.growveg.com/gift/giftcertificates.aspx

Let me know if you have had similar experiences to this farmer who is still picking his raspberries .To date there have been no real frosts in the south of England but … feel sure they must come soon!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15869905

Seed catalogues already provide kitchen gardeners with a lengthening range of tomato cultivars such as ‘Tornado’, ‘Roma VF’ and ‘Marmande’, and melons such as ‘Ogen’, ‘Sweetheart’ and ‘Galia’ to tempt them, plus there are are lots of chilis,sweet peppers, aubergines to choose from.

British plant breeders are selecting specifically for the warming UK conditions, and trialling cultivars sourced from milder climates to see how they perform in UK gardens. This gives an ever-expanding choice of a range of unusal crops. Who would have believed a few years ago that UK gardeners could grow sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) .

Vegetable suppliers

Seeds of Italy has more than 500 Mediterranean vegetables, many of them heirloom or regional cultivars new to the UK, and also supply fruit trees.
Thompson & Morgan has new aubergines and new blight-resistant potatoes – ‘Sarpo Axona’ and ‘Sarpo Mira’. The company also offers cuttings or ‘slips’ of three cultivars of sweet potato, and many ‘heritage’ tomatoes and chillies.
Tozer Seeds breeds specifically for UK conditions, and trial cultivars from the Mediterranean. They offer an increasingly large range of sweet corn, and have seen a huge increase in the popularity of their ever-widening range of chili peppers. Their new butternut squashes ‘Hunter’ and ‘Harrier’ were bred to ripen fully in UK conditions.

 OUTDOOR RIPENING FIGS IN AUTUMN ARE COMMON IN UK GARDENS

Adapting veg plots to less water

The main priority is to retain winter and summer rainfall. Achieving a high organic matter content in garden soil is vital to help reduce evaporation .Conserving soil water, mulching, using garden compost, green composted waste, chipped bark or woven plastic landscape fabric, are also essential.

Using collected rainwater and even recycled household or ‘grey’ water has to become the norm. Rainwater can be stored, but grey water is best used immediately – see the water pages on this blog for more information http://www.myclimatechangegarden.com/blog/where-can-i-buy-a-rainwater-harvesting-system

A new iPad App is launching soon to make planning your vegetable garden even more enjoyable – and easy!

Garden Plan Pro  is the fastest way to plan a productive vegetable, herb or fruit garden and achieve your best ever harvest.

Designed by the makers of the award-winning garden planner, currently used by over 100,000 global gardeners with data from more then 6,500 weather stations in 20 countries.

Adapts to Your Location

Garden Plan Pro adapts to your local climate, giving recommended planting and harvesting dates for your area.

Simple to Use

With flexible drawing tools and an extensive database of plants and varieties, Garden Plan Pro makes it easy to design the perfect garden layout, rearrange plants and track progress.

Sign up for the launch at http://gardenplanpro.com/

TED recently invited Kitchen Gardens International to present their ideas for a world where gardening and growing our own food is a priority.The presentation by Roger Doiron  is entitiled A Subversive Plot: How to Grow a Revolution in Your Own Backyard is very American in style but the content makes absolute sense and will hopefully inspire everyone to think about this subject on a practical level and make what Roger talks about start to happen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezuz_-eZTMI

The RHS are also  running an online competition during next week to share your veggie delights. Post images of your veg on our Facebook page from Saturday, 15 October to Sunday, 23 October and  you might win a £50 seed voucher from Suttons Seeds

The veg in the challenge

• Beetroot ‘Boltardy’
• Chilli ‘Chenzo’
• Tomato ‘Alicante’
• Pumpkin ‘Hundredweight’

Each veg has three entry categories:

• Individual adult
• Child
• Group (gardening clubs, allotment groups etc)

If you prefer to exhibit the real thing just bring your veg to any of the RHS gardens ready for them to be judged at lunchtime on Sunday, 23 October.http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Grow-Your-Own/Great-RHS-Veg-Challenge

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Shows-Events/RHS-London-Flower-Shows/RHS-London-Autumn-Harvest-Show

I will be going along to listen to an interesting speaker from London who has caught my attention lately as she is encouraging a new breed of gardener in London.

Helen Babbs lives in Holloway, North London, in a first-floor flat with a small roof garden. Inspired by the launch of a Living Roofs for Wildlife campaign she decides to transform her rooftop into an organic, wildlife-friendly, edible garden. A complete gardening novice, she embarked upon a year of gardening and nature watching and has shared her experiences in an interesting book called My Garden, the City and Me Rooftop Adventures in the Wilds of London

Helen has received numerous positive reviews in national newspapers and publications and has recently started a blog for The Guardian on ‘a year in a window box’.http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/helen-babbs

Helen will  be reading excerpts from her book in the Harvest Hangout at the RHS Autumn Show and joins conversations in Lindley Wood’s Foraging Forum plus she will also be signing My Garden, the City and Me .

Great to see the RHS embracing roof top gardening and gardening in small spaces as  many people in London really do not have the space – or time – to engage in gardening on a big scale but would like to understand how to grow a few veggies or plants.

http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781604691672