• 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/

• 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

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/

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

This guest post has been written by Peter Kearney who created and runs the excellent City Food Growers web-sit from Brisbane in Australia.

Peter uses his expert horticultural knowledge and practical experience to explain how vegetable gardens can adapt to changing temperatures and unpredictable weather.

Being in tune with your local climate is one of most important success factors for gardening. Climate change has complicated the picture for vegetable gardeners, but there is a silver lining. With the right knowledge at the right time, food gardeners can actually grow more because of climate change.

Changing climate has in general brought greater extremes of temperatures with warmer and longer summers and often more extreme cold in winter, but on average, higher temperatures throughout the year. Food gardeners are finding that choosing vegetable crops with the methods they have always used is giving them results they don’t expect.

For many gardeners, figuring out when its right to plant vegetables is based on one or more of the following:

1. What they have always done – This is reliable so long as it has worked in the past, but climate change alters the picture.

2. Planting calendars – Most planting calendars use very broad zones for recommendations which do not account for local temperature variances. These zones are based on climate definitions which may be up to 100 years old. So with temperatures changing, the zones are becoming more inaccurate each year.

3. Advice from a nursery – Seedlings are often grown in temperature controlled environments and may come from thousands of kms away, so it very possible they are not in season for your local climate.

4. Emotion – Whenever you do things in the garden without some objective thought, the results will invariably tell you to go back to drawing board.

Vegetables are very sensitive to temperatures at planting and over their growing period. Frost is a killer for many vegetables. If you plant too early or too late in the season you may be hit with frost. If it is hotter earlier in the season, there are many crops you could get underway which you would not normally grow at that time and because of extended warm periods you could be staging your crops for much greater production. There may be crops that you thought would not grow at all, but are actually now very suitable for your climate.

In a changing climate, the biggest opportunities for a healthier and more productive garden include:

1. Extending your cropping time due to more heat and by becoming more aware of protecting your plants from frost and temperature extreme’s.

2. Planting new crops that were not previously suited to your climate.

3. Reducing the potential for crop loss by getting more accurate with your planting times.

Our web site planting calendar has been specifically designed to deal with these three opportunities . We have detailed local climate information and climate profiles for all the food plants in our web site. So you don’t need to know how to work through climate data, our Gardener subscriber planting calendar does it for you at the click of a mouse. It incorporates:

1. Local temperatures – Averages over the last 7-20 years (Australia, NZ and USA) . Its fascinating to see how much average temperatures have changed in Australia over the last 100 years compared to the last 10. Our web site deals with this climate change by you simply choosing your closest weather station to create your climate profile and you can easily fine tune this for your location in relation to the weather station and for micro-climates you may have created in your garden.

2. Frost data – Our site incorporates frost data for all the weather stations (Australia only at this point) so you can see your frost profile and easily manipulate the profile if you can protect your plants from frost, thereby increasing the number of plants you can select and your cropping time

3. Detailed climate profiles on more than 130 vegetables and herbs – These are all matched to your climate profile in the site calendar so when you search by day, by month or by crop and you get a list of ideal or OK crops to work with. This not only gives you the best times to plant the crops you know, but opens up the opportunity find crops you have not worked with before.

4. Climate warnings – Based on averages, the site tell you when there will be frost days, too much heat or cold during the growing period of the crops you have selected, so you can have advance warning to protect your plants.

In these times of climate change, the objective knowledge on planting and climate in our Gardener subscriber site and its ease of use, gives you the power to make timely decisions on managing your vegetable garden. It will help you achieve greater success in your food garden.

Visit:  http://cityfoodgrowers.com.au/about.php

This excellent site currently provides gardeners living in Australia, New Zealand and America the opportunity to adapt to climate change by simply choosing their closest weather station to create a local climate profile. This can then be fine tuned for your location in relation to the weather station and for micro-climates you may have created in your garden.

Peter is planning to launch this useful system in the UK during 2011. If you would like to be included in the trial please e-mail at debbie@globalgardening.org.

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, my favourite culinary guru and renowned grow your own advocate, is launching a new book that encourages vegetable eating. He confirms that this is not just good for our bodies but also much better for the planet:

“How can we eat really well every day without contributing to global warming, the suffering of animals or the pillaging of our precious marine resources? There is one, unequivocal answer: to eat more vegetables. Addressing this issue isn’t about giving anything up, it’s about filling your boots: embracing a world of fabulous, fresh ingredients and finding some new and irresistible ways to cook and serve them. The crucial thing is the mental shift: after that, I predict you will find it a breeze.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/aug/26/hugh-fearnley-whittingstall-vegetables

• River Cottage Veg Every Day! is published on 19 September by Bloomsbury at £25. To order a copy for £18 (including free UK mainland p&p), visit the Guardian Bookshop.

If you are thinking about what to grow in the veg garden this winter check out these helpful articles for inspiration:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/16/dan-pearson-grow-winter-veg

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/3350629/Top-10-vegetables-to-grow-over-winter.html

Food for thought?

This amazing edible garden brimming with fruit and vegetables caught the judges attention at The Chelsea Flower Show and shows just how home grown produce can be produced in the smallest of urban spaces.

Apart from providing home grown food and reducing our air miles , there are a host of other benefits from this planting style:

*reducing pollution and rainwater run-off

*insulating buildings and providing habitat for wildlife

* offset the impact of paving over front gardens

* increasing vegetation in otherwise concrete-filled spaces

* reducing the risk of localised flooding.

Research by the Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Cambridge has found that “a layer of vegetation can reduce heat loss from buildings, cutting the wind chill factor by 75% and heating demand by 25%.”

London and other UK cities need to explore this idea as a serious option for the future?

Inspired ?  Check out these web-sites on creating  your own vertical garden:

http://www.vertigarden.co.uk/?gclid=CPSd9qL-gKkCFUIMfAodXi7RwQ

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/design/plant_recipes/vertical_garden.shtml

All over the UK gardeners are busy planting seeds, veg plants and getting excited about the prospect of looking after and harvesting their plants over the next few months.

It has been a great start to the growing season this year with record sunshine and warmth – lets just pray for some rain in the South to help those seedlings grow into big healthy plants.

For more inspiration about growing your own Veg this summer visit the RHS Veg Challenge for some expert advice:

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Grow-Your-Own/Great-RHS-Veg-Challenge

I am busy planting seeds now the weather is warmer and the days are longer  – all great fun but with mixed results so check out these ready made vegetable plants from Rocket Gardens in Cornwall if you have neither the time or inclination to wait for seeds to germinate.

A Rocket Garden is a box brimming full of baby organic vegetable and herb plants packed in golden straw and delivered direct to your door.

All you have to do is pop your baby plants into their new home to begin growing your own vegetables, herbs or fruit.

Rocket Gardens  take out all the risk and hard work that comes with growing your own organic plants from seed. They look after the plants when they are young and vulnerable, only letting you have them when they are the perfect size, ready to be transplanted straight into your garden.

Rocket Gardens saves you time, effort and eliminates the disappointment when seeds fail to germinate.They even have a window box garden for smaller spaces.

Sounds perfect for busy people who love gardening but are short on time.

http://www.rocketgardens.co.uk/instant-kitchen-gardens.asp