Own Grown Gardening

In my last post, I spoke about the fine tightrope I walk gardening to grow fruit and vegetables while also promoting wildlife. To monitor my progress on both these fronts, I not only record my harvests but also remain constantly vigilant of the beautiful species visiting, growing in, and using my tiny 100th of an acre plot. So, you can imagine my fixed concentration earlier this week when I glimpsed an unusual bird foraging for invertebrates in the loose soil around my recently transplanted raspberry canes. It looked superficially robin like in form and behaviour, but its colour was all wrong, a solid sooty grey. I watched intently as it flicked up onto the garden wall revealing a flash of rusty red under its tail. What a stunning little one, repeatedly bobbing in the sun's early morning rays. This was certainly a totally unfamiliar species to me. I kept watching with curious excitement, taking in every detail I could make out. Something of serious note was the subtle tendency for ...

Our urban soils can, unfortunately, hold a multitude of nasty secrets. I actually eluded to this problem in my previous post about compost when I mentioned having a rather depressing reason for keeping one of my compost bins on the hard standing rather than in the garden. To put it bluntly, our soil is contaminated with pollutants. Our tiny urban garden, 100th of an acre in size, has unsafe levels of lead, asbestos, and several aromatic hydrocarbons (probably from coal).  You might now be thinking, good God, why do you live in such a frightening place? We asked ourselves the same question when we got the soil test results back, particularly when we saw the high levels of lead. I'm sure I don't need to tell you the health risks associated with this heavy metal. Ever since receiving these results, we've hunted for an alternate property to buy in the city. What we discovered, however, during our house hunting is that the soil in ALL the properties we tested are contaminated...

I'm feeling conscious my last post was rather sterile with so much text and no photos. I'm determined to rectify that today.   This is my first time growing pak choi and boy am I pleased with the results. I'm growing them interplanted with carrots, the ferny looking foliage, along with chard which are more difficult to distinguish from the pak choi. They both have wide spreading leaves.     Some stinging nettles have opportunistically taken up residence between these plants. An unexpected welcome addition. Honestly.    Nettles provide so many benefits. First of all,  nettles refuse to grow in anything but nitrogen rich soil indicating my raised planter is fertile. Considering how well everything is growing in it that's a bit of a given, but added confirmation is nice too. By the way, nettles are brilliant additions for your compost bin to help activate decomposition.   Additionally, nettles are delicious. Nettle tea, nettle soup, nettle pesto, Cornish...

I guess I better start with my gardening and food growing philosophy. I consider my outlook dynamic and evolving so I'm sure to return to this subject in the future. Everyone should have the right to grow at least some of their own food. Food is, of course, the literal sustenance of life keeping us healthy and happy. Equally, everyone has a social responsibility to grow at least some of their own food. Each of us, after all, are fundamentally responsible for our own wellbeing when it truely comes down to it. Since food sustains our health, we should logically each be responsible for food production. What are the consequences of this way of thinking? Well, if we as a society made a concerted effort to embrace this philosophy, we would grow far more food within cities because the world's population is already predominantly urban. Today, well over 50% of the world's population lives in urban areas, and the United Nations expects this proportion to rise further, to 68% by as s...