Growing your own food in London

There seems to be a trend happening in London town and other cities around Britain for growing your own food. I have arrived a little bit late to this but I wanted to share my experience of starting out growing some your own food if you live in the city with  not much outside space.

We don't have huge back garden and I definitely don't have the desire to apply to a waiting list for veg plots on an allotment (as community minded as that is, its just not my thing). For me the odds of tending to a small patch in front of my kitchen were much higher than dragging myself and the kids in the rain to the allotment 😏. So under those circumstances we decided to try to grow 'up' and so opted for a vertical vegetable garden.


Sounds simple right. Well it could have been if I had bought one of these.- Plastic Wall Planter

Plastic Wall Planter 

 However, wanting a more natural looking solution so we opted to build one using pallets. Yes that's right! Pallets are made of very sturdy wood and are a great solution for lots of DIY projects. And buoy did we luck out with our pallets! We got all the material free from a local builders merchants 👍👏. They recycle the pallets there and were very happy to have a few (8 in all ) to be taken off their hands.

So with pallets in hand (well in 2 hands at a time!😜 ), the journey to start a vertical vegetable garden began.

A few DIY cuts and nails later plus some landscaping fabric to line the areas chosen as boxes- the vegetable garden has started!
This frame took nearly 2 days to make from start to finish. 2 Pallets were nailed together to create the 2 bottom sections of the frame. Some of the slats at the front of the doubled pallets were then cut to create some growing space for larger veg. When it came to planting, YouTube instructions suggested lining the back, sides and bottom section of your pallet and then stuffing with your chosen soil/compost mix. However, we decided to create these fabric boxes as the inches between the slats on these pallets did not seem small enough to ensure that the soil would hold in enough moisture without some kind of guarding. This kind of landscaping fabric which we found in our local DIY shop is strong enough to hold the soil, very flexible and at the same time permeable. It is made of a type of plastic but has the look of a burlap fabric with very tiny overlapping squares and looked very similar to some bags used to grow potatoes. The size of the space was measured and the fabric boxes created to fit the space. An overhang was left on each fabric box so that it could be easily stabled to the wood. This created a more sturdy box for the soil to be kept. The whole idea behind using this kind of landscaping fabric is that it will keep the moisture in that is needed, yet allow any roots to grow without being suffocated. For extra stability, extra slats of wood could be fitted under each box area.

Hopefully this time next summer, it will be burgeoning with lots of Yummy vegetables! Watch this space!!

Let me know if you have tried this and your experiences.

From a fledgling gardener just a mum looking to learn more....

See you soon!!