Growing season a go-go

April’s been a whirlwind of a month, as I’m sure all you gardeners out there will agree! Hardly a moment to spare for sharing my growing tales with you all.

Traditionally, when the clocks change at the end of March, we move the harvesting back to a Tuesday from the winter timetable of Wednesday morning, there now being light enough to get it all done before dark. However, this year’s field of applicants being so good, we were a little behind on the selection of our apprentices…a very real indication of the growing interest in the exciting world of urban agriculture. This meant the first week’s harvesting remained on the Wednesday morning. And that week saw Ru and I picking and then packing 260 bags of salad between us. Seriously hard labour, I tell you! The harvests leapt from just 40 bags in the middle of March to over 200 in a matter of weeks! We just managed to get down to the Climate Change camp in central London, where the ‘Farmers’ Markets not Carbon Markets‘ stall had our very own salad leaves on sale…

Selection made, the following week we were joined by, not two as we had intended, but three new apprentices. One apprentice has been allocated to each of our urban market gardens – Allens Gardens, Springfield Park and to my own site at Clissold Park too. I’m very excited that Sophie will be joining me every week over this growing season.

We also had two wonderful visitors from France – doing a three week internship with us. A terrific spike in numbers to get the salad picked and packed.

Over the winter I’ve been deliberating over what element of the sites I’ll bring to you as a regular feature this year…2007 was Leaf of the Week, 2008 I gave you Dressing of the Month. So what’s it going to be for 2009? Well, I’ve finally settled on something…watch this space, it’s coming soon.

September’s dressing finalé

I couldn’t believe it this week. Arrived at Allens Gardens from our Clissold Park site (lots to be done there this week!) just a little late, all ready to dive into the last ever salad dressing showdown, and it had begun without me! Unsure whether the volunteer assigned to bringing a dressing would show up to contest apprentice Annie’s sure-to-win mix, Ru took the executive decision to go ahead without us. He had pulled out a bit of dressing left over from a class we had held on the site a couple of weeks ago. Funnily enough, it happened to be a simple one I had thrown together. So the fact that this was all I found left in the salad bowls…

…didn’t matter, as being a contestant, I couldn’t cast my vote anyway…The dressings fought hard but in the end it was Annie who walked away with the final title. Which makes her the overall winner of our ‘monthly dressing’ slot.

Try, what I can only imagine, must be a delicious combination:
2 small cloves of garlic
A splosh of maple syrup
A double splosh of basalmic vinegar (“twice as much as I normally put in” says Annie)
And two thirds again on top of what you’ve got, of olive oil
Oh yes, and the secret ingredient? A big tsp of dark miso

Sad to say, this is the last of my ‘dressing of the month’ features. As September draws to an end, so too does what we consider to be the ‘growing season’ and our apprentices finish their stint with us next week.

Now, what will feature in its place next year? Thank goodness winter’s on its way, gives me time to think!

Leaf of last week: Cornet de Bordeaux

Not only is this one of the biggest leaves on our site at the moment but wow, what a mouthful of a name! It’s the escarole type of endive and I just had to resurrect ‘Leaf of the Week’ to show it to you.

It has been a hugely successful crop over the past winter and has continued to grow nicely over the last few weeks of unsettled weather. If you get the salad bags you should have no difficulty recognising it! This type of endive is less bitter than the other types.

Last week was the first day back harvesting on the sites. Now that British Summer Time has arrived (even if summer itself seems far off!), we are back to harvesting on a Tuesday. This means super long days which end in trailer loads of salad bags being cycled from our growing sites to Growing Communities’ HQ, ready to be packed into the veggie boxes the following day.

So long…for now…

So. My last week as an apprentice. My last ‘leaf of the week’ just written, even though there are loads more leaves to feed the feature for weeks to come (how I love the diversity of our salad bags!). But it’s time up. My six months of being an Apprentice Grower are over. A good growing season in which, as I hope my posts on this will testify, I’ve learnt a huge amount. I hope they’ve taught you something too.

And, what next? Well, first up, I’m taking a bit of a break for October. A trip or two away, while I ruminate on the next step on this growing path I’ve decided to go down. I should warn you that there are some exciting developments brewing…

So, maybe take a break too, but don’t go away entirely. Check this every now and again. This blog will continue to tell its growing tales…I’ll be back soon.

Bits and bobs on the wild side…

Every week the majority of leaves that go into the salad bags we pack are those that we grow in the main section of Allens Garden – the green oakleafs, the red oraches, cos, the lollo rossos etc. etc. All good leaves, sure, ones that you would find in any salad worth its salt. But it’s on the wild side that things get more interesting. In this section of Allens Garden we follow a more forest-garden approach. It’s not as managed as the other area and when you harvest you really feel like you are foraging. So, of course it means we spend a bit more time picking these leaves, lifting up other plants sometimes to get to them, but the taste that they bring to the salad makes it all worth while.

In a little bit of a departure from my usual blogging style, I thought I would share them all with you – something like a rogues gallery of ‘bits and bobs’, as Ru calls them, ‘the unsung heroes.’ Hope you enjoy!

First up is mint – one of the largest beds on the wild side, this plant has been producing since I arrived in April. Mint in salad is a must – makes it very fresh and surprising. You just pluck out the tender tips…

Next up is salad burnett. A delicate little string of leaves, with a very subtle taste and oh so pretty in your salad bowl…

Then come chives, featured last week as Leaf of the Week. Here they have already been cut back.


The next is a truly delicious leaf called saltbush. It is, as its name suggests, salty. It’s almost as if the leaves were finely dusted with salt.

Then there is buckle-leaf sorrel. This grows voraciously on our site, so needs constant cutting back, which is great for us and, if you like the sour taste, great for our salad eaters too. It’s good with a sweet dressing…

And here, looking nothing like the buckle-leaf variety above, is common sorrel. It does, however, share its taste…

This next one is marjoram, typically used in cooking, as a herb, but as you’ll know from my last couple of leaves, herbs get tossed into our salads too. We make sure we pick the young tender leaves.

And as grand finale, this is Ceylon spinach. I love it that this is spinach. It’s so succulent and it climbs! The leaves get pretty big, which is great because for a moment we thought they weren’t going to get a chance to grow at all – something, we think it might be fleas, rather liked the young plants. Now they are doing really well, climbing up and round the stakes we optimistically put in a few months back. Apparently they can get to 30 ft in their true habitat in Africa and southeast Asia. Now that would be something!

And in conclusion, here they all are together, picked and mixed up, ready to go into this week’s bags. All together they gave us just over a kilo of leaves. It might not seem so much out of a total of 10.8kgs. Yet, without these bits and bobs, the salad just wouldn’t be the same.

Weekly stats…
Grower: 1 | Apprentices: 2 | Volunteers: 4 | Support workers: 1 | Dog: 1

Harvested from the site…
Salad greens & edible flowers: 10.8kg | 2 punnets blackberries: 600g | Tomatoes: 24kg!! – yes, I know, it’s amazing! We thought the tomatos would peak last week but here we have a whole 6kg more! Those calabash toms are incredible!