Child Development and Gardening

This is the first photograph readers have seen of my beautiful daughter, aged three and a half. After a long discussion with fellow Green Parent readers I've been inspired to come out and share something of my parenting philosophy with the world. Forgive me for being a bit slow on the uptake here, folks, but I've suddenly realised that being VISIBLE as a green parent, may help others who are trying to do things differently too.

As far as child development is concerned, we know that pretty much all the important stuff happens between birth and the age of three. You don't need expensive complicated toys to keep little ones amused.

In this photo my daughter is playing with a coir compost brick which I put into a bucket of water. She was fascinated by the process of watching the brick expand into compost and this provided no less than THREE HOURS of entertainment on one particularly wet day, when we were both confined indoors. But then daughter has been filling pots with compost and putting seeds in them since the age of one and a half.

If you analyse all this in terms of motor skills and sensory development - there's probably the meat and two veg there for quite a few 'Early Learning' educational assignments...

Readers will know that we don't have a garden. I'm sure lots of other families are in this situation. We're lucky enough to have an allotment - and I know these are difficult to come by right now. As you may remember, I started converting our plot from derelict soon after having my daughter. It was really hard work and I believe EVERYONE, including families with small children ought to be given a lot more support when they take on a plot, in terms of access to information, networks, tools, childcare even. I've seen many people give up because they find it too difficult.

As parents we're constantly told to keep our children away from junk food, get them to exercise more and give them creative possiblities. Providing growing spaces is a way of doing all these things. My daughter's attitude to food has been shaped by a very practical relationship to the origins of food - and the progress of our veg patch. We've already spent so many happy days together on our plot - putting down roots with other plot holders (small and large) in our community.

I was outraged yesterday when a taxi driver told me he had tried to get an allotment and his local council had sold off the site. The council hadn't maintained the plots - and had allowed them to become so derelict that they had become really difficult to cultivate. Of course no-one wanted to take them up then, and the council had the perfect excuse to sell off the land. This shouldn't be allowed to happen.

I'm adding my voice to the many others calling for a huge increase in the land that is available for people to grow fruit and vegetables. We're all in for a tough time in the recession and I honestly believe a growing space can make a big difference to communities. It's good for people's mental health and helps them link up with each other. Governments and councils can achieve this food vision if they want to. Like everything else it is a matter of political will. We need more growing spaces, simple as that. Check out the Landshare scheme. It's a 'place linking people who want to grow their own fruit & veg to space where they can grow it'. Let me know how you're getting on with it via the comments box.

Okay, I'm getting off my soap box now to get on with watering my seedlings...

What to plant now

I'm determined not to miss any planting windows this year. So here is a run down of this week's plantings with photos. I've set up a growing system for myself, which I tweak occasionally. Work routines seem to help. So here's what our small courtyard looks like at the moment. Three mini-greenhouses plus a few tables and chairs to raise the pots up a little. We're into our second big phase of planting:

From left to right:

Little gem lettuces in a plug planter, started a month ago. Some of these I'll take to plant out today on the allotment and I'll put a few in the courtyard for the odd sandwich, and in case I can't make it down to the lottie during the week.

1. Wild Rocket ready to plant out - this is a perennial plant so I'm hoping it will save me some work as I won't have to plant it out again every year.
2. Large coir pots with Courgettes (3) to be planted out when they are large enough.
3. Sweetcorn
4. Balconi tomatoes - yellow and red
5. Small pumpkins
6. Lunch box cucumbers (long white paris)
7. Globe Artichokes
8. Two large pots of leeks to plant out in June.
9. Melon
10. Basil
11. Pot of strawberries recovering from their journey through the post.
12. Sugar snap peas
13. Two tomatoes a bit further on
14. Two pots of flowers
15. Pot of calendula
16. Tray of green and gold Orach

In this picture there's calabrese (started off a month ago). Coriander and lettuce seedlings (Lollo Rosso) to be planted out when they are big enough.
Oh, and broad beans in root trainers. They'll go out on the lottie in about ten days, I would think.

Close up of the lettuce seedlings. Best get on down to the lottie. Good weather waits for no man. (Or woman).

Early sowings

As we plant the first plantings of the year: broad beans in succession - carrots, parsnips, little gem lettuces in plug planters - tomatoes - globe artichokes - I'm reminded of all the things that are possible in a small courtyard space.


I haven't cropped this photo (so you can see it really is the view from my kitchen with the reflection of the window). I like to keep things real with kitchen gardening, as you know.

Took the photograph last year in summer I think - the Clematis Montana creeping up the wall there had finished flowering.

You can see my pots of rosemary and bayleaf. Although I planted these out on the allotment as they were getting too big.

There's lavender on the staging too, and lots of little gem lettuces in containers. You can also see my blue builders buckets for larger items.

We even made space for a sand pit table for my daughter (in the middle). When she wasn't playing with it I put the plug planters on top.

This year we've rationalised production quite a bit. We have three greenhouses on the right hand side of the yard now. There's nothing much to see yet - but both the first early potatoes (Lady Christl) and the maincrop potatoes (Golden Wonder) are chitting (sprouting) in these as it's a good frost free place that's not too warm.

I've also started calabrese early in pots.










There's a bit of mould creeping in on the coir pot there. Must nip it off and make sure the greenhouses are well ventilated. My growing system and my work routine seems to be working really well now, touch wood. Seems a lot less work than it was last year.

I raise the plug plants at home, starting them off with a small heated propagator and use a warm windowsill for the plug planters. As soon as the seedlings begin to show I move them out into the mini-greenhouses to carry on growing and start the next batch inside the house.

When the weather warms up I don't need to grow seeds in the house anymore I can just put the plug planters straight into in the greenhouses. It's all done in a pretty small space, but because I keep moving things on in a shift system - it seems to work. Hope you can make use of these ideas.

When the plug plants or seedlings are big enough and the weather is suitable I cycle down to the allotment and plant them out. There are some who say you shouldn't do this with parsnips and carrots, but mine seem to be okay so maybe no-one explained that to them!

I've got a few other nifty ideas that save space. Instead of buying huge bags of compost, I buy dried, compressed, coir bricks with nutrients. You can get these from good garden centres or the Organic Gardening Catalogue. When I need potting compost I just re-hydrate a brick in a bucket of water and off I go.

This year, I've also successfully managed to overwinter some things for an early start. I did wonder whether it was worth the effort but here's a picture of my winter gem and winter density lettuces. I'll be having lettuce with my salad in just a week or two. That's not bad going as it's not even March yet and I don't have a heated greenhouse.

Overwintering vegetables

Don't suppose any of you will be braving it out to the garden today. Absolutely freezing here. Stuck my nose out as far as our tiny courtyard though, and found some nice surprises.

The vegetables in this post started life in late OCTOBER 2008 in my three, small plastic greenhouses. True, they've all been neglected over Christmas. But they're holding their own, so this post shows what CAN be done to get a head start on Spring. After all, it's only January.

First up we have broccoli - grown in a blue plastic builders bucket. Used a knitting needle to make holes in the bottom for drainage. Broccoli is my little girl's favourite food (honestly!) and though there isn't a vast amount, there'll be some for a few nutritious snacks for her.

Then there's a new variety of lettuce: WINTER GEM. Specially bred to withstand winter in a cold greenhouse I'm happy to see it looks fresh, crisp and healthy. Won't be too long before that's salad material.

Last but not least there's GIANT WINTER SPINACH(below). A few weeks ago I thought I'd lost these to the heavy frosts but here they are, bouncing back. Soon the leaves will be big enough to add to a creamy, comforting pasta dish with home grown garlic.