Garden update

This pretty gaura is the only thing I can find in the garden worth photographing at the moment.

The tomatoes, raspberries and strawberry plants are all looking distinctly sorry for themselves, and the garden is generally in need of a bit of TLC.

There’s something about living in a first floor flat which makes it difficult to get into the garden sometimes.  Clearly in reality this is just laziness, but having to descend a staircase, wander through downstairs neighbour’s garden and then pause on the threshold of the garden checking for cunningly spun spider webs at eye height puts me off going down there as often as I should.  This is really rubbish of me, because I spent the first three years of my life in London wishing I had a garden of any description, so to now abandon the poor thing is really just inexcusable.

Wilb, on the other hand, seems to spend more and more time in the garden.  Mostly sitting on top of the compost heap, partly I think because it has a nice bit of carpet on top of it, and partly because it is probably pumping out heat as it decomposes all my grass cuttings etc…

Self-berating aside, I also think I might adopt Gill’s brilliant no-internet-Tuesdays rule.  Not that I spend a lot of time doing anything on the internet, but it does seem to hoover up a lot of my time, despite my not actually doing anything on it.  That would surely leave more time for gardening, and making cakes for my new cake stand.

It is the most ludicrous thing in the world, but cakes look amazing in it, and this entirely justifies the impulse buy last time I was in IKEA (of all places.)

City bump! – AKA Little Wilb

Incoming!  I am delighted to announce that a new addition to the citybumpkin family will be arriving in March.

He/she is currently the size of an avocado.

Wilb is so far blissfully unaware of her forthcoming demotion, but we have advised her to make the most of having a nice, quiet flat to herself for another six months.

More on that fox cub…

I mentioned a little while ago that a fox cub had fallen through the roof of my greenhouse.  This sounds rather alarming, and caused some consternation on the comment threads, so I thought I should clarify.  My little garden is all of 16ft square, and backs onto a 12ft, ivy clad wall, over the other side of which is a large car park.  On top of the wall live a couple of beautiful young fox cubs, who scamper out of the ivy and along the wall every time I venture out of my back door.

I was a little worried that they would scare Wilb when I first noticed they had taken up residence, but so far they seem to live in harmony, and Wilb of course rules the roost, so I am happy enough for them to stay there for now.  However, they have a rather messy dismount from the wall, due to the fact that it is 3 or 4 times higher than anything they should really be jumping off.

Consequently one of these dismounts resulted in the poor creature crashing through the plastic roof of my greenhouse.   It is only really a plastic sheet rather than solid plastic, so I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have hurt itself too much.  The greenhouse may in fact have broken its fall, and prevented the poor creature being speared by a raspberry cane.

Their methods of getting back onto the wall involve jumping up a 6ft fence, and then from the fence up another 6ft onto the wall.  This often requires several attempts and is highly entertaining to watch from the kitchen window whilst doing the dishes.  Who needs television?

Anyway, I noticed one of them practicing this technique a week or so ago, and managed to scramble the camera just in time.  Thought I would stick it up here so you can see my resident wildlife.  Now I’m never going to be able to set up with urban chickens am I?  Sigh.

Apologies for a slightly dodgy shot with intruding clothes line, but the cub would definitely have vamoosed by the time I got outside, so a pic through the window was all I could manage I’m afraid.

Tooting Foodival 2009

Last Sunday saw the second annual Tooting Foodival, arranged by Transition Town Tooting.  TTT aims to

“…bring together the people of Tooting and surrounding communities to develop a plan to transition to a life beyond our dependency on oil.”

Practically, this means lowering the collective carbon footprint of the town by encouraging greener modes of transport, food growing groups and re-skilling workshops.  There are even rumours that Tooting may get its own currency before too long.  I have been deeply envious of the ‘Brixton pound’ and it would be great to see T£ as it will be known enabling residents to keep trade flowing through Tooting’s local businesses.

The Foodival kicked off with a ‘Food walk’ which I was unfortunately unable to attend, followed by a Food Fete in Fircroft school.  Here there was free food cooked from home-grown Tooting fruit and veg, an urban beekeeper (very distressed about vandals who have been throwing bricks and logs at her hives), and the great Tooting pudding competition, which featured some amazing looking puds which sadly weren’t on offer to the punters, although perhaps they were dished up after the judging.

Kids were getting involved making creatures out of locally grown vegetables, and Ting Ting Tooting were there fixing bikes and promoting cycling in the area.

It was a beautiful September afternoon, and everybody seemed to be having a great time.  It reminded me that I had meant to go to some of the TTT meetings, so fingers crossed I will get to one before too long.

It might seem impossible that an area as urban as Tooting can possibly embrace low carbon ideas, but the TTT movement is growing all the time, and steps have already been made in the right direction.  If it can be done in Tooting, it can be done anywhere!

Book review: The Alternative Kitchen Garden

The Alternative Kitchen Garden - an A-Z

Emma Cooper has transformed her ‘ropey old lawn’ into a bountiful kitchen garden complete with orchard, chickens and a huge variety of fruit and veg.

This book documents that transformation, and also provides a very useful A-Z with information and tips on how to grow all kinds of fruit and veg in the modern kitchen garden.

Emma’s enormous enthusiasm for gardening shines from every page in this book, and it is inspiring to read about her journey, complete with ups and downs, successful crops and downright disasters.

This book is a great addition to the city gardener’s bookshelf.  Emma has space restrictions to contend with, as well as some very innovative solutions, including the construction of a unique ‘grow-dome’ in which she grows the plants which would be confined to a dodgy plastic greenhouse with a broken roof where a fox cub fell on it (seriously) in my garden.

It is great to read about her adventures, and she is of course on my list of heroes having successfully accommodated her two chickens, Hen Solo and Princess Layer into her garden and of course her life.  I will get there one day!

Emma’s brilliant blog and podcasts can be accessed here.