Hello from the Make it and Mend it team

The Make it and Mend it team are having a team meeting and lunch today at Clare O's. When we arrived we were greeted by this trayful of home grown tomatoes from Clare's garden. We're now looking forward to tasting some of the chutney and tomato pickles she's bound to make soon (yum yum).

Clare has really excelled herself with her urban garden this year. Here are some pics:

The veg garden also featured at lunch - with home-grown chard and tomatoes. Clare also showed her MIAMI creds by serving us a delicious soup based on her leftover chicken casserole. We're now looking forward to tea and home-made cake while debating what content we're going to create for the MIAMI website

Clare F

Cash for caulis!

If you live in London and want to grow your own veg, you'll be interested to hear about the £75,000 that's on offer for community groups interested in growing their own food in under-used areas of the capital. This dosh comes from the Capital Growth scheme, managed by the London Food Link and supported by the Mayor of London.

Groups can submit an application onlline at www.capitalgrowth.org/apply. Grants between £200 and £1500 are up for grabs to help you turn a neglected plot of land into a veg plot. If you find a concrete plot they'll let you cultivate on it using cotainers or growbags. As well as the money, there's advice and training etc to support your group's efforts.

The cash injection follows an earlier one of £75k last December. It was snapped up to create 95 growing spaces by housing estates, schools,universities and others. Commenting on the success of the scheme the Mayor said

 “Creating lush patches of fruit and veg is catching on, judging by Londoners’ enthusiastic response to Capital Growth. We’ve already helped to create dozens of new growing spaces at schools, housing estates, at homeless schemes and at three of the city’s universities. The scheme is helping to make the urban environment more pleasant and cared for, as well as providing a cheap, fun way to grow grub.”. 

Boris, in conjunction with London in Bloom has also created a competition to encourage primary schools to create food gardens. There are 3 categories 'Bugs and Slugs', 'Collect and Create', and 'Climate Cool'. The top schools in each category wins a visit from a celebrity gardener, £500 cash prizes, plants and wormeries.

Related links:

>> Incredible Edible Todmorden - a whole town goes for sustainability

>> Grow your own veg - you can do it! - top tips for beginners

>> A great software tool for planning your veg garden - we LOVE this!

>> Dig for Victory - see the wartime video - still full of good advice

>> London Food Link

>> Allotments Regeneration Initiative

My home-grown lunch

OK, for the experienced veg grower I’m guessing, the following story may not have that much resonance. I say guess, because this is the first year I’ve grown things to eat in my garden and so I don’t know if I’ll feel this way every time I pick my lunch!

That’s exactly what I did yesterday – I picked my lunch of carrot, yellow courgettes, lettuce and beetroot. Well, if I’m totally honest, I added some asparagus that was on offer this weekend at Waitrose and added a dollop of shop bought mayonnaise. But the main event, as you can see from the picture, was my very own first crop of delicious vegetables.

The sense of satisfaction was immense. I mean anyone can buy salad and probably enjoy it. But a day later, I can still taste my lunch. Yes! The flavours were fantastic. I can’t remember the last time tasted such a carroty carrot and I simply grated the raw beetroot into a beautiful deep magenta little mound of the most intensely flavoured sweet beetroot I can remember tasting.

And these little golden courgettes I’m growing are almost creamy they’re so dense and un-seeded – absolutely no need for salting. It’s probably fair to point out that I’ve been cropping my Lollo Rosso lettuce for a couple of weeks now (leaf by large crinkly leaf) and mixed with finely chopped lovage, and lightly dressed with olive oil and cider vinegar they make a splendid salad to go with just about anything but especially pasta.

You see them here straight from the ground, but 15 minutes later and with the addition of steamed asparagus and mayonnaise mixed with a little ready basil from one of those squeezy tubes, the whole effect was sublime. Really.

Tell me, if you are a seasoned veg grower, do you grow immune to that extra sense of ‘I did it myself’ that must add at least another 100% to the taste factor? Do you?

Or do you keep it? I was reminded to ask this question listening to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on Desert Island Discs this morning, because to me, he seems perpetually enthused by food (and animals) that he’s grown himself.

Anyway I hope so, because I’m already planning what I’ll grow next year having put my toe in the water with courgettes, tomatoes (not yet ripe, so watch this space), pumpkins (watch for a separate posting on this subject), carrots, beetroot, potatoes (maincrop: Maris Piper), butternut squash, strawberries (Elan – so sweet!) and lots of herbs. I’m thinking broad beans, cauliflower, celeriac already. Any other ideas and suggestions?

In the meantime, if you’re looking to get started, July is definitely not too late. I’ve learned that now’s a great time to plant new potatoes for Christmas and Pak Choi for cropping in August. I’m sure there must be more. Let us know your tips for sowing now.

>> How to grow veg in mid-summer

>> How to grow your own vegetables

(Clare O'B)

Homemade Home - with a bit of help from her friends

Well now we've seen the rest of the series have we softened our tone about Channel 4's "Kirstie’s Homemade Home" after our rant following episode 1? Errr... no. Kirstie is a good presenter and we're glad she's trying to encourage us to think about traditional crafts. However she's missing the point of getting back to basics and using our own talents, creativity and more to the point, existing materials to create a fantastic home.

Over the last few years, television programmes have told us how make over our houses, but with other people doing the dirty work. Unfortunately this is true of Kirstie as well. Whilst claiming Meadow Gate is a "homemade home", she trots off to craftspeople for a brief lesson in basic skills, but never completes a project herself. She enjoys a cosy one-to-one tuition session and then pays her teachers to finish the projects off and deliver them ready for installation. Apart from the fact that this costs money that few of us have to spare these days, it also gives the impression that beyond the very basics skills, you need to have years of experience to be able to make anything. Not only is this misleading, but does little to encourage us to have a go at making things for ourselves.

With a little time and effort you can make some beautiful, practical things for your home. You may not get it right first time, but that doesn’t mean that you have to give up and pay somebody else to do it for you. You just need to practice a little first. Half the fun of creating something for yourself is the process of mastering the new skill. This is where the real sense of achievement comes from, not standing back as yet another craftsmen knocks on your door to present you with a finished item.

In one programme, Kirstie throws out a perfectly good fireplace because it doesn’t go with her design. But who removed it and how? She seemed to have a secret team of elves that came in when the cameras weren’t rolling and miraculously did all those tedious building and plumbing jobs. Which leads to a second question, how much did it cost her to have the fireplace removed? And what did she do with it afterwards? Sell it and recoup some of money she spent on refurbishing? Throw it in a skip? Why didn’t she reuse it somewhere else in the house or even in the garden as an unusual planter, or change her design to fit around it, or make the fireplace over?

What's really frustrating is that it was meant to be about inspirational sustainable living, but there was nothing sustainable about it. Spending £100 a roll on hand made wallpaper, when a paint effect might have sufficed, is not sustainable living. In the final programme Kirstie made over the garden, using lots of professionals to do it for her. The garden was transformed without her having to take off one of her fabulously bright coats or get a fleck of dirt under a fingernail. Yet again her invisible trusty elves rushed to her rescue and laid a York-stone terrace that didn’t even merit a mention. And where was the vegetable patch? Yes this is a holiday home, but she could at least have given a nod to the idea of putting one in. We should be encouraging people to grow their own vegetables. It's not just satisfying, but good for us. Research has shown that children who are involved in growing veg are fitter and healthier and more likely to eat vegetables. I appreciate that Kirstie wanted a fabulous entertaining space, but vegetables can fit into this notion brilliantly. Vegetable patches don’t have to be boring, they can be bright, colourful and excitingly designed. I think she missed a trick here.

The final irritant was when she audibly whispred, while dressing the table with someone else's flower arrangements "Eat your heart out Martha Stewart". At least the old jailbird does know how to do her own flower arranging and ice her own cakes! Overall, Kirstie – good work for showcasing some talented British craftspeople, but homemade it aint!

Growing vegetables in containers

My recent experiments with vegetable gardening in my tiny London garden also include growing vegetables in containers. The inspiration for this has come from a fabulous book Crops in Pots by Bob Purnell. This is packed with delicious photographs of fruit and vegetables growing decoratively in containers - they make most floral displays look bland in comparison.

The visual drama of bright red against green foliage from a display of tomatoes or peppers with some orange nasturtiums tumbling between them is stunning. You can even grow "Tumbling Tom" tomatoes in a hanging basket. Or for a more subtle colour combination, how about yellow courgettes with red leaved banana plants?


The book has some great tips on growing from seed, pests and diseases, planting and proposgation as well as guidance on the types of fruit and vegetable to grow. It is orgranised into Starters, Mains and Desserts and each double page is a different easy-to-do project with a beautiful full colour photo of the plant display, the list of "ingredients" you'll need to recreate it, a clear explanation of how to do it and a little recipe idea using the featured veg. There are also good ideas for unusual containers.


I defy you not to get inspired!