How to Grow Vegetables at 48 Feet (From The Argus)

How to Grow Vegetables at 48 Feet

12:29pm Friday 5th June 2009

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By Georgy Edgson - urban avant gardener »

Last week, I had a lovely conversation with a chap who popped into The Green Centre to see what we were up to.

He had not long retired and declared his intention to turn his flowerbeds over to vegetable patches. “A lot more people are doing that now,” he said and he’s spot on. Not only is there a resurgence of Victory Gardening across the globe, but community gardening schemes, and projects such as Grow Your Neighbour’s Own and Landshare are proving very popular.

The rising cost of living coupled with growing levels of unemployment mean that many of us are wondering how to put food on the table. However, we live in a city, and not all of us have access to gardens or plots.

So what do you do if you want to grow vegetables but all you can see around you is concrete?

The Green Centre, founded by Mel Rees and Tony Nisbett, opened in Whitehawk on May 1st 2009. In the first month, they’ve had 188 visitors and taken on more volunteers to help teach Brighton residents how to reuse and recycle waste, grow their own vegetables and achieve a sustainable lifestyle.

Urban Farming

I moved into a fifth floor council flat last year with a sizeable East-facing balcony. I’ve always lived in cities and predominantly cities by the sea, and so had no experience of plants or plots, but knew that I wanted to grow my own vegetables.

Standard gardening books at the time didn’t help much; books about container gardening tended to talk about flowers, whilst vegetable books assumed that you had access to land.

I also knew that I wanted to make use of junk, having spent some time working with found trash in mixed media artwork. According to Zero Footprint, the average Brit produces a staggering 6.5 tonnes of CO2 per year in garbage and fuel consumption. It made sense to me that the tonnes of garbage we throw away could be productive. It might not look pretty but it could be pretty useful.

A few gardeners I chatted to stated outright that I just couldn’t do it, and I might as well give up before I’d even begun.

Sowing Seeds

But I’m made of sterner stuff than that and bought three packets of seeds, sweet basil, carrots, and French marigolds. I figured that a flower, an herb and a vegetable covered my newbie bases.

A thorough dig through a marvellous junk and DIY site, Instructables, gave me the tools for three self-watering germination pots made out of old 2 litre plastic soda bottles and string.

So now I had some seeds nestled in earth and plastic, hopefully about to turn into something edible. Between the bag of compost and packets of seeds, I’d spent £4.42. There was still loads left over, and I was on my way to some kind of self-sufficiency, More importantly, I had the growing feeling that junk gardening in Brighton might just work after all.