Grow your own tips from the Eden Project

On July 10th EDF energy and the Eden Project will launch the first Green Britain Day, your chance to be part of collective energy saving action aimed to help with climate change. There are loads of ways you can join Team Green Britain and play a role in the activity, both at home and out in the community. With expert advice from the Eden Project, find out how watching your garden grow can help the Team Green Britain effort.

 

More about Team Green Britain

 

Growing your own fruit, veg and salad saves you money, gets you fit, burns up fat… is fun and incredibly satisfying while providing the freshest, zero food miles, seasonal food.

Leafy salads and veg
For starters, these leafy wonders are easy, quick and look great on a plate.

 

Choose from the following varieties:

 

Sow: in the ground or containers every fortnight or as often as you need.
Crop: ready in 6 weeks(ish). Cut and they grow again (sometimes up to six times).

 

Tomatoes
Plant in containers of potting compost (or a grow bag) and put outside against a sunny wall or grow inside if you’ve got a sunny windowsill. The bush types work well in hanging baskets and can even be left to their own devices.

‘Cordon’ types need more love and attention: tie them to canes as they grow up, remove side shoots as they grow and cut the tip of the plant off in midsummer to help force food into the swelling fruits.

 

Water your tomato plants when dry and feed with tomato food when recommended. Bees pollinate tomatoes but if you don’t have any indoors give the plant an occasional friendly, gentle shake which should do the trick.

 

Courgettes
Plant out in lovely rich soil full of compost after the risk of frost has passed - simple!

 

Spring onions

Sow in rows in the ground or in pots. Thin, eat, grow, thin, eat, grow, thin eat, repeat - you get the idea.

 

Carrots and beetroot

Again, sow in the ground or in pots. Go for the fast-growing or mini-veg types. Did you know that before the 18th century carrots came in white, yellow or purple but not orange!

Peas

To give peas a head start, sow in some spare plastic guttering and put on the windowsill. When they are about 6cm tall, water them well and slide them out into a shallow trench in the garden for an instant veggie patch. Put some sticks around them to support the plants as they grow. If they don’t quite make it, eat the tips of shoots in a salad.

 

Broad beans

Sow the beans in rows in the garden. Put stakes and string around the rows for support, as per the peas.

 

Radish

Sow out in the garden in rows. Radishes can take just four weeks from seed to harvest (in a good year) - healthy fast food!

 

Short of Space?
You might think you need acres and acres of land to grow your own veg - wrong! Try one of these options.

 

Go up the wall
Vertical gardening is soooo 2009. Spread the trend and do you bit for the team. Grow trailing courgettes/squashes up trellis and over arches. Get your leafy salads, herbs and tomatoes tumbling, give it a go and green up that wall!

Container culture
You can plant your veg pretty much anywhere waterproof: a welly, a wine-box, an old washing-up bowl. Just stick to these rules:

- Make sure it’s got a hole in the bottom for drainage
- Line with absorbent material (and waterproofing if you spot drips) such as an old woolly jumper.
- Add good quality potting compost (peat free).

- Plant away.

 

Five things ...
For families: potatoes, tomatoes, beans (DIY beans and chips!), radish and rocket
To grow in a shoe: chives, strawberries, edible flowers, frilly red lettuce, creeping thymes
That are hard to kill: rocket, mizuna, rhubarb, fennel, Jerusalem artichokes
For foragers (eat your weeds): dandelion leaves, young nettle leaves (ouch, good in tea and tarts), chickweed, young hawthorn and hazel leaves (look out for mouse-ear size)

Veg for the flower garden: purple-podded peas, red and white flowered runner beans, rainbow chard, fennel, kale

For dappled shade: spinach, land cress, parsley, beetroot, kale

 

And finally, if you're fingers aren't all that green yet...

 

Ten of the easiest things to grow
Salad, mint, tomatoes, strawberries, beetroot, courgettes, pea shoots, dwarf French beans, onions, pumpkin.

 

Once you've grown all your own delicious fruit, veg, and salad why not put it all to great Team Green Britain use? The Big Lunch is a great way to meet your neighbours and save energy at the same time - get more Big Lunch info.

 

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