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The Green Centre, 39 Manor Hill, Whitehawk, Brighton BN2 5EL

01273 687700 www.thegreencentre.co.uk

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Carrots

• Start sowing carrots monthly from March onwards. • Store in a sand-filled box – cut leaves off to within ½ in of

carrot top, and lay carrots alternately root to tip in rows but do not let the carrots touch, store in a dry place and inspect regularly for any rot.

• Mulch the container to prevent the carrots drying out and keep to a rigid watering schedule particularly in dry weather – dry carrots will split.

• Carrots will take up to 18 weeks to fully mature – take advan-

tage of this by planting a new bucket every month throughout

the growing season.

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sunlight during the day. Plastic buckets come in a range of colours and make a cheerful addition to your city garden. Wash and dry the bucket thor-oughly and drill a row of holes around the bottom edge, about an inch from the base and two inches apart. Mix two thirds potting compost with one-third horticultural sand and fill the bucket up to about an inch and a half from the top edge. Water the soil and let it drain, so that the soil is just moist. The sand mix-ture helps the soil to avoid water logging, which carrots hate. You can also add an inch layer of small pebbles or broken crockery to the bottom of the bucket to help with the drainage. Carrot seeds are tiny things and sowing them individually is almost impossible, even for an experienced gardener. Mix a 5p piece amount of carrot seeds with an equal amount of horticultural sand and sprinkle the mixture over the surface of the soil – the sand helps the seeds to distribute more or less evenly. Take a tiny amount of dry compost and literally dust the surface of the seeds with it – think of a layer of icing sugar. The seeds are so small that you want just enough soil to cover them but not enough to smother them and stop them germinating. Take a large plastic bag and secure it over the top of the bucket to make a mini greenhouse – in the early stages of germination seeds need warmth not light to get them started. Spray the soil daily to keep it moist, and once the seedlings appear, start thinning them out. Keep the buckets in a sunny position and once the last frost is over – usually the middle of May – take the plastic bag off com-pletely and let your plants grow! You can harvest carrots when the tops appear and you have a fine head of feathery green leaves.

CONTAINERSCONTAINERSCONTAINERSCONTAINERS Amsterdam Forcing and Early Nantes are excellent for containers – you can sow them every three to four weeks for a continuous supply of carrots until the autumn.

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You can sow cut and come again - a mixture of salad leaves in-clude rocket, spinach, and varieties of lettuce - every few weeks throughout the year for a continuous supply of crisp and tasty leaves. All you need is a sunny space outside in the warmer months and a sunny windowsill in the cooler ones, and a handy pair of scissors. Basic Needs of Salad Leaves Do not leave salad leaves in direct or fierce sunlight – they will wilt and bolt, and make sure that you water them well and often to stop them turning bitter. • Mulch the surface of the soil with bark chips or rotted leaves

to keep in the moisture. • Snip off the leaves with scissor as needed – you should have

about three main crops from each sowing. • Cover with a cloche or horticultural fleece to extend the grow-

ing season into the autumn. • Speed up germination at the start of the season by putting a

plastic bag over the crate to create a mini greenhouse. How to Grow Salad in a Vegetable Box Growing a variety of cut and come again salad leaves in a wooden vegetable box is one of the easiest and most satisfying things you can do as a city gardener, and it will cost you considerably less than buying salad bags from the supermarket. You can pick up discarded wooden vegetable crates from any market or greengrocers, or

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Tomatoes are a perennial favourite when you grow your own. There is nothing quite like picking a fresh tomato off the vine in the sun-shine and popping it in your mouth, and as long as they have enough depth for their generous roots tomatoes are ideal to grow in containers in the sunshine. Basic Needs of Tomatoes Tomatoes need at least five hours of sunlight to ripen – ideally, they should be somewhere where they can get around eight to ten hours. They also need warmth. • Remove any weeds once a week • Pinch off any new side shoots to encourage the energy to go

into making fruit not leaves • Water the soil regularly so that it is moist but not wet • Irregular watering will make the fruit split and rot • Fertilize every one to two weeks in the summer with comfrey

or nettle liquid, seaweed, hair cuttings, wood ash or a house-hold liquid fertilizer

• Mulch the surface of the soil to keep in moisture • Cloche the plants if the weather turns cold How to Grow Tomatoes in a Growbag The problem with a conventional Growbag is that it’s too shallow. Tomatoes need at least six inches of space down for their roots, so a Growbag leaves them spindly and leggy, but with a bit of lateral thinking, you can have a marvellous crop of tasty red fruit throughout the summer and into the Autumn.

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First, you’ll need to germinate your seeds. The inner cardboard from a toilet roll is ideal for this – squash it flat one way and then the same in the opposite direction so that you have a square tube of card-board. Make slits up the folded sides to about half an inch and fold the ends in to make a flat bottom. Fill the tubes to about half an inch below the top with potting compost and water until just moist, letting the excess water drain off. Plant one tomato seed in each tube to a depth of two and a half times the seed. Gently brush the soil over the seeds and put them in a warm, dark place, like an airing cupboard to germinate. Once you see sprouts, put the seedlings on a sunny, warm window-sill to carry on growing, keeping the soil nice and moist. When the plant is about six to eight inches tall, you’ll need to leave it outside for an hour or two every day to get it used to the temperature change – this is “hardening off”. Take a Growbag and put several layers of duct tape around the shortest part of the middle of the bag in a straight line, so that you’ve divided the bag in two halves. Slap the bag over your knee so that the two halves dangle either side of your leg and the soil falls equally into each new “bag”. Carefully cut through the duct tape with a sharp knife, so that you now have two deep bags of soil with a strengthened duct tape edge. Mind your leg with the knife! Tap the bags down gently to compact the soil a little and create air pockets, and dig a hole in each one about three of four inches deep. Gently loosen two tomato plants from their cardboard holders and plant them, one to each bag, until the bottom of the first two sets of leaves is level with the top of the soil. Fill the holes back up with soil, water the plant until it’s moist, and mulch over the surface to keep the water in. Punch some drainage holes all over the sur-face of the bags and your tomatoes are ready to pop out onto a sunny balcony, patio or windowsill!

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Fill your bag or sack by about a half with potting compost, water it well and let it drain thoroughly. Make four evenly spaced holes in the soil down to about 3cm. If you have some comfrey leaves, push one into each hole, and then pop your four seed potatoes in each hole and cover them over with the compost, just until the shoots are covered. Every couple of weeks keep put-ting soil over the shoots as they grow and keep going until the bag is full, roughly three times in all. This is earthing up and stops sunlight getting onto the shoots. Soon you’ll have a crop of lush green leaves, followed by flowers in white, pink or purple, depending on the vari-ety of the potato. When the flow-ers die and the leaves start to wilt, empty the bag and harvest your potatoes! Every time you plant a bag of potatoes, start chitting the next batch so that you have a succession of potatoes growing throughout the season.

VARIETIES First Earlies: plant before Christmas and harvest at Easter – protect from cold with cloches or polytunnels, good varieties are Duke of York, Sutton’s Foremost, and Arran. Second Earlies: plant at Easter and harvest in late July/early August, good varieties are Charlotte, Nadine, Marris Peer. Main Crop: plant in late April for harvesting in September/October, good varieties are Maris Piper, Desiree, King Edward.

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Potatoes are the staple vegetable of almost every diet throughout the world – from sweet and creamy new potatoes in the spring to a crisp and fluffy baked potato in the middle of winter; everyone loves a spud. Potatoes don’t mind a bit of cold or shade either, and don’t take up a huge amount of space, so they’re perfect for the city gar-dener. Basic Needs of Potatoes Potatoes are a tuber, which means that they have a swollen, edible root that bulks up as they grow. Unlike most vegetables, you don’t plant seeds; you plant seed potatoes by a process known as chit-ting. Water regularly as this helps them to swell up and mature properly Potatoes need earthing up until they produce leaves, as sunlight will turn the seedlings green and make them mildly poisonous. How to Grow Potatoes in a Sack Potato sacks or supermarket jute carrier bags are an excellent way to grow potatoes, and you can use the bag afterwards for storing the harvested potatoes in your larder. Take a clean sack or bag and punch small holes about an inch from the base and two inches apart all the way around the bag for drainage. Next, you’ll need to chit your seed potatoes ready for planting. Take about seven seed potatoes and pop them into the compartments of an egg box and keep them on top of the fridge or somewhere that’s cool and away from direct sunlight. In about two weeks, you’ll see shoots that are around 2.5cm long growing from the seed potatoes. Discard any that are spindly or weak, and keep the four strongest ones to one side.

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Tomatoes • Seeds keep for about four years in a cool, dry place. Sow

indoors in February to March for harvesting from June to just before the first frost (early October). Ripen tomatoes by plac-ing apples near green tomatoes laid out.

• Common diseases and pests are slugs, blight, and splitting.

May is generally the best time to plant tomatoes out. Keep tomato plants away from other tomato plants and away from potatoes to avoid the spread of disease.

• Cut off the top of the plant when it reaches 4 feet tall (about

four or five bunches of fruit and flowers) to encourage growth.