One Pot Pledge® Blog

Just a quick post to share my excitement!

Yep, the One Pot Pledge will be making an appearance at the Prince of Wales’ Garden Party to Make a Difference which starts in central London this Wednesday (8th September). By Royal invite, we’ve been asked to bring the pledge to the palaces to get visitors to the garden party potting their own edible veg to take home, grow and eat!

If you’re heading to the Garden Party then make sure you find us – we’ll be the ones wheeling the lovely bright green Haemmerlin wheelbarrows, giving out Delfland Nurseries’ organically grown chard and wild rocket to anyone that pledges to grow their own!

See you there…www.startgardenparty.co.uk

First Harvest- copyright Linda Scannell

It’s fantastic getting feedback from our One Pot Pledgers. Here photographer, Linda Scannell, shares tales of her first forays into food growing and some of her lovely photos:

Name: Linda Scannell

Age: 44

Location: Warwick

Is this the first time you’ve tried to grow anything edible?   No- I’ve had a go at strawberries and rocket before but not very successfully.

Why did you decide to ‘give it a grow’?   I thought it would be interesting for my children, who are aged 8 and 5. Plus i was fed up of buying bags of salad from the supermarket and wasting lots of it- I thought it would be easier to cut what I wanted.

What are you growing?   Runner beans, peas, mangetout, potatoes, pumpkin, carrots, mixed salad leaves, tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, red cabbage, spring onions, mint, thyme, rosemary, chives and parsley.

New Potatoes- copyright Linda Scannell

Have you had any teething problems?   The fist sowing of carrots didn’t go that well (4 small ones) – not sure why, but the next lot have all grown so looking forward to eating those. The broccoli didn’t come through at all – I ended up nurturing something that turned out to be a nettle where the broccoli should’ve grown! And the peas haven’t thrived – we’ve just had enough for one spoonful each – so I need to think about planting them somewhere else next year. The slugs have pretty much left the veg alone – they were too busy eating all our sunflowers!!

Have you eaten any of the produce you’ve grown?   We’ve eaten loads of mangetout and runner beans, salad leaves, one meals worth of new potatoes and a few tomatoes and peppers so far. And the mint has come in handy for Pimms and making fresh mint tea.

Has the One Pot Pledge inspired you to have a go at growing anything again? Yes – I’ll definitely be growing some more. It’s been a lot less time consuming than I thought it would be, it’s been very satisfying watching everything grow, and we all think fresh veg is much tastier than supermarket bought, so now I’m looking for an allotment so we can grow more of it.

What would you like to try next?   I definitely want to give broccoli another try, and the kids want to try purple carrots.

Dwarf French beans in a recycling bin and old tiling grout container!

Name: Matt Priestley
Age: 25
Location: Coventry

Is this the first time you’ve tried to grow anything edible?
This is the first time I have attempted to grow anything edible other than strawberries, except for growing cress at school.

Why did you decide to have a go? I decided to have a go while working at Gardeners’ World Live. There were a few seeds and pots left over at the end of the week and it seemed a bit hypocritical of me to sign people up for the One Pot Pledge and not try it myself.

What are you growing?
At the moment I have dwarf French Beans growing in pots and some tomatoes and carrots growing in a raised bed.

Have you had any teething problems?
My first problem was trying to find a bigger pot to transfer the beans to when they outgrew their original pot, luckily I had an unused recycling box laying around that worked well for this purpose. My second problem was remembering to water the pots after I had moved them outside, but the regular rain showers saved me!

Have you eaten any of the produce you’ve grown?
So far I have only eaten some of my own lettuce as I decided to eat it before the slugs attacked it!

Have you got a recipe idea to use your One Pot Pledge veg in?
As I cannot cook to save my life I will most likely give the French beans to my mum to be cooked and eaten with my Sunday dinner!

Will you be having a go at growing again?
After finding out how easy it is I will definitely try growing again in the future.

What would you like to try next? Next time I may try growing some winter veg but if I don’t get round to it I will try growing some chillies and peppers next as I know these will get eaten.

It’s great to hear tales from our One Pot Pledgers, here Jo Roberts, tells us all about her office pledge competition at Parenthesis Design and Marketing in Coventry.

“I decided to get the ‘office growing’ this year and sorted out a challenge for our One Pot Pledge: a chilli growing competition.

We had eight seedlings and six were all potted up on the same day, all have the same compost, same size pot and same saucer to sit on and they were all more or less the same size.

After lining them up on the windowsill in our canal side office kitchen, staff were asked to choose one. The MD chose the biggest (no surprise!) and I waited until last, as it seemed fairer.

A list of rules was then posted on the notice board stating staff could not swap their position on the windowsill or sabotage other chillies. Despite this we did have someone cut out several paper chillies and tie them to their plant and one even tried to fool everyone with a real chilli!

So far we have one plant with three chillies, one with none, and the rest have one. We will have a prize for the biggest plant and the one with the most chillies.

The competition really has galvanized staff into action and the some have already asked for the next challenge, which will be potatoes for Christmas dinner!”

Competition chillies

Here at One Pot Pledge HQ we’ve been opting for veg plants over houseplants this summer. They may not have the same lifespan as your average spider plant, but they’re pretty exciting – especially when this happens! What is more I reckon that chilli is going to be pretty tasty too!

Desktop Chilli plant

I must add to this post that had I have planted this chilli plant into a larger pot – as per the instructions – I would have had more to show for my efforts! Oh well, it’s a start and that’s what the One Pot Pledge is all about. So how are the rest of you doing?

It’s not every day that you get a buzz from going to work, but I think today definitely counts as one of them!

Today Chief Exec of Garden Organic, Myles Bremner, joined the One Pot Pledge team and our campaign partners, Food up Front, to take to London Bridge to get as many commuters, tourists and passers by to join us in making the One Pot Pledge to grow something edible and delicious this year.

Based outside Pret A Manger on London Bridge, the morning surge of commuters was intense but despite the pressures of needing to get to work within an hour hundreds of people had already taken the opportunity to make the pledge and take away a coffee cup sown with delicious basil seeds in rich organic compost. Some were suited and booted business men, some were sightseers and day trippers and some were ‘ladies that lunch’ but one thing was certain – all of them were chuffed to bits with their reused coffee cups filled with soil, seeds and most of all promise!

And it wasn’t just commuters that dropped by. Rosie Boycott sowed a cup, so did Tristram Stuart, and as well as literally hundreds of eager Londoners – even the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson chipped in with his own contribution from his City Hall office!

All in all it’s been a great day – I hope today’s pledgers got as much out of it as we all did.

Boris Johnson with his One Pot Pledge

Good day to you my pledging chums.

It’s now been over a week since I started my One Pot Pledge and my strawberries are coming up a treat. Or at least I’m sure they would be if I’d actually got round to planting them yet.

I know; I am quite, quite terrible.

I have bought the seeds though… so that’s something I guess. Although I am quite shocked to learn that a strawberry is not just a strawberry. Oh no. There are varieties and everything.

I have got myself an alpine strawberry. Apparently they’re quite a tiny little fruit but extraordinarily flavoursome. Once you’ve grown them, that is. Currently they’d be rather crunchy.

What I have achieved in this time is a lettuce. In a hat! It has rather enjoyed the sunshine over this weekend and has come on a treat. I’ve just got to be careful that I’m not too over-zealous with my watering. As I usually forget it now seems I have compensated for that by attempting to drown the poor little mite.

Maybe one day I’ll find that middle ground.

This weeks jobs:

Buy Seed Compost.

PLANT STRAWBERRIES (!!!)

I’ve also been donated some chilli seeds and seed potatoes so they’re going to have to be given a grow.

Just a quick update to say hi all those new pledgers out there that joined the campaign at the Real Food Festival last weekend. It was fantastic meeting you all and we hope you’ve been looking after your newly acquired seedlings!

We had a great time talking to you about food growing and seeing how excited so many of you were at the prospect of your very own home grown veg. Don’t forget there are tips on how to care for your veggies on the website and do keep us posted by sending in your stories and pictures – onepotpledge@gardenorganic.org.uk

Oh and just to show you how far reaching the campaign is – here’s a pic of Michelin starred chef, Raymond Blanc, making his very own One Pot Pledge!

Renowned chef, Raymond Blanc, makes his own One Pot Pledge

If you want to get involved with the One Pot Pledge this year but you’ve surveyed your growing opportunities at home and they’re not very inspiring, then why not look further afield?

Most of us spend around half of our waking hours at work, so why not pot up a plant and take it with you? You can water it on your tea breaks, talk to it while you’re waiting for the printer and harvest your crop to liven up your lunch!

One of the best crops of peppers I ever grew was in an office. I had a nice, sunny spot by the window and the long days of artificial light and temperature-controlled air-conditioning provided the peppers with just the kind of conditions they love.

Peppers (sweet and chilli) are happy growing in pots as long as they get enough light and enough water – something it’s easy to keep an eye on when you’re at your desk. They also appreciate regular liquid feeds with a tomato fertilizer that’s high in potassium (the K value) to encourage them to grow lots of fruit.

Peppers are largely self-fertile and don’t require the attentions of bees, but in the calm air of an office it can be helpful to either gently shake the blooms or rub your finger inside them to encourage the transfer of pollen. You’ll know which flowers have been pollinated – their insides swell into little green fruits – whereas unpollinated flowers simply drop off.

Peppers can take a long time to ripen, which makes them tricky to grow outdoors but perfect candidates for an office, where they can grow year round. They are perennial plants, so you won’t need to replace them, although they will need repotting every so often as they get larger. You can prune any unruly branches off if they’re getting in the way of your computer screen!

Having an interesting plant on your desk really adds life to the office, and if you work for a big company then you might be surprised at who stops by to take a look! You may be less pleased to see that some fruits disappear when they’re ripe – unfortunately a bit of ’scrumping’ is often inevitable, so try and look upon it as sharing with strangers. And you’ll need to find someone reliable to keep up with the watering duties when you’re on your holidays.

And if you don’t have a sunny spot for a pepper? Then think about plants that don’t mind less light and don’t need insect pollinators – a little pot of salad plants, or a couple of herbs, could really liven up your lunches.

Emma Cooper is a freelance garden writer living in Oxfordshire with her husband and three pet chickens. You can read her garden diary and listen to The Alternative Kitchen Garden Show online at http://coopette.com. Her first book, ‘The Alternative Kitchen Garden: An A to Z’ was published by Permanent Publications in August 2009.

The office chilis get off to a good grow.