One Pot Pledge® Blog

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