New seedlings
This summer, inspired by the passion and pride of our smallholder grower partners from across the world, we are planning to grow our own fruit and veg on the balconies at our London offices.
That was the commitment at the beginning of March, so when our RHS Grow Your Own kit arrived shortly afterwards we had to walk the talk and get growing.
The idea that we could actually use the balcony on the top floor of our office building as a space to grow vegetables did appeal to me – and in some ways reminds me of a the smallholdings that our coffee growers use to cultivate their ‘kitchen gardens’ which can include corn, beans, papaya, banana and numerous other staple foods.
So we’ve rolled up our sleeves, got our hands dirty and have started growing our own!
We’ve been quite creative in finding suitable materials for our ‘garden’ – this includes reusing old coffee sacks and packaging for plant pots and grow bags, and we’re even hoping to make our own compost.
We set to work planting seeds in our mishmash of pots on 26 March, simply added water and left them to germinate. This happened surprisingly quickly!
I was pleasantly surprised to come back from the Easter break and see the runner beans, courgettes, mixed salad, tomatoes and sunflowers had already sprouted!
They are getting towards the point when we’ll have to plant them outside – so we’ll have to construct raised bedding over the next couple of weeks and our green fingers will truly be tested.
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