Burgon & Ball 5-A-Day Garden

Burgon & Ball 5-A-Day Garden at 2011 RHS Hampton Court Flower Show

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The Burgon & Ball 5-A-Day Garden in the Small Garden category at the 2011 RHS Hampton Court Flower Show, designed and constructed by Burgon & Ball – which also won a Gold medal in that category – is a great example of what can be done, as regards to food growing, in small spaces.

This incredible small garden crams enough planting into just 10 square meters of planting space to produce enough fruit and vegetables to proved a person with their recommended 5 portions a day, every day, for a whole year.

The plants are packed in to the planters cheek by jowl in a way that defies the traditional spacing suggestions more often than not found on seed packets. Nevertheless they thrive and crop as if they had the luxury of their own expansive personal space which, indeed, they have, though not in surface area.

The secret is the “deep bed methods” as espoused by the late self-sufficiency expert and guru John Seymour. Growing in very loose deep soil encourages roots to grow straight down rather than sideways, thereby enabling increased planting density, with the resulting harvests of up to fourfold of that which could be achieved by traditional planting methods.

The Burgon & Ball 5-A-Day Garden at the 2011 RHS Hampton Court Flower Show is set in a typical small courtyard, part of a large scale urban development, assessed by the kitchen back door. There is very limited space and lots of hard landscaping. The garden shows how, by using off the shelf, crop specific sized, Burgon & Ball Home Allotment® Planters, it is possible to replicate the conditions of the deep bed method and become self-sufficient in fruit & vegetables.

It is, obviously, also possible to recreate this garden using other planters, especially homemade ones, and reused and upcycled ones, such as builders' bags and such like.

Every single plant in the Burgon & Ball 5-A-Day Garden is edible in some format and all surfaces have been considered for a productive use – including the chamomile rooftop recliner and the wall of herbs in Home Allotment® Vertical Planters.

One of the highlights of the garden is the salad table – a stunning hand crafted table with integral planting trough packed with salad leaves and edible flowers for diners to pick and enjoy at their very freshest.

The Burgon & Ball 5-A-Day Garden also features rainwater harvesting, via copper drainpipes into and under-deck series of water butts, additional water butts to catch falling rain and an attractive copper rain chain channeling further water into one of the butts. You can make rain chains yourself and there are instructions that can be found, I am sure, on the Web.

Space under the stairs is utilized to house a pull-out potting bench and tool store plus a compost bin.

Burgon & Ball Home Allotment® Planters are available from all good garden centers with recommended retail prices from £9.95 to £27.95 and full information can be found on Burgon & Ball's website www.burgonandvall.com and also www.5adaygarden.co.uk.

As I have said earlier, it is obviously possible to create your own version of this garden – tailored to your own space – with a lot of DIY and reusing and repurposing this or that item of waste. If, on the other hand, you want to do it the direct route then there are the planters that you can buy, obviously.

© 2011

Burgon & Ball Potato Harvesting Scoop – Product Review

Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The Potato Harvesting Scoop, ideal for use large tubs, raised beds, or planters on the patio, in which you are growing your taters, is a brilliant re-interpretation of a traditional potato ‘grate’ – for lifting your potatoes without damage.

The bar across the end of the tines prevents accidental stabbing while the tine’s spacing and shape allows potatoes to be sifted from the soil. The design is a rather old one and the full-size tools were in use in potato and sugar beat harvesting in the days gone by. A proven design.

The tool is ideal for use with Burgon & Ball Potato Planting Bags and also for tub planting, as I do in my garden. If using to harvest potatoes grown in the ground it is recommended to first loosening the soil around the base of the plants.

Forged from stainless steel, with hardwood handle and leather hanging thong, it is a high quality tool and also, in my view, an heirloom which, if looked after, will be a tool that is still going to be used by your children and grandchildren.

A small word of advice: Despite the fact that the potato harvesting scoop has that bar across the tines to prevent damage to the potatoes being harvested the scoop should be used with care, especially when harvesting potatoes while still leaving the plants in place. It is still possible to graze the potatoes, if you work without care, and this would make them vulnerable in storage.

This is, as I have said, a great tool, brilliantly designed and one that will, I am sure, become a heirloom, and I really love using it.

© 2010

Free planting calendar for vegetable container gardening

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

A handy planting calendar from the folks at Burgon & Ball and the Royal Horticultural Society (UK) is available for download.

The nice folks at B&B have teamed up with the Royal Horticultural Society to create a handy vegetable planning guide and calendar for container gardeners.

The calendar lists when to plant and harvest a variety of vegetables (and a few fruits) with the objective of giving gardeners the 5 vegetable servings a day that is recommended by nutritionists.

And the calendar and planning guide are specifically designed for vegetables that grow well in containers, and is part of the Burgon & Ball 5aday garden, designed together with the RHS Wisley and of which a half-size one can be found at Wisley Gardens and a full size on from July 6-11, 2010 at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show.

Burgon & Ball of Sheffield, England makes beautifully crafted gardening tools and aside from looking beautiful they should, properly cared for, last for generations. I shall, hopefully, be able to review some of their tools in due course. The first one will be their Potato Harvesting Scoop from their Harvest Range of products.

One thing is worth mentioning as regards the calendar: It is designed for gardeners who live and grow their produce in England, so you may need to adjust the timing to suit your location.

Most of England is considered to be located in hardiness zone 8, with the last and first frost dates reckoned to be March 15 and November 15 respectively. But there is no guarantee that frost will not strike later in spring or earlier in fall, as spring 2010 proved only too well.

If you live in Zone 8 in the US, you may not need to make any such adjustments, but if you live in a different hardiness zone, the recommendation would be to adjust the calendar a few weeks based on the first and last frost dates in your area.

You can download the calendar here.

© 2010

Grow your own 5-a-day – from just 10sq meters

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The Royal Horticultural Society together with Burgon & Ball, renowned manufacturer of garden tools and equipment, have devised a plan to grow enough fruit & veg to meet the “5 a day” guidelines for two people, or 2 a day for a family of five...from just 10m² of raised bed planters.

By carefully selecting the most productive varieties and using the principles of the ingenious 'Deep Bed' method, plants can be spaced more closely so a planting area can achieve yields up to 400% greater than more traditional methods. Burgon & Ball's Home Allotment® Raised Willow Planters can replicate the deep bed conditions and have many other benefits of growing above ground – such as increasing the amount of light reaching the plants.

Using a series of Burgon & Ball Planters to accommodate almost 50 different varieties of the Nation's favorite fruit and vegetables, the 5-a-day Garden is both attractive and incredibly space-efficient.

To compliment this stunning garden an information packed wall chart is available to help families achieve their goals by becoming self sufficient in fruit and vegetables and living the 'Good Life'.

The 5-a-day Garden provides fresh and nutritious food, with no additives or preservatives, excess food miles or unnecessary packaging! It's simple, fun and immensely rewarding and very, very tasty.

The RHS has be nurturing a half scale version of this unique, edible and healthy '5-a-day garden' at the RHS Plant Center in Wisley and the full sized version can be seen in all it's glory at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2010.

Visitors to the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2010 and/or RHS Wisley can pick up a FREE '5-a-day Garden' planting guide, full of advice and instructions on how to schedule plan ting to maximize the potential of each planter.

Those that cannot make the show can download the planner from www.5adaygarden.com

© 2010