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Go on - have a grow! Sign up to the One Pot Pledge

Anna Guyer | 24.02.10

The One Pot Pledge is about getting people that want to grow, but are a bit afraid to start, to make a pledge to grow their own edible veg. What can simpler than growing something – just one thing - in a pot this year?

We are working with Garden Organic to encourage more than 30,000 newcomers to gardening to have a grow. Personally, I love cut and come again lettuce. It can last in pots throughout the year. Another of my favourites is Basil. Why waste £1.39 per pot at the supermarket when you can grow your own all through summer?

For something a bit more exotic, try a chilli plant. Matthew made some de-licious chili oil this year which has gone down a treat at home and as Christmas presents too.

All you need is a pot, some compost and some seeds. We are providing all sorts of very helpful growing advice at www.onepotpledge.org.uk.

As part of our commitment at Greenhouse we have said we will get 250 new people into gardening this year. If you are a keen gardener, consider hosting a ‘plant a pot’ party, or go into your kids' schools to get them all planting up a pot to take home.

We at Greenhouse are about to get a bit competitive among our team on the creative use of pots: who can make the best pot? Will it be something recycled, unusual, or bit decorative? I am planning a home made mosaic pot decorated with old pieces of crockery. I have been meaning to do a mosaic table for about a year so I thought that a pot might be easier. It might be a bit Heath Robinson (?) and you're free to laugh at it later when it appears on the blog.

Who knows what our pots and plants will look like, but we will post our best pots and produce later on - before they get eaten.

We would love if you want to send in pictures of your plant in a pot when the first green shoots appear, or to pass on advice. Tell us what you have you have chosen to grow and why.

Go on, join us. Have a grow!

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Give it a grow: Join us in the One Pot Pledge

Anna Guyer | 18.05.10

Everyone at Greenhouse is working to recruit 1,000 people to join us in the One Pot Pledge, a campaign to get 30,000 first-time gardeners to grow a pot of fruit or veg.

I love this project. It's good for the environment, and it's stuff you can eat :-)

Please join us in pledging to grow a pot of veg. Like you, we are just starting out.

The official web site is chock full of tips for first-timers, and they have expert advice from well-known gardeners like Alys Fowler. You can even submit your gardening questions and they will be answered.

It's all on the One Pot Pledge site, sponsored by Garden Organic, the leading organic growing charity.

We'll be posting our progress here and on our new Facebook page. Check it out and "like" us. We're mailing free veg seeds to new Facebook friends.

If you're already a gardener, there's a role for you in the One Pot Pledge to help get a friend or two growing too.

Let's grow a tastier world together!

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Teach your children well

Anna Guyer | 20.05.10

The greatest resource we have for creating a sustainable future isn't a law or a revolutionary new product. I believe it lies in our ability to, as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young so beautifully put it, teach our children well.

As parents of three, Matthew and I are keen for our children to develop an understanding of the importance of being good stewards for the planet. They are really into it -- and so are their friends, which I find both fascinating and heartening.



When Rosie’s school, St John’s in Wimborne, celebrated Environment Week, we spent a day there to help more than 160 children plant edible veg. This was part of our effort to support Garden Organic's One Pot Pledge, which I've talked about on the blog. It's all about getting first-time gardeners to plant a few seeds and grow something edible.

Our day at school was really great. It was also exhausting - a good exhaustion - which left me in complete awe and admiration for the stamina and commitment that teachers expend everyday.

For many of Rosie's schoolmates, planting something was a first. We gave the children a choice of seeds for French beans, courgettes, carrots and salad. Everyone had fun and they loved growing the veg.

The day before, I went to our local supermarket and bought the equivalent of what we were going to plant. We looked at food miles:

• French beans from Kenya, 4685 miles
• green beans from Morocco, 1500 miles
• lettuce from Perthshire, over 400 miles
• carrots and courgettes from Spain, 585 miles

What was inspiring was that the children were knowledgeable about food miles and the issues where are food comes from, and they have an awareness about the impact of food transportation on the environment and the benefits of growing your own. There's something to this exercise of reaching kids when they are seven and eight. These are such formative years. 

We weren't taught lessons of sustainability when I was a kid. What I saw at Rosie's school gives me hope. It makes me reach for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.



PS: I am going to keep asking you to take the One Pot Pledge. I have promised myself to recruit 1000 new growers! 

Food Gardening Green Living Parenting | Share +
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Barbra Streisand, the One Pot Pledge and Me

Kenneth Hill | 26.05.10

I don't talk to my plants. No, sir. I'm not a crazy person.

I don't sing to them either, not when I have Barbra Streisand to do it for me - with proven results.

In the 1970 Vincente Minnelli film On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, Ms. Streisand gives a marvelous performance as Daisy Gamble, a nice woman living in New York, engaged to a guy so boring he could make weeds wilt.

Among her gifts, aside from channeling her past lives during psychotherapy, are two sorta cool "superpowers:" She hears phones ring before they ring, and she sings to make plants grow --and I mean grow REALLY FAST - with lyrics like:

"Hey buds below
Up is where to grow
Up with which below can't compare with.
Hurry, it's lovely up here…"

The supersonic plant growing is done to marvelous effect in the film thanks to the talents of John Nash Ott Jr., a time-lapse specialist who pioneered the medium working for Disney and others as early as the 1950s. Ott was also a horticulturist.

The scene below is a fantastic ride through Daisy Gamble's ability to get things to grow, something I'm thinking a lot about at the moment as I watch my little pot of basil inching, well, quarter-inching, it's way to become something I can harvest.

Oh Ms. Streisand, how my One Pot Pledge could use you now! 



 

PS: Do you talk or sing to your plants? C'mon, you can tell :-)

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Eco Hero: Arthur Potts Dawson

Sally Hill | 25.08.10

Arthur Potts Dawson has been a professional chef for twenty-three years.

In 2006, he designed and created two sustainably aware urban restaurants, Acorn House and Water House in London.

Arthur’s latest project is The Peoples Supermarket, a not for profit, co-operative and social enterprise. Its members work voluntarily, helping to reduce business costs and keep the food cheap as well as good. The idea of the supermarket is to create an urban community business that supports British rural farming.

Arthur is also supporting One Pot Pledge and its attempt to get everyone recognizing the superior flavour of homegrown food.

Read more

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