I'm just curious to know whether there are others out there who either have an allotment in the city and/or a city garden they grow their produce in? Although I've been trying to keep my veggie garden as organic as I possibly can, I am overcome by thoughts sometimes of whether it is actually wise to be growing veg.herbs, etc... at all bang smack in the middle of a very polluted city. While I can guarantee that no pesticides or other chemicals are used on my produce, I really wonder about the enviromental toxins, contaminants, and other city pollutants not to mention the nasty exhaust fumes from the traffic. I don't want to stop, and I dare say that I enjoy veggie growing far too much to do so anyway, and just hope that vigorous washing can get rid of some of the nasty things out there. I must say however that it's times like these I wish I didn't have to work and could move out to the countryside. :-* Oh well, maybe sometime down the road... :)
Mmmm I guess country living might not be what it is cracked out to be. Alright in summer but a bit desolate in winter.
Hope your veggies aren't glowing.
I live off of the A2 - one of the busiest roads in South London.
For the first time i am trying to grow courgettes, sweetcorn, sage, tomatoes, carrots and broccoli - I might have taken on more than i can handle but never mind.
This is just in my little back garden that gets hardly any sun and is quite a wind trap- but they are all going OK at the minute.
Go for it - cant turn out worse than some of the stuff i have had from my supermarket!
Just wash it well.
Ps, I know of an allotment near me that is boxed in by roads and i always see loads of stuff growing - especially massive rhubarb leaves!
My allotment is a 'city' allotment. So city infact that I can watch planes take off and land from London City Airport.
All of our plots are really productive.... Not sure about the pollutants. But the produce is tasty!
we are under the heathrow flightpath - unless there is an east wind. :D
car wise, no major roads nearby, the lottie is in a residential area. but yes, when it rains, the rain is probably acid which washes into the soil and goes into the produce. however, like has been said, it can't be worse than what supermarket produce have inside them in terms of pesticide, and i get proper 'taste' as a bonus :D
svea
Took the words out of my mouth, Svea!
You can't help what is around you in the environment - you can only help what you put in the soil and on your plants. If you are organic, you are organic - enough said - just wash it well.
My sister used to live in Suffolk in the middle of a farming area, and she was bothered by crop spraying by the nearby farmers. It used to be a real problem for her and they did suffer more asthma and allergy problems in the country with oilseed rape etc. So it is not always good news in the countryside. :) busy_lizzie
My parents live in devon and are in the middle of a farming community. Even they with their background get hacked off with the crop spraying - they try to be as organic as poss, back in the 80s they were as bad as all the others - funny how things go round in circles. As for us we are here due to my husband's job. We have had to overcome a lot of potential pollutant problems - land behind the farm is an old landfill, prev to that said land was mined land opp the farm is a quarry. When I say in front its behind a hill andwe cannot see it and the lorries do not go past the house as the entrance is the other side of the area that we live in but you do still feel the blasting now and again.
The land out the back is now well and truely grassed and has bridle ways etc on it and you would never know its history unless told. But that is why the Black Country is called the Black Country.
As already said you can only deal with the land you work, our land had to be checked for contamination etc thankfully passed. We are the only farm in the area so no prob with other farmers spraying. At the end of the day if you are organic then thats all you can ask for that and the age old rule of give evrything a quick light rinse. :)
I know exactly what you mean about the possibility of contaminated land; I used to live in the middle of the china clay district of Cornwall. Nothing but pits everywhere, and some of the stuff in the spoil heaps is seriously poisonous. We had the biggest pit in Europe a mile away, and local telephone and power lines went down regularly because of abrasion by grit blown against the wires. If you've never seen a 33000 volt power line go down, it's an impressive sight;the flashes can light up the entire sky.
Whereabouts in the Black Country are you? Do you have any bees on your land? I have an allotment a mile from Birmingham city centre; I don't know about pollutants but it doesn't feel the least bit urban.
Here in Camden Town, I am right by a road - a rat run, in fact, though the installation of humps has slowed it down somewhat - and next to that is the Euston to Glasgow railway line, so we get a lot of what I call 'diesel dust', that black, sooty, rather greasy stuff.
However, having lived here for over twenty years, I reckon I've ingested so much assorted muck from the atmosphere on a daily basis that the amounts which might get into my edibles will make no difference.
As for cleaning the produce, I'm afraid I've no willpower - especially when it comes to 'quick picks' like radishes, petit pois; etc - that's what my sleeves are for!
Paul told me off for that last night Amazin - I was thinning out radishes and one was about 1cm long by about 1/2cm wide and as we've not yet eaten anything from the plot I was so excited I wiped it on my sleeve and scoffed it - small but perfectly formed and tasted delicious ;D. Think he may have been jealous ;D
Hi
I'm gardening in Lewisham, South East London. The traffic here is mental, of course! I too have the same worries about pollution. However, I've come to the same conclusion as the others - can't be any worse than supermarket veggies. I grew my own carrots last year, and couldn't believe the flavour!!! Made the supermarket ones taste like cardboard.
I don't have an allotment - it would be too much for me to manage, we already have a very large garden. We live in a distinctly average 1930's terrace, which we bought because it has the largest garden in the street. The previous owners bought a lot of land off the railway co.
Our elderly neighbours grow a lot of fruit, which is cool because we can swap produce. Nobody else in the street as far as I know grows anything edible. The lady on the other side has a lovely apple tree, but never picks any of the fruit.
I do hanker for the nice, clean countryside sometimes. I was brought up in Staffordshire. However, we have a lot of advantages with temperature in London, if nothing else. The pollution keeps the ground nice and warm, and our growing season is quite long. It wasn't till the short, sharp frost earlier this year that my night-scented stock stopped flowering.
To all you city allotmenters: give yourself a big pat on the back, I reckon. By growing your own veg you're cutting down on trips to the supermarket and the associated pollution this causes.
I live in a field, basically. By growing our own fruit & veg we've managed to get supermarket shopping down to one monthly delivery. In fact we've got rid of the car altogether!
The disadvantage of living in 'the countryside' is the old boy network on the allotments is like the mafia. Unfriendly and interrelated!
Anyway, keep up the good work, I say...
Funnily enough I just finished reading a book about urban gardening. It said that lead and car fumes keep quite low, so as long as the garden is surrounded by houses, hedges, fences, trees etc you won't have any problems from that.
as said - probably much cleaner than chemical supermarket food.
thanks to all for your feedback and responses - I am very much relieved to see that there are many of us in the same boat!
And it's good to remember the pros of living in the city sometimes as well (right you are Charlotte about the temperature).
And yes, I agree very much with the general consensus on this - despite what the skeptics here may say (perhaps my collleagues/cohorts are silently envious of all this home-grown food production going on? ;)
In any case it is with a renewed conviction and spirit that I will be planting my beetroot, carrots, radishes, dill, basil kale, lettuces and arugula this weekend! :D
long live city allotmenteering/potagers!  ;D
I've read that people are less likely to suffer from asthma if they don't live directly on a main road, and thast trees soak up the pollution and make it less likely again,. I suspect you're right about pollution being low away from roads. So my plot won't suffer much; it's got playing fields on one side and the Botanical Gardens on the other.