It wasn’t a fantastically productive growing year for us, but TA TAH … it was successful. Last week, we celebrated!

Back in May we started to transform a 12 square metre plot of waste land – covered in weeds, rubble, empty bottles, cans and cigarette butts –  into a small garden for edible growing. We had no idea whether it would work. Given that the soil there was hardly soil, we decided to use grow bags and any containers we could get our hands on. Container vegetable gardening can be hard work, particularly through dry spells.

But it DID work … our first produce was mange-tout (well, two mange-tout), followed by some runner beans, lollo rosso, oriental greens and radishes. Our courgette plants – in any case, rather weak ‘rescue’ seedlings from the bargain stand of a local garden centre – didn’t do very much, and some of our squashes clearly needed more room, but the garden was nurtured over our uninspiring summer.

Last week, we got together for a ‘Harvest supper’ made with late produce from the garden: tomatoes finally turning red, scarlet chilli, various herbs, frisee lettuce, radishes and our two beautiful orange squashes provided a wonderful meal. Our menu: Madeleine’s spicy squash and tomato soup, Elspeth’s frisee salad with walnuts, raddishes and bacon lardons and Diane’s tomato tartelets.

There were also dessert grapes from garden vines – we haven’t quite got to the point of producing our own wine yet, but there’s a great south-facing wall in the Station Partnership garden just waiting for a trellis that would delight a vine …

Who knows what our Harvest supper will bring in a few years time: will we be drinking Shaftesbury Chardonnay? Chateau de la Gare 2014? The time to plan the garden for next season and perhaps longer term is coming up: let’s dream … Meanwhile, a big thank-you to all those who have participated in, and contributed to, the London Road Station Partnership garden.