Recent social media posts
09/09/2026
Hello!
Organic September continues, and there has been some more delightful rain for our producers!
Mathew at Better Food Shed, who coordinate buying from our farmers across the London network of organic box schemes, writes “Sare I say it, our group of growers seem ... happy! Martin at Ripple recorded 30mm of rain, Andy at Nash told me things are actually ‘all doing grand’ after the rain, John at Newfields was weeding his sprouts and saying he thought they could well be excellent when they are ready.”
I recall also reading that UK groundwater levels remain in “remarkable” health despite the record breaking dry summer, so that’s also cause for gladness.
There are cauliflowers in many of the bags this week. One of the best looking of the autumn veg, in my humble opinion. There’s something quite beautiful about the white or creamy head of a cauliflower, cradled by green leaves all around.
And they are surprisingly versatile in the kitchen, not just a pretty face. Low in calories, very nutritious, and easy to digest for those with delicate stomachs. They can be eaten raw – grated into a fine crumbly “rice” with salad dressing. They can be roasted whole, perhaps smothered in spicy yoghurt first. They can be grilled in slices. Why you can even drown them in bland creamy cheese sauce and your children will be delighted.
And don’t forget the leaves. Oil them up and roast them in the oven. They are crispy and lovely.
Tom Steele
03/09/2026
Have you ever had freshly pressed apple juice? 🍎
If you haven't, you're in for a treat. It's sweet, fresh, cloudy and ridiculously delicious - nothing like the stuff you buy in a bottle
On Saturday 26 September, we'll be in the packing yard at the The Thanet Youth & Community Centre, NW5 pressing apples and making juice. Come along and have a glass (or several). There will also be a conker battles too 🌰
Bring a friend, bring a neighbour or anyone who needs to discover how good fresh apple juice can be
We'll supply the apples, conkers and string - just turn up
📅 Saturday 26 September
🕑 2–4pm
📍 The Thanet Youth & Community Centre, NW5
Link to the event page is in the description
02/09/2026
Some of us made nibbles for brunch/lunch/teabreak: plum cake, cheese, cornbread, plum jam and radish top pesto. Delicious!!!! 😍❤️🥰
Hello!
It’s Organic September, a month of celebration of all things organic, organised by the Soil Association. It’s a good month for it, as generally September is the crowning glory of the British agricultural calendar. The volume and diversity of homegrown UK produce is at its peak.
I really like September. Partly because it’s my birthday month, but also because of the weather! Usually sunny, but not too hot. The days grow shorter, but there’s something special about the early evening light, a wistful glow as we chase the last days of sunshine before autumn arrives full force.
The end of September also sees Fairtrade Fortnight. The “fair trade” part of Vegbox’s mission is as important as the “organic” part. The two are intertwined. Right relations between people and planet.
On average, producers receive just 10% of every pound you spend in the supermarket, while they receive 60% of every pound with Vegbox.
Don’t forget to return your re-usable Vegbox bags and packaging. Please don’t machine wash your veg bags, just rinse them in cold water.
When you want to take a holiday from Vegbox, please let us know by Wednesday of the week before!
Tom Steele
26/08/2026
Hello!
The autumn squash are arriving, with red uchi kuri squash in some of the bags this week. We’ll see more squash over the coming weeks and months.
Squash all originate from Central America, and they were one of the first of all vegetables to be domesticated by humans. They have been bred into an amazing diversity of forms. This one genus – Cucurbita – includes pumpkin, Crown Prince squash, little acorn and gem squash, patty pans, and also courgettes and marrows.
I generally like to roast squash. It softens those hard rinds and makes them easier to cut open and deal with. Speaking of which, what animals actually ate wild squash before humans came along? The hard rinds are difficult to get into, the wild plants have very bitter flesh, too toxic for small animals. It turns out that they were probably eaten by megafauna, the large animals over a tonne in weight that once dominated our ecosystems but which all went extinct around 11,000 years ago.
It would have been no trouble for a mammoth or giant sloth to break open the hard shell of a squash. Their bigger body size would have left them unbothered by the bitter flesh. Wild squash also need recently disturbed ground in which to thrive. The trampling of megafauna would have done the job.
So it seems that Cucurbita originally evolved to ensure it was specifically eaten and dispersed by megafauna. Once the megafauna died out, Cucurbita found itself trapped within its hard, unpalatable fruits, and its range dwindled. But then humans domesticated them, bred out the bitterness, and gave them a second evolutionary act.
When you want to take a holiday from Vegbox, please let us know by Wednesday of the week before!
Tom Steele
20/08/2026
Ever eaten radish tops?
In Italy they cook with what they call cima di rapa (technically translates to turnip tops, but radish tops are pretty much the same)
When I get radishes in my vegbox I make a real simple and tasty pasta. All you need is onions, radish or turnip tops, Parmesan and some quality olive oil
Fry your onions then add the tops, boil your pasta, mix together, add pepper, salt, Parmesan and use a quality oil. The olive oil is a key ingredient for taste so it won't work with a standard frying olive oil
05/08/2026
A very beautiful and busy with volunteers packing day today! Thank you our lovely volunteers 🙏🏻🌽🥰
Hello!
The astonishing run of dry weather continues and its had a massive impact on farmers. The fruit crops like courgettes, aubergines and tomatoes are small and growing very slowly, and it looks like this may be our last week of courgettes, which normally are plentiful well into September. Green leafy crops have suffered, there is still kale available from Yorkshire, but we have no access to lettuce across our farms at this point.
The extreme swings in weather conditions that characterise our climate change driven era are punishing for agriculture. The south of England was pummelled by one of the wettest winters ever recorded at the beginning of 2026, followed by a very dry spring and then the driest July since records began.
It points to the need for farms to plan carefully for extreme weather, and for governments to support them to do so. Sarah Green has mentioned a few times how grateful she is that her grandfather and father built an irrigation reservoir on their land forty years ago.
We will see how it goes, but I for one will be very grateful if we can turn our faces to the skies and bask in some heavy rainstorms in August!
Don’t forget to return your re-usable Vegbox bags and packaging. Please don’t machine wash your veg bags, just rinse them in cold water.
When you want to take a holiday from Vegbox, please let us know a week in advance!
Tom Steele
29/07/2026
Packing indoors today to protect our lovely Hugh Lowe Farms strawberries and beautiful RIPPLE FARM ORGANICS salad leaves 🍃
Kentish Town Vegbox
Enjoy this buck moon 🌑
Hello!
It has been an exceptionally dry July. England has seen just 5% of the usual July rainfall this year, and down here in the southeast most areas have seen no rain at all this month. These are challenging conditions for veg and fruit growing. The u[coming El Niño weather pattern means 2027 could bring even hotter weather, though its exact impacts in different countries can vary considerably.
Agroecological farming systems like organic farming helps with building resilience for these climatic changes. Caring for the soil helps the land retain water, while agroforestry practices help to shade produce, cool the air, and stabilise moisture in the soil, not to mention providing shade for our farming colleagues who work out in the open harvesting the crops we eat.
For those of you who have cherry tomatoes in your bags this week, the cherry tomatoes are “green shouldered”. This can happen when they are grown in excessively high temperatures. The green parts of the tomato are at the top of the fruit and won’t turn red, they will be harder and sharper in taste. A good option is to cook the tomatoes rather than have them raw.
If you fancy engaging more closely with the glory of the Corn Mother this summer, consider a visit to Sarah Green’s in Essex, where they have created a Maize Maze! https://www.mark-farm.com/maize-maze.html
Don’t forget to return your re-usable Vegbox bags and packaging. Please don’t machine wash your veg bags, just rinse them in cold water.
When you want to take a holiday from Vegbox, please let us know a week in advance!
Tom Steele
22/07/2026
Sunny marrows and lovely 🌽 packing day! 🌽😍🌽
Hello!
Sarah Green writes this week... “First thing on Monday morning Stuart got in the farm truck and there was a young rabbit looking up at him sitting on the passenger seat! After the initial shock, for both, the rabbit hopped off and presumably went under a seat as Stuart couldn’t find it!”
I like seeing the spring onions from Ripple Farm turn into green onions and gradually grow bigger, week by week, through the summer. The final stage is that they are all harvested and “cured” – i.e. dried in the sun – in September, so they can be stored in dry, well-ventilated barns, and used through the autumn and winter.
Corn on the cob is making an early summer appearance! One of my favourite veg. Did you know that each corn kernel is a sort of flower? When you peel back the husks that protect the cob, you see lots of thin strands of corn silk. Each silk strand is a greatly elongated flower pistil that connects a single corn kernel, or o***y, to the outside world. The outer end of the silk collects pollen, or s***m, from the air, which travels down to fertilise the kernel. So each cob is the mother of 800 little kernel children, each potentially fertilised by a different father. In Native American culture, they call her the Corn Mother.
Don’t forget to return your re-usable Vegbox bags and packaging. Please don’t machine wash your veg bags, just rinse them in cold water.
When you want to take a holiday from Vegbox, please let us know a week in advance!
Tom Steele
22/07/2026
Marrow time!!! Kentish Town Vegbox
14/07/2026
Indoor packing last Wednesday due to the extreme heat!
Hello!
We are moving into the season of the nightshade family, the time for those sun loving vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers and aubergines.
The beautiful aubergine arrived in Europe from Asia from the 14th century onwards, with written records of them first appearing in England in the 16th century. They were first admired as ornamentals and thought largely to be poisonous. Back then they were much more bitter, with high levels of alkaloids, the same compounds that can be dangerous or deadly in green potatoes or deadly nightshade. They were gradually bred to be less bitter, but even now many recipes still call for them to be salted, to draw out the bitterness. This is something you generally don’t need to do anymore.
There is a lot of variety in aubergine types around the world. When I spent time in Ghana years ago, I used to cook the little round white ones they have there, known as “garden eggs”. You can find all kinds of other varieties with different shapes, sizes and colours across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
I think aubergine is a great staple for vegetarian and vegan cooking. It brings an earthy “meaty” texture to the table that’s quite unique.
Don’t forget to return your re-usable Vegbox bags and packaging.
When you want to take a holiday from Vegbox, please let us know a week in advance!
Tom Steele
27/06/2026
We packed indoors Wednesday as a complete weather turnaround regarding packing indoors; 🥵 🤪
And not many photos taken either! 🥰
Phew, what a scorcher!
Make sure you collect your bags as soon as you can tomorrow and get that veg straight into the fridge!
One thing that’s fun about seeing the whole plant, as you can at the moment with carrots, is that it becomes easier to see the resemblances between different vegetables, herbs and spices. The feathery fronds of carrots are reminiscent of parsley for a reason, they are part of the same family. If you let them grow further and flower, you’d then see that the flower resembles the flowers of dill, cumin and coriander too. One reason why these flavours pair so well. Carrot, cumin and coriander, a cornerstone trio of many eastern Mediterranean dishes.
Similarly, you’ll notice the resemblance between the beetroot stems and leaves and chard stems and leaves. Chard is pretty much the same plant as the beetroot, just cultivated for its stalks and leafy greens rather than for its root.
For those with summer cabbages in the bag, instead of cooking them, try them raw. They are crisp and sweet and thinly sliced make an excellent coleslaw, you could also mix with grated courgettes, carrots and even beetroot if you’d like your coleslaw to flaunt some flamboyant pink vibes.
Don’t forget to return your re-usable Vegbox bags and packaging. For those of you who wash your bags for us, thank you! Rinse them out in cold water rather than put them in the washing machine though, it stops the ink from washing off.
When you want to take a holiday from Vegbox, please let us know a week in advance!
Tom Steele
23/06/2026
Very lovely Kentish Town Vegbox Summer Solstice pizza gathering Rhyl Kitchen Classroom (the most delicious pizzas! )
Where we enjoyed sautéed turnips tops, spring onions, and courgette toppings on our pizzas! Courtesy of Kentish Town Vegbox leftovers 🤩
With turnip, kohlrabi and carrot salads! 🥗
sign up to get a Vegbox go to https://vegbox.org.uk/sign-up/. Link in bio
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22/06/2026
🌳 Under the concrete, there is soil
A few weeks ago group of Vegbox members visited OrganicLea's Market Garden in Walthamstow. What started as an abandoned council nursery is now a thriving community farm, training centre, orchard, and food forest run by a workers' cooperative. OrganicLea has spent years transforming the site into a place that grows both food and community.
It is a beautiful green oasis in the Big Smoke and I recommend everybody visit it.
I've written up the full story of the day, including what we learnt wandering through the food forest and why places like this matter.
📖 Read the article via the link in our bio.
And if you'd like more stories from the farms behind your veg bag, subscribe to our newsletter while you're there.
Address
The Thanet, Herbert Street
London
NW5 4HD
To get to the location on Herbert Street in London, take the Northern Line or Thameslink trains to Kentish Town Station. From there, take a short walk towards east and turn left onto Herbert Street. The location is on your right.
If you are driving, take the A503 road towards Kentish Town and then turn onto Prince of Wales Road. Turn left onto Herbert Street and look for parking options available nearby. Please note that parking on this street may be limited during peak hours.
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Kentish Town Vegbox is a food delivery service that offers a local organic veg box scheme. With over 380 members, this non-profit organization is committed to making our food system more sustainable by sourcing great-tasting organic fruits and vegetables from small-scale farms near London. The cooperative nature of Kentish Town Vegbox ensures that prices remain affordable while farmers and staff are paid fairly. Located on Herbert Street, this community-focused initiative empowers its members to connect with the freshest produce available in the area. By choosing Kentish Town Vegbox, you can support local farmers and enjoy delicious, healthy food at the same time.
