Kentish Town Vegbox

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Kentish Town Vegbox

🍏🥕Local, Organic fruit & vegbox scheme. Non-profit with 380+ members. Kentish Town | Camden | Tufnell Park | Kings’ Cross | Holloway
https://linktr.ee/vegbox

Local organic veg box scheme

14/10/2026

Hello!

Purple sprouting broccoli in many of the bags this week. Purple sprouting used to be rare early spring treat, a bit like asparagus, which appeared for a few weeks before departing again. This was certainly the case when we started out with Vegbox 14 years ago.

Since then, the traditional season has been expanded by growers to run all the way through the year. Farmers plant a mix of varieties that crop at different times of year, and milder winters and judicious use of polytunnel growing have also extended the season.

These days, PSB feels like a veg box staple, akin to chard or beetroot.

Also in many of the bags, the Brussels sprout top. This is the crown of foliage which grows at the top of every stalk of sprouts. They look a bit like a squashed cabbage, as if someone sat on them, but they are one of my favourite greens. They have a tender creaminess to them. They are great lightly sautéed in butter or oil.

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

07/10/2026

Indoor packing today ☔️

Hello!

These last few beautiful warm days of summer have been an amazing October blessing. The temperature is finally dropping, but this is still a lovely moment for produce, the bountiful autumn, with the best of summer and winter to hand.

Lovely crunchy French beans, affable broccoli, delightfully fractal Romanesco cauliflowers, and butternut squash, the prince of the Cucurbita family.

Squash are one of the great gifts of the New World, and along with beans and sweetcorn, make up the holy trinity of native American horticulture. The three sisters. When planted together, they are an ancient example of permaculture in action. The corn grows tall towards the sun, providing a living pole for the beans to climb up and the beans fix nitrogen in the soil, the squash grows along the ground, its leaves provide shade from the sun to keep moisture in the soil and its prickly leaves deter insects from feasting on the beans and corn. The way they complement each other in the fields and in the kitchen feels quite miraculous, even if it is the end product of millennia of natural selection and human agency.

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

02/10/2026

Sunnyside Community Gardens one of our lovely collection points will be having a plant sale this Sunday 🙏🏻

🪴🪴🪴🪴🪴🪴🪴🪴
Sunday 4th October 2026
1-4pm
Plant Sale
🌻🌞🌻🌞🌻🌞🌻🌞🌻
Sunnyside Community Gardens,
Hazellville Road,
N19 3LX
🫖🍰🫖🍰🫖🍰🫖🍰🫖
Tea and cake
🚲🚲🚲🚲🚲🚲🚲🚲🚲
Bike Workshop
🦜🦜🦜🦜🦜🦜🦜🦜🦜
Talk to your neighbours
🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁

24/09/2026

It was very nice to have our lovely volunteer’s even lovelier Grandmother help out at the yard yesterday! It was great to meet you Lucia! 🥰

Hello!

Savoy cabbage make their mid-autumn return to some of the veg bags this week. I do like savoy cabbages. They are hardy veterans of the colder months, yet also have a delicate beauty, with their elegant corrugated leaves, there’s something almost ornamental about them.

The leaves are strong enough that you can roll them up and stuff them with fillings, as they do in eastern Europe with ground pork and beef. The vegan version is to use lentils, wholegrains, chopped nuts and dried fruit as the stuffing. Personally I like savoy cabbage simply sauteed with some chopped onion and caraway seeds.

With corn on the cob, I’m so pleased we have more of these to go round, as it was looking like a poor season for them from many of our growers. Such a great autumn classic. You can barbecue or roast them, but personally I like to boil them in salted water for about five minutes, the water keeps them nice and moist. I boil them in their green husks, and then unwrap them on the plate.

Don’t forget we’ve got our Organic September “refer a friend to Vegbox” special offer. Tell a friend about us, get them to put your name in the discount box field on our sign up form, and we’ll make sure they get a free trial week and you get a free week too. https://vegbox.org.uk/sign-up

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

17/09/2026

The beginning of the Wednesday pack 😍

Hello!

Organic September continues, and we have a special offer for you. Refer a friend to Vegbox, and get a free week of veg for you and your friend!

Word of mouth is our biggest single source of new members to the box scheme. If you’ve been thinking about recommending us to someone, now is your moment! Just get them to put your name in the discount box field on our sign up form, and we’ll make sure they get a free trial week and you get a free week too. https://vegbox.org.uk/sign-up

Not much sweetcorn around this autumn compared to previous years. Sweetcorn needs a fair amount of water to thrive and this has been a very dry summer. At Nash Nursery, they had to plough all their sweetcorn back into the ground. At Sarah Green’s, the badgers broke through the fencing and completely destroyed their whole sweetcorn crop. They think that due to the dry weather, the badgers were desperate for moisture so were more determined to get to the crop. They’ve decided not to grow sweetcorn next year, as they have a substantial badger population on the farm.

Other autumn crops are doing quite well though. The late summer rain has been somewhat of a reprieve.

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

16/09/2026

Live in Angel? We have a new collection point hidden behind Chapel Market, in a beautiful community garden

I just visited today for the first time and it is stunning! It may be small but once you enter you are enveloped in luscious greenery

Would recommend ✅

Thanks for Carmel for building the relationship with Mandy and the garden. Also very grateful to Mandy who lives in South Camden housing cooperative, so is keen to support us as a fellow cooperative 😁

Culpeper Community Garden

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

Address

The Thanet, Herbert Street
London
NW54HD

Website

https://vegbox.org.uk/

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