Early planting in the poly tunnel!

This year we are starting to plant earlier in the poly tunnel, it's the first week in February and yesterday we planted “Salad Leaf Mix (Mesclun Mis) and “The Californian Salad Mix Baby Leaf Salad”, in guttering hanging up in the poly tunnel.

We have early early potatoes chitting and  we are  planning to plant them down one side of the poly tunnel. The idea being that they will be ready and picked by the time we plant tomato's in their place later on this year!

Other seeds we are planning to plant  next week are an early carrot “Giant Red Carrot”, “ Oskar” dwarf early peas and “Hon Tsai Tai” purple sprouting greens.

All this inspiration has come form a book called “Grow your own Vegetables” by Joy Larkcom and seed companies like “The Real Seed Catalogue” and Seedaholic” web sites.

Christmas is coming and we've got great plans for the New Year!

2014 is fast approaching and it's going to be an exciting year at the allotment. We've got plans to put up a new polytunnel in January, some improvements to the shed in February, and lots of planting plans for March onwards. Come along and give us a hand!

A bumper year for apples

2013 has been a brilliant year for the Fruit Harvesting Scheme. We have harvested crates and crates full of surplus fruit from around Oabby and Wigston - it's certainly been a bumper crop!

We have been working with various Food Banks to distribute the fruit to people in need, and have been able to help well over 100 families.

Thank you to everyone who has been involved; the owners of the trees, volunteer pickers and sorters, people who have helped to process the damaged fruit to make juice, and the food banks for helping to get the fruit to the people who need it most.

Award winners!

Thanks to all your votes, the Community Food Champions have won the 'Local Food Heroes' award for the East Midlands Region. They were presented with a beautiful wooden trophy this morning, and some were even interviewed live on BBC Radio Leicester!


The award is well-deserved recognition of all the hard work the volunteers put into the project.

If you want to listen to the interview it is available on BBC iplayer, www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01cjsz6/Jim_Davis_Jims_Time_Machine/   from about 1.09.40secs

Gardening is good for you!

Eagle-eyed viewers of BBC Breakfast might have spotted the familiar 'TCV' logo yesterday morning, when a project run by The Conservation Volunteers in London was featured in a clip about the benefits of gardening. Take a look at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23311583

 

So now it's official, volunteering at the Community Allotment will make you a happy person!

A delicious harvest for the Muddy Boots group

Summer has finally arrived and last week the Muddy Boots group made the most of the harvest and munched their way through some delicious strawberries, lettuce, peas, cucumber and beans. It's amazing how a reluctant fruit-and-vegetable-eater will happily gorge on 'the green stuff' if they've picked and prepared it themselves!

Harry enjoying picking some lettuce

Maggie found an enormous cucumber...

...and Rosie found a funny-shaped one!

Alex loved the strawberries...

...and so did Chloe.

Huey enjoyed preparing the salad

Soren's t-shirt reminds us how important it is to look after wildlife on the allotment.

That's why we're organic!

Sharing our experience

In May and June the Community Food Champions went to visit two other Local Food projects to share ideas and be inspired by what others are doing.

The 'Get Growing' project in York works with local community groups and schools to develop food growing areas. We were taken on a very interesting tour of some of the sites the team has helped to develop, and had a thoroughly enjoyable day. The team from York made a return visit to Leicester, and enjoyed spending time at the Community Allotment, swapping ideas and tips with the volunteers.

 

 

We also visited Kelmarsh Hall, a stately home with a walled kitchen garden which is being developed into a volunteering centre and teaching resource with the help of Local Food funding. We were really interested to see how traditional planting was integrated with food growing, and were treated to a guided tour of the whole garden.