Get Set Grow!
Category: Grow your own food
Sowing peas
See this link for some handy advice on ways of sowing peas from the RHS Campaign for School Gardening
Financing community food: Securing money to help community food enterprises to grow
‘This report examines the funding needs of community food enterprises and how they can continue to use food to achieve a wide variety of important social and environmental benefits.
The report was written following a series of community food finance meetings, bringing together organisations that assist community food enterprises, with progressive funders. This process was undertaken as part of the five-year Big Lottery funded Making Local Food Work programme that has – since 2007 – supported a wide range of community-run food enterprises to help communities take control of their food and where it comes from. The community food finance meetings discussed how best to secure funds for community food enterprises in the future, to help them through the all-important start-up phase, and to obtain funds to grow and, thereby, continue work that has more charitable than commercial aims.
We hope to see the community food movement grow and thrive, hence the enterprises need improved prospects for securing the finance they need to succeed. With this report, and work evolving from it, we wish to encourage conversations between enterprises and their communities, the sector organisations that support them, the individuals and organisations that provide funds, and with government, whose policies provides the framework in which we operate….’
Its such a fun time of year when you can walk outside to your backyard and harvest food from your garden. Nothing says fresh like that. I have been growing some different tomatoes this year. I am able to harvest tomatoes everyday since they are in a greenhouse and ripening sooner than those outside.
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| Yellow Pear & Golden Rave |
The yellow pear tomato is one of my favourites. It isn’t as acidic as some and a great snack while in the garden. The two larger yellow Roma tomatoes on the bottom of this photo are Golden Rave. They are a couple of inches in size, great for snacking or in salads.
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| Brandywine |
My favourite red tomato is the Brandywine, an heirloom tomato with fruit weighing about 1/2 pound. This is the perfect tomato for fresh eating. It tastes like it has been roasted already with its deep flavour. I will…
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Community Veg Growing
Tips for community gardening:
• Join with like-minded neighbours who’ll commit time to the project and keep the momentum going.
• Start off small – sharing a few packets of seeds and swapping a bit of growing advice.
• Don’t be afraid to knock on doors – there’s a real appetite to grow vegetables and to get to know those who live around you.
• Funding is important. Look online for national awarding bodies for community projects. Approach local businesses for sponsorship, and seed companies for free or discounted seeds.
• Record your activities to demonstrate to funders and others how great your project is. And start a blog: mytinyplot.com/build-a-blog/ has a great “build your own blog” tutorial.
• Grow what you love to eat. With space (and time) at a premium, plump for fruit and veg you’ll find truly delicious.
16th March 2013
Hi!
Thanks for the tips… have pretty much done everything now!
Bought some seeds and have planted them in a compartmentalized seed tray… went for basil, coriander , parsley , sage, oregano and piripiri chillies.
Also got some raspberry plants – maybe they’ll work this year!!
Now to wait and see if they sprout!
To be continued…. do youn have any tips about growing fruit and veg in containers? Please let me know!
Previous post: Dear Dad ….15th March 2013
Old School Gardener
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With all the gloomy weather we are having this month on the west coast of BC, its amazing I am getting anything to grow in the greenhouse. I started growing tomatoes in the first week of March. So far I have had about seven seedlings germinate and that’s been exciting. With hardly any sunshine this month, the greenhouse is a bit cooler at 60F during the day. Unfortunately tomatoes would rather have a consistent 70F to grow well. It doesn’t seem to matter which kind of tray I have used, wooden or plastic.They are both germinating seeds with the wooden trays about three days later than the plastic. The heat mats are what is helping them grow, that’s for sure. The heat mats provide the bottom heat needed for growth.
To increase the warmth over the tomatoes, I placed some bubble wrap over the top of the flats. I would…
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On Monday we made seed tapes with the grade three class that comes to the Ladner Community Garden. We made so many seed tapes that I was getting worried we wouldn’t have the space to plant them. So when the seed tapes were done, I brought them home and laid them out on my dining room table to make sure they dried out from all the glue the children used. Yes, some children were a little zealous with the glue so I hope it doesn’t affect the seed germination. I looked over all the seed tapes and tallied the seeds.
The children used 979 seeds! Wow! Now that’s a lot of food for the food bank. That seemed like a lot of seeds but I sat down last night to see how much space we would need to plant them . If you remember from Mondays post I used…
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Old School Garden 