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Bridgend Growing Communities and the City of Edinburgh Council are offering a grow your own course for anyone with an allotment or aspiring to grow more of their own food.
The course will be delivered in 12 monthly sessions throughout 2012 - each three hours long - at the Inverleith and Drumbryden Allotment sites. This means you could literally turn over a new leaf next year...and learn how to grow more of your own food.
Course costs £95 or £55 if you are a new allotment holder.
At Greener Leith we think growing your own is great! We plant community orchards, Ally is fond of allotment sheds and I even managed to volunteer at a vegetable patch . But we've been missing something, ladies and gentleman, I may have unearthed it in the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe Festival....
Look no further than Inverleith for a marriage of melody, comedy and cucumber trumpets, accordions, evil pigeons and Alan Titchmarsh hymns. Can You Dig It is a fringe show full of comedy gardening caper and it takes place in the best garden in Edinburgh (The Botanics).
What did the audience think of the show? I caught up with Leith Gardener Ben straight after a performance to find out: (listen here)
Next (even more exciting) I bagged an exclusive Greener Leith interview with the creators of the show, Dan Woods and Jo Stephenson. Find out where they get inspiration for their songs, is Jo's love for Alan Titchmarsh only turf deep and do they have green thinking as well as green fingers? I also asked the most important question, how do you make carrot pan pipes: (listen here)
If you're as excited about making vegetable intruments as I am, here's a handy 'how to make a cucumber trumpet' video from Dan:
Lastly, while we're on the subject of making exciting things from vegetables, I made a giraffe out of carrots. This is a great way to encourage children to eat vegetables. I didn't have any children to encourage but instead, I entered Ginger into a unusual vegetable competition at the Guilty Lilly and she won! Although they thought she was a lama (she's clearly a giraffe, she's orange!).
Have you made anything exciting out of vegetables lately? Or seen any Green Fringe shows? Please let us know (:
You can see Can You Dig It at 4pm every day in August (except Tuesdays) at the Royal Botanic Gardens. Get tickets on the Can You Dig It website
After sucessfully growing a chilli in my bedroom window I thought it was time to head outdoors and put my newly found green fingers to work. We head to the Ferry Road Allotments to help (or possibley hinder) the fabulous Dora, who lives in Leith, but was born in Italy. She has had an allotment for many, many years. Why does Dora come to the allotment and what are they all about?
And yes I may be out of breath in this clip - and it is real digging.
Image Credit: Emily Dodd
We're delighted that Emily is going to be writing more blog posts and recording loads more audio clips like this with Greener Leith. If you have iTunes installed on your computer you can subscribe to our audio as a podcast by clicking here.
The finalised city Allotments Strategy is set to go to committee for approval on the 27th of July. In the draft strategy it was suggested that new allotments be created in parts of both Pilrig Park and St Marks Park.
In our consultation response we argued that these public green spaces were both highly valued by local residents and that the council should consider other areas for new allotments. We suggested that the council might consider Craigentinny golf course, or indeed parts of the docks - where greenspace of any kind is sorely lacking.
Therefore we're pleased to see that the finalised strategy rules out Pilrig Park as potential site for new allotments. Sadly, St Marks Park is set for 'more public consultation' on whether part of it should be converted for allotments, so we'll be sure to let you know when that one comes out.
Also, we've just received the FEDEGA newsletter, where there is a bit of a debate about the proposed price rises for plot holders. The annual rental of a full plot is set to rise 100% in five years to £100 - with the council set to make a net 'profit' from allotment holders by 2012.
One respondent from Craigentinny asks, "In a time of deep recession what service requires such an astronomic rise? Apparently allotment rents do!"
What do you think? Should the council subsidise the costs of running allotment sites? Or should plot holders pay more? Will the cost increases lead to allotmenteering becoming a middle class pursuit?
The City of Edinburgh Council has released a new allotment strategy called, "Cultivating Communities: A Growing Concern," for consultation.
A council spokesperson said, "The new strategy identifies seven key objectives which will help address the increasing demand for allotments in Edinburgh, whilst ensuring the standard of current allotments remains high. An Allotment Strategy Implementation Plan has been developed, alongside the strategy, to guide the work of the allotment service over the next five years."
"The strategy also gives a list of potential allotment sites. These will also be consulted on through the Open Space Strategy consultation process. Our colleagues developing the Open Space Strategy will also be seeking suggestions for other potential allotment sites."
There's lot's of interesting allotment stats in the strategy. Did you know:
There are more than 2152 people in Edinburgh on a waiting list for an allotment in Edinburgh - but there are only 1392 allotment plots in the city.
Leith, like other areas where there are a lot of tenements and little green space, is an area of very high demand.
There are more women than men allotment holders and just under 10% of the total number of allotmenteers are disabled.
Most allotment holders live with 2 miles of their plot.
On average, allotment holders spend 10 hours per week tending their plot in the summer and 4 hours in the Winter.
The net cost to the council for maintaining the allotments is just £15,000 per year, once income from rents is deducted.
Given the huge demand for allotment plots, it's not surprising that the council is trying to get creative in finding land for people to grow on. One of the proposals for new allotment sites involves extending the allotment site on the edge of Pilrig Park. If you have views either way on this, then you may wish to respond to the consultation.
And of course if you're on the allotment waiting list, and you're frustrated that you can't get a plot then perhaps you could consider helping out at the Persevere Community Garden.
We're really pleased to hear from Isabel at Out of the Blue that plans are afoot to start a weekly Food Co-op there, with the aim of providing access to cheap, fresh, local and organic vegetables and promoting healthy eating.
The Co-op, which is set to launch in the next few weeks, will run every Friday afternoon, and any profits generated will go straight back into running the Co-op - so prices should stay low. Best of all, Greener Leith asked Isabel to accept donations of excess food from local allotmenteers and community gardens, if people can drop it off at the cafe. She said yes! Whilst we doubt the Food Co-op will ever be deluged with local produce, it's great to know that any surplus that doesn't sell at the Food Co-op will be used in the cafe at Out of the Blue in the following week.
This seems like a great way of closing the local loop - giving local growers a chance to distribute food to local people who'll use it, knowing that they're helping to support a local social enterprise that is playing a bigger and bigger role in the community. The Food Summit that Greener Leith held earlier this year identifed a real need for this type of initiative too, so we're really pleased to promote it.
The Co-op needs the help of volunteers. If you have 2-3 hours to spare on a Friday afternoon, and you're comfortable with basic numbers skills, then Isabel or Chris want to hear from you. Get in touch with Isabel or Chris at Out of the Blue - 0131 555 7100.
And if you have an allotment, or connections with a Community Garden - here's the perfect opportunity to make sure all your hard work doesn't go to waste.
Ed, one of our newest Greener Leith members, has made an on-line 'food map' for Leith. Based on the outputs of our food summit, Ed has put all the community food related activities on-line so now you can easily see where the various food co-ops, community gardens and so forth are. We've no doubt that the food map is probably missing some important places and so please do contact us, if you you know of something that should be on the map. Thanks Ed, for putting this together, we think it's great!
It turns out that Ed is a bit of an expert in Local Food Politics. He also writes a great blog, which you might want to check out if, like us, you're interested in that sort of thing.
December 13, 2011 by 
