Lockdown Love, Episode 1 - FOOD!

Lockdown has been in place here in the UK since the middle of March and had a huge affect on our activities. We had to improvise quick, like everyone, and adapt to a rapidly changing context of how we live, where we live. 

Over the early weeks, our growing core group found our niches and put what energy we each had into developing outward facing projects to help our community, both near and far, using networks nurtured with love for over 10 years. 

Over the next few days, we'll be posting what's live and how you can get involved. We'll be sharing projects about public space and building community with more posts cooking up.

Never know, Transition Town Tooting maybe fertile ground for collaboration with you!

This episode is all about food and offers four projects: Vegetanuary! - an online group focused on celebrating and sharing vegetarian and vegan cooking; Foodival2020 begins! A callout to share food growing stories and a date for the diary as we stretch to imagine our annual food festival in September; Tooting Community Garden has been sharing the wonders of nature in Spring and looks to future projects and our Neighbourhood Seed Swap in direct response to a huge spike in interest in growing your own. Do read on...

Tooting Community Garden: The 6 rotational beds this May/June

Tooting Community Garden 

Have a read of our plans for the 6 rotational beds this May/June. Join in and have a go at propagating some basil, or making some homemade fertiliser for your own plants or to bring to the garden when we re-open. 

PLANT OF THE MONTH: The Roveja Bean 

A very ancient variety of peas originating in the Middle east, today cultivated in only in a few Appenine regions in Italy. Thanks also to its relatively problem-free cultivation this variety has been rediscovered in recent years and grows well in the UK. 

The plants are semi-dwarf - you can let them sprawl, but we'd suggest supporting them with pea sticks or low netting for the best crop. They are absolutely beautiful, with bi-coloured pink-purple flowers fading to pale pink/white as they age. They're allowed to mature and dried, then used for delicious winter soups and stews.

We sourced this seed from the Real Seeds company in Wales and look forward to harvesting the beans and also saving the seeds for next year! We sowed them indoors and planted them out in April. 

GROWING OPPORTUNITIES THIS MAY/JUNE 

• Companions to bring to our plants 
• Swiss Chard for our runner beans 
• Nasturtiums for our runner beans 
• Coriander for our potatoes 
• Sunflowers for our squash 
• Palm kale for our oak leaf lettuce 
• Nigella for our garlic and onions 
• Rocket for our garlic and onions 
• Summer savoy for our garlic and onions 
• Basil for our tomato plants 

New spaces created this June 

• Parsnips seeds once the broad beans are harvested 
• Cucamelons seedlings once the Japanese onions are harvested 
• Squash plants once the green manure has been dug in and 3 weeks have past 
• Carrots and turnip seeds once the garlic is harvested 
• Tomato seedlings once the garlic and onions are harvested 

GUIDES TO HELP US ALONG THE WAY 

Green manure 

Benefits and how and when to dig over https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/green-manures 

How to propagate basil 

Basil from a cutting

Basil from a cutting: https://zerowastechef.com/2017/08/15/how-to-grow-basil-from-cuttings/ 

Basil from a seed: https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/grow-your-own/herbs/basil 

Basil by dividing a mature plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAvzV-hNxdI 


Homemade fertilisers for our tomato and squash plants 
Comfrey, nettles, weeds and manure https://www.permaculture.co.uk/readers-solutions/how-make-organic-liquid-fertiliser 

Nettle tea: https://www.soils-permaculture-lebanon.com/our-blog-articles-diy/nettle-tea-brew-your-own-liquid-natural-fertilizer 

WATERING
At the garden we have only as much water as the sky gives us. To limit our water use we are watering only: 
Seeds that haven’t yet germinated; and 
Seedlings less than 3 weeks old 

We are using leaf mulch and cover crops on our over plants to reduce evaporation and increase water retention.

🔁Seed and Plant Swap 2020🔁

Tooting Community Garden's 
🔁Seed and Plant Swap 2020🔁
Sunday 1 March 2020
Supporting Tooting's Diverse Seeds
Take a look at the photos to see what we did on the day

We created a growing structure and it has a wind sock!

We folded newspaper to make compostable pots

We used our homemade potting compost!

People selected an edible seed to grow from the Seed Swap table

We sifted our homemade compost. The fine soil can be used for potting and the larger compost for mulch.

Between the 50 participants there were a lot of seeds and plants!

Thanks to Work and Play Scrap Store for the yarn and fabrics used to weave our dream catcher growing structure

The structure will be a great support for our cucamelon plants later in the year

We liked this seed swapper's choice of packaging. 

Seed and Plant Swap at TCG

Heads up & a date for the diary, for an early spring celebration in the Tooting Community Garden. On March 1st, we will be running a Seed and Plant Swap. Bring any spare plants or seeds you would like to swap or donate to others. It is fine to turn up with absolutely nothing and see what interesting plants or seeds you can pick up! 

It's also a great opportunity to think about growing something for Tooting Foodival in September.

We will include house plants, vegetable and fruit plants and seeds, rooted cuttings, divisions and bulbs.  It's all going to be very informal, family friendly and of course will be a FREE EVENT. 
 
Sunday,1 March 2020 1pm - 2.30pm 
Tooting Community Garden 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN (opposite the common) 

TTT Makes the Guardian in Rob Hopkins Article

TTT is pleased to be included in today's Guardian newspaper article featuring Rob Hopkins' new book What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create The Future We Want 

The paper version of today's Guardian

Well done to media mogul Mal for getting some photos sent over in the nick of time featuring the Community Garden, Tooting Twirl and Foodival. The article also references our regular Restart repair cafes.

The online version HERE has a great photo from last month's Foodival courtesy I think of Franco Ruarte. Other TTT pics are featured in the paper version above. Thanks to Simon Maggs, Jenny Teasdale, Bryony Williams and David Thorne for these!

Rob is running an event at Batersea Arts Centre with help from TTT's Lucy Neal entitled Pop-Up Tomorrow (click thru for tickets) which invites you to "step into an imagined future to collectively vision, playfully build and then physically inhabit a 3D vision of a Zero Carbon Britain in 2030".

Meanwhile don't forget tonight's talk with Resina and Belinda on Ecobricking at Tooting Green Drinks. All welcome to the Selkirk Pub SW17 0ES for 7.30pm

Growing Community across London - Part 1...

130 people joined us for 2 events during London National Park City Festival Week!

Our 2 linked workshops, called Growing Community in the Heart of Wandsworth, invited people to come and get their hands dirty learning how to make vertical planters, potting on, creating leaf pressings and loads more. They also created a lasting echo in both locations, read on to find out more...

The first event was at Ravenstone Primary School on Monday 22nd July. What struck me most about this day was that we had way more young people than adults and all the young people wanted to get active.

The cloth planters were made using a staple gun, here's Kate and Chuck in action. 

These four friends knew exactly what they were doing making cloth planters 

These guys loved moving muck and making a wee home for their plants.

A big element of our day was to give a workshop on making vertical planters. Why? To show what can be made with largely waste materials - pallets, any cloth, cardboard tubes from carpet shops and homemade compost. Paul Wilson gave a fantastic session on the pallet planters, encouraging people young and old to get involved.

Paul in action taking through the endless possibilities of a pallet

All planted up and ready to go!

Grandpa/son tackle the drill

The day also inspired a diverse range of volunteers who not only helped deliver the event, but also had time to catch up, share experiences and enjoy the day. HUGE thank you to Miranda, Tara, Paul and Paul, Sarah, Mary, Peter, Claire and Claire and Veronica.

Big up the Volunteer Team!

We were planting for community, for ourselves and for nature. At Ravenstone, the vertical planters for community will be used in a brand new Wild Place for Nature. This project, led by parent volunteers and quite literally digging up the asphalt down to the subsoil to build up new planting areas and provide much needed connection to nature for the 400 children at the school, not to mention parents, teachers and staff.

Everyone got to take a plant home and, of course, all the planting was good for nature.

Feedback, child-style... do we really hate plants??

Both events for part of a London wide National Park City Festival with events happening over 9 days and the announcement by Mayor Sadiq Khan of London being the world's first National Park City. Many more Cities across the World have their eyes on London and are exploring what National Park City status means for them. For us, its about advocacy for green and blue spaces in celebration for all that they give us. Its also about feeling part of a much bigger ecological and social system across London whenever we come and garden at home, at Ravenstone or at Tooting Community Garden. Its a fantastic response to the Climate Crisis, embracing imagination, communities and wonder in making London healthier, greener and wilder.

Blog 2 will be all about the linked workshop at Tooting Community Garden, keep those eyes peeled!

Follow London National Park City Foundation HERE
And their website HERE
Check out the National Park City Festival Website HERE

ACE 2019 - A celebration of Transition in Tooting and looking forward...

On Saturday 2nd March, we held our Annual Celebratory Extravaganza! at Mushkil Aasaan on Tooting High Street. 75 people came from diverse backgrounds, some close to Transition Town Tooting, some coming for the first time, some young, some not so young, all very welcome!

75 people joined us to celebrate! And look forward together

It was fun looking back at our activity and seeing how we have worked.

7 themes of our endeavours emerged:

Local Food Growing and Cooking

Outdoor Learning

Urban Nature and Biodiversity

Good Change Locally

Creativity and Imagination

Low Carbon Living

Wellbeing and Community Inclusion

Do you Jellybrella?

Mushkil Aasaan was decorated in true TTT style with a  displays highlighting specific projects and partners: folks sitting on the Talk / Not Talk bench made by CARAS and TTT; the Community Garden and a partnership project with Gatton School; the Foodival annual community food festival; the buzzing presence of crocheted honeybees illustrated the community & CARAS getting together. We shared the extraordinary Jellybrella - happening now and during the Wandsworth Arts Fringe.

Pumpkin Party Sunday October 28th

Come and join our autumn festivities in Tooting Community Garden!

click for pdf poster

Following on from our normal open gardening session (11am-1pm) this Sunday, we will be celebrating all things pumpkin – you can carve your own creations into the pumpkins, help make some fresh pumpkin soup and learn how to make delicious damper bread over a fire. All activities are free and suitable for children and adults. And once you’ve enjoyed our campfire feast, you’ll be able to head to the annual pumpkin parade on Tooting common!

We look forward to seeing you!
Sunday 28th October, 1-3pm 
Tooting Community Garden, 5 North Drive, London SW16 1RL

Tooting Speaks! The big dilemmas of local food

30 passionate Tooting folk came to The Selkirk (thanks so much Ben and the team!) on Wednesday night to join our 4 fantastic speakers, Kemi Akinola, Robert Biel, Robyn Knight and Sue Sheehan, in wrestling with the big dilemmas of sustainable food systems and what we can do locally. Our title was "Local Food is an Expensive Luxury" and the discussion was hosted by TTT's co-founder Lucy Neal. If you're interested in these gatherings, they're part of our monthly Green Drinks at The Selkirk on the third Wednesday of every month, details HERE.

Local Food is an Expensive Luxury

But what was it that contextualised food as "local"? Our first speaker, Sue Sheehan (Incredible Edible Lambeth) opened the account with the hyper local - food grown by you as being an active form of protest - claiming the land and building personal resilience for healthy, home grown, cheap veg and against the power of advertising and convenience, after all, gardening is the most "therapeutic and defiant act as you can do" according to the ultimate Guerrilla Gardener, Ron Finley, watch THIS and "plant some shit". Switch to our second speaker, Dr Robert Biel, Senior lecturer at University College London and author of Sustainable Food Systems - the role of the city and we learn as recently as 1985, with population at 56 million, the UK produced 95% of its food from within its shores... a poignant and powerful statistic, particularly given the risk of a no deal Brexit and the threat that presents of us not being able to feed ourselves, which you can read more about in a recent article by Jay Rayner HERE.

Read on for LOADS more...

The fabulous OaKomotion! Carnival promenading in Furzedown: re-imagining, movement & change

Ten days ago the fabulous OaKomotion! travelling Carnival promenaded all round Furzedown.

The whole amazing sunny event was based on the sucess of the Furzedown Oak Community Project. 
In the Project community artists and host groups adopted sections of the large American Oak felled locally. Then they created sculptures to give the oak a rich and longer life. Read all about the Project here!


Oakomotion! started at 10:30 on Sunday 24th June outside Sprout Community Arts. As Fio Adamson says: 
"As soon as Vince and the Never Wilbies started playing outside Sprout at 10.30 on Sunday morning I realised that music in the streets is all we need to complete the Furzedown dream."
Read about the whole carnival day in Fio's report - read or download here.


Tooting Community Garden hosted the last part of the day. Fio writes:
"A secluded dream-place with bees buzzing, veggies growing and flowers greeting the sunshine.  The Bean Dragon made by myself and 80 others still lives and should live there for many years to come. Remember the Big Day Out 2016, Dahomey Road street party and the Foodival the same year? – yes,  you too probably chipped away then at the big piece of Oak and helped it on its way."

Here's the oak Bean Dragon - part bench, all magic:

Below there's the new Community Garden table made with young refugees and asylum-seekers from the Tooting charity CARAS.
It's inscribed in many languages with messages of welcome, and all were invited to add more. When there was no more room on top it was the turn of the table legs to be decorated. Come and see the Dragon and the table any Sunday from 11-1 when the Garden is open to all.

Really the whole day was about re-imagining, movement and change,

from a felled tree to some beautiful living sculptures; 

from all corners of Furzedown to our hidden but accessible oasis. 

Thanks to Fio and all the OaKomotion! team.

Here's the dancing finale in the garden:

November update on our 'Gardens of Refuge' refugee & asylum project partnership with CARAS

This time last year we were in the middle of the voting period for the Aviva Community Fund, where the Gardens of Refuge joint project with the Tooting charity CARAS won £10,000 - thanks to the votes of many friends near and far. 

This time last year...the voting was hot!

We're nearing the end of 2017's diverse activities with refugee and asylum-seeker beneficiaries. TTT has co-facilitated over 20 workshops in 2017 with the project...there's two more to go before Xmas.

Here's an update of activities since the summer - and a view forwards as we plan for 2018. We've included notes about each of these: 

1. Family Group
2. Youth Club for unaccompanied young people
3. Adults Group
4. Stay With Love exhibition
5. 2018 plans
6. Would you like to contribute?

1 Family Group
With the CARAS team we co-facilitated a Family Activity Day over October half term in the Hall at All Saints, Tooting. 50 people joined in to meet and reconnect, do some fun creative activities for all ages and enjoy lunch cooked by members of the group.

 











The big activity was carving pumpkins - and before that of course you have to get hands-on to scoop out the seeds. Any reluctance to get sticky hands was very quickly lost...in fact this stage became an activity of its own as hollowing-out took over and the children shared their new skills (none had ever done this before). Then: sketching and designing, cutting and admiring, collecting candles to take home: adults and children made short work of 20 pumpkins.

We created more Signs of Welcome:
 

These narrow strips of timber - some of them are the slats from discarded bed frames - are a design challenge where the artist develops what they want to say as a message, works out the fit, and paints directly or uses stencils. 


The arttist can also tidy up an earlier sign...so it's a collective project too.
Thanks Jeni, Nikki, Chuck, Hannah, Isabel and more.
We're going to continue creating 'Signs' in other workshops with adults and children. The Signs evolved as a combination of our Community Garden crop markers and the welcoming words in many languages that decorate the four pallet-benches made by the Youth Club in July.