Welcome to TTT's new governance team!

There's been another election recently in Tooting: TTT has a new governance team who will be carrying out their roles until spring 2019.

TTT was established in 2008, and by 2011 we agreed to formalise the key governance roles and also fill them with willing volunteers who serve a term of two years. That means that:

• no one has to do (or get stuck doing) the same role 'for ever'
• there's an expectation that different individuals can step into these roles and carry them out in their own diverse & fresh ways
• we share between us the responsibility for doing these useful roles which support us all in TTT

Give them a wave! Welcome to TTT's new governance team:

From the left: meet the Treasurer David, the two Co-Chairs Jeni and Sharon and the Secretary Eleanor. They look forward to meeting you!

All these roles are voluntary, and these four people work alongside TTT's project co-ordinators - and maybe lead TTT projects themselves. Earlier in the year we shared the role profiles. The Co-Chairs, for example, fulfil a leadership rather than a management role for TTT as a whole.

The election was part of TTT's Annual Celebratory Extravaganza, where we invited partners, volunteers and the curious to join us to recap strategy and activities in the previous year and look forward to the next.

We had an evening full of energy and heard from many colleagues who explored 15 projects large or small, long-term or one-off:

• Thank you to all who spoke about projects and asked questions - and brought refreshments

• Thank you to Dr Rosena Allin-Khan MP for her vivid summary of the value of bringing people together in a practical and creative way across the Tooting community's diversity of views, voices and concerns.

One group game we did was partly aimed at meeting new people and finding out who was in the room, and partly aimed at imagining (on the spot) some new potential taglines for TTT. There are some great comments written on these balloons! You'll have to click to read them.

There's plenty to be involved with right now in TTT - no need to wait for the 2019 AGM. Please read the events listing and blog, sign up to our monthly email and keep an eye on facebook & twitter. Come and chat!

Refugee Week 2017: Tooting activities starting Sunday 18th June

Refugee Week is a nationwide programme of arts, cultural and educational events that celebrate the contribution of refugees to the UK, and encourages a better understanding between communities. 

Refugee Week 2017 starts in under a fortnight, and there are plenty of London activities to choose from.

Plus here are two local events to share:


1. Queens of Syria - free film Sunday 18th June

We're showing this thrilling and absorbing film about 50 Syrian refugee women joining together to prepare to perform an ancient Greek play about women and their families in war. It's definitely NOT simply a 'film of the play' - it's all about how the women explore telling their shared stories with passion and creativity. It's a moving and positive film.
Click here to see the flier, and save the date! Here's the listing on the Refugee Week site.
We're showing the film in the Hall at Mushkil Aasaan, the local charity supporting families, young people and the elderly.

• Date: Sunday 18th June
• Timings: Doors open 4:00 pm for tea and samosas, film at 5:00.
• Venue: Mushkil Aasaan, 220 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW

2. Midsummer Merriment with CARAS
- Thursday 22nd June
Book now for the comedy night in Tooting Market, put on by TTT's partner CARAS. The host will be Arthur Smith - the Night Mayor of Balham. Many of the tickets have been sold already, here's the link.

• Date: Thursday 22nd June
• Timings: 7:30 to 10:30
• Venue: Tooting Market, 21-23 Tooting High Street, SW17 0SN

Three diverse events in Tooting celebrating refugees and migration

We're continuing our 2017 Gardens of Refuge project with local refugees and asylum-seekers with workshops during May and into June.
Alongside that long-term project, we want to share three diverse and fascinating events in Tooting which celebrate refugees and migration:

To celebrate Refugee Week in June:

1. Queens of Syria - free film Sunday 18th June

We're showing this thrilling and absorbing film about 50 Syrian refugee women joining together to prepare to perform an ancient Greek play about women and their families in war. It's definitely NOT simply a 'film of the play' - it's all about how the women explore telling their shared stories with passion and creativity. It's a moving and positive film. Click here to see the flier, and save the date!

• Date: Sunday 18th June
• Timings: Doors open 4:00 pm for tea and samosas, film at 5:00.
• Venue: Mushkil Aasaan, 220 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW

2. Midsummer Merriment with CARAS on Thursday 22nd June 22nd
Book now for CARAS' comedy night in Tooting Market. The host will be Arthur Smith - the Night Mayor of Balham.
A third of the tickets have been sold already, here's the link.

• Date: Thursday 22nd June
• Timings: 7:30 to 10:30
• Venue: Tooting Market, 21-23 Tooting High Street, SW17 0SN 

Sowing the seeds in TTT's ACE goody bags

If you took home one of our TTT goodie bags and are wondering what to do with the packet of seeds in it, here are some simple planting instructions.

Radish 

You can grow these in the ground or in containers or window boxes.

Sow thinly in soil and cover with 1.5cm fine soil. Firm down gently and keep moist.

Seedlings should appear within 2-3 weeks.

Thin out the plants if necessary and keep soil moist. Radishes should be ready to harvest in 4-6 weeks.

Lettuce

You can grow these in the ground, containers or even hanging baskets (good for evading snails!)

Sow thinly in soil and cover with 1.5cm fine soil.

Firm down gently and keep moist.

Seedlings should appear in 7-14 days.

Thin out seedlings if necessary and keep moist and weed-free.
Pick and use when needed

Peas 

Grow these in the ground of a large pot. You will need to support the plants with netting or bamboo canes and string.

Plant seeds 5cm apart and cover with 5cm of fine soil. Firm down gently and keep moist. Seedlings should appear within 10-14 days.

Protect young plants from birds with twigs or netting and remember to support the plants. Keep moist and weed-free. Pick when ready.

Send us some photos of your vegetable-growing successes!

Come to our Annual Celebratory Extravaganza Friday 28th April

On Friday 28th April we are hosting our  

Annual Celebratory Extravaganza!

Everyone is welcome to join us at:   

Derinton Community Centre
101a/b Derinton Road
Tooting, SW17 8HZ

From 7:00 pm to 9:30 pm

If you’re on our mailing list, like or follow our Facebook or Twitter accounts, have been to any of our events, or are just interested to find out what we do in Tooting – come along. And share with your friends!

Celebrating and sharing at TTT's 2016 ACE

We will be celebrating all of the past year's achievements and the partnerships that have developed to help deliver those projects.

We will also be signposting the exciting projects we have planned for the future and inviting people to get involved in their own way.

It’s a place to meet other local people who share our goals:

Making Change in How We Live, Where We Live, 

in Light of Climate Change.

What to expect:

• TTT sustenance: a.k.a tea, cake, samosas, Turkish bread & hummus
• Energy and participation: a Tooting-themed quiz & more
• A celebration of past successes
• Information about TTT’s projects
• Sharing ideas you might have to improve our neighbourhood
• Looking ahead and an invitation to get involved
• Conversations with friends new and old
• A TTT goody bag
• Please note: so we can open the door and celebrate with our whole community and all the local people and partners who support us, the celebration will be alcohol free

Eleanor writes about last year's ACE: 

"I attended for the first time last year and it was a fantastic event. The presentation of the successes really opened my eyes to what can be achieved when like-minded people get together on a common theme and don’t give up. 
Even though I was already involved and getting the regular newsletter, there were lots of activities going on under the radar that were ready to shared by the enthusiastic people leading the charge. All of the activities presented together showed an incredible achievement.

The activities included things like: workshops inspiring beginner gardeners, carbon conversations, helping to create a neighbourhood plan, running a community garden, sustainable art projects and restart parties.

The main theme that stood out to me on the night was partnerships. It was clear that it wasn’t just TTT working on their own. The strength comes from the partnerships that TTT has developed and nurtured. These partnerships were not all with other environmental themed groups either. They cross a variety of sections of society and combine the interests of both parties to create amazing results.

Last year's event inspired me to get involved in more TTT projects.
I hope I have inspired you to come along and see what is going on."

See you there on Friday 28th!

Facebook invitation to share: https://goo.gl/lviVH1

Urban Heat Research Report Published

Today the Policy Studies Institute publish their research report Urban Heat: Developing the role of community groups in local climate resilience. It's a readable, accessible and expert report.

TTT are proud to have been able to contribute to this valuable piece of work, hosting and facilitating community conversations, mainly in 2015, about the increasing risks posed by localised heat in cities - including neighbourhoods like Tooting - in our warming climate.

Cold weather challenges are much better recognised by most of us, including health and social care professionals, in terms of individuals' vulnerability. So it was useful to be part of research showing that urban overheating is a significant risk, and we can take action to reduce its impact.

We commenced the project in a cold spell in winter two years ago, when the priorities seemed very different. It was hard to visualise that later the same summer we would hold a workshop near Tooting Broadway on the hottest day of 2015. Very appropriate!

Funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Urban Heat project examined the potential role of the local voluntary and community sector (VCS) in the development of local climate resilience.

In Tooting the research engaged with over a dozen relevant community organisations with diverse services and areas of focus: health care, social care, low-carbon living, community development. A number of local individuals were interviewed as well. Finally, a group of Wandsworth local authority and statutory organisations also explored the impact of Urban Heat.

To read our past TTT blog posts about the whole project since its inception, please click here.

Other partners in the Urban Heat research programme explored the same topic in Hackney and in West London, all co-facilitating alongside the Policy Studies Institute team.

Finally, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation funded a sister research project at the same time, about 'Climate Resilient Communities'. This was developed in the context of local flooding in the Scottish Borders, mostly rural, but much of the experience and lessons are relevant to all communities working proactively with practical climate challenges. We'll share that report when it is published.

'Gardens of Refuge' project wins 2017 funding from the Aviva Community Fund

We are thrilled that Gardens of Refuge, the 2017 project working with Tooting refugees and asylum-seekers, has been awarded funding by Aviva. The project application was made by the local charity CARAS (Community Action for Refugees and Asylum-Seekers) and TTT are the partners along with The Grange respite centre in Norfolk.

Thank you for all your votes and support! 

Here's our vision for the Gardens of Refuge project: please click here to read

This funding award lets us look forward to a fascinating 2017, developing and delivering the new project and building on our learning and experience from our previous project together.  

We want to do some things that we know work well, and also some new things.


Plus we'll invite ideas (and resources) from the many well-wishers who voted for Gardens of Refuge last November.

A new feature that will add value is the new CARAS Youth Council. This governance group will help provide a voice for project beneficiaries in the youth club.
We'll also be working with other members of the CARAS community.

We all expect to learn and benefit. One of our first reactions, apart from joy at the award and making the project real, is that this award gives profile and visibility to the fact that refugees' lives matter, and that they have much to contribute in our shared communities.

We'll post more information on project plans as they develop.
Yes, we all worked hard to get to this stage, so it's great to have the affirmation from the Aviva Fund judges.
It took us a while to be sure on announcement day: students of communication will be interested that Aviva made the 'Project Winner' info available online and by twitter...and it was 24 hours before CARAS received a direct email saying 'You've won!'. By then we'd taken the public messages at face value and trusted that it was all true.

And there are some extra surprises - such as a reception at Parliament in late January where all the funded projects can meet each other and their constituency MPs.

We've worked since early 2015 with CARAS - that was on the 'Rooting in Tooting' project, supported by the Royal Horticultural Society's 'Greening Grey Britain' campaign and by Sir Walter St John's Educational Charity - more info here. That project brought new volunteers to CARAS & TTT; we're really delighted with that.

Thanks again for all your interest and support - 

this is a very motivating start to the New Year!

TTT 2016 Gardening Celebration tonight!

Tonight is the TTT 2016 Gardening Celebration - plus we're looking forward to exciting things in 2017. The event is at The Selkirk near Tooting Broadway from 7:00 pm.

To celebrate the celebration:
here are five current growing, gardening and sustainability events and ideas to follow up even if you can't make it tonight:

1 TTT attended the bi-annual Wildlife Gardening Forum last week at the Natural History Museum. This is always an amazing and cross-cutting event with around 100 participants - private gardeners, schools, local authorities, biodiversity and growing charities, researchers, enterprises.

The theme this time was learning from European experience in Germany, Belgium, Austria the Netherlands, Ireland (oh, and Scotland).
Why learn from Europe? Click on the photo...




We learned a German word - schwammstadt  - meaning 'sponge city'. A sponge city is redesigned to be responsive and adaptive to climate change impact and allow for more natural rainfall retention, reducing runoff. (See the event on December 8th in para 4 below).
Anyone can attend the Forum; it's a great day when you can meet experts and work out what ideas you can use yourself. And all the presentations appear for free on the WLGF website in due course.

2 TTT joined Capital Growth's 'Roots to Growth' workshop.
We looked at the experience and potential of farming as an enterprise within London.

There's tons of good info on the Capital Growth site - all these reports are free downloads.


While the pleasure and impact of growing together is not only about saving money and managing our budgets, what do you think is the annual value of the crops grown by 2000 London gardens linked to Capital Growth? Include crops for sharing, not only veg which are sold, so you can include Tooting Community Garden's pumpkins in the calculation. Have a guess - the answer is at the end of this blog.
We could take up the challenge of recording our crops - see the Harvest-ometer from Sustain.  
This kind of data is very valuable in order to be able to make our case for more growing in London!
TTT's friend Mark at Vertical Veg has documented the equivalent value of what he grows - click here to read about it.

Gardens of Refuge: yes we are through to the finals of the Aviva Community Fund!

Brilliant success at the voting stage: Aviva Community Fund has just confirmed that we're through to the finals for the Gardens of Refuge project! 

 

We now do some further application steps by December 7th, and then there's judging and then the results are announced January 10th '17.

Great news & thanks for all the support!

 

To see the project description, click here: https://goo.gl/y6b66Y

First feedback after voting closed Friday 18th on Gardens of Refuge via Aviva Community Fund

We're proud to share where we reached when voting closed yesterday on the Gardens of Refuge campaign with CARAS.   
Over 600 people supported the project online.
We believe we came THIRD, with over 6200 votes. 
WHICH IS WONDERFUL!

Our formal ranking will be confirmed on 22nd Nov by Aviva & we'll communicate wider after then. 

If we're in the top 4 in our project category, we go through to the next round - to a more familiar bid process.

By the way votes went from 3400 on Weds morning to 6200 by lunchtime yesterday!

Thanks for your votes, patience and energy in this period of repeated messages and nudges in every medium possible, dominating the TTT airwaves.



Normal service can soon be resumed on communicating the rest of TTT's rolling projects.

Every vote really did count!

Please vote by 12:00 Friday November 18th for 'Gardens of Refuge' project funding from Aviva

This week is the home straight for voting online for funding support for Gardens of Refuge at the Aviva Community Fund. It will come down to our tally of votes at the end of 18th November, and of course the other 'Aviva projects' are also doing a push this week.

Please vote by Friday 12:00 for Gardens of Refuge, and ask your family and friends to vote too. Together we can support this creative and forward-looking Tooting partnership project with the refugee and asylum-seeker community centred on the Tooting charity CARAS.
Every Vote Counts, and every vote is appreciated!

How to vote?
You have to register individually before you can vote. To register, please click here for the Aviva webpage
Then search for CARAS or Gardens of Refuge to vote!

Project Details:
Read the description of the project online here.

For the future: bulbs for 2017

You'll see that the project is all about growing the therapeutic benefits of gardening plus greening the community we share in Tooting.
And it's about building ways to enable refugees to share their own knowledge and skills locally.
Together we'll imagine and create a more beautiful neighbourhood as a legacy for all.

Legacy: flourishing from 2015's cuttings

There are three partners in Gardens of Refuge:

CARAS - with whom we have worked in depth for 18 months on Rooting in Tooting.

The Grange - a residential respite and permaculture centre in Norfolk who work with CARAS. Please see The Grange.

& Transition Town Tooting


 Thank you so much for your support & please vote by 12:00 on 18th Nov!

'Gardens of Refuge': our new partnership project for 2017 with CARAS & The Grange. Vote for funding online through the Aviva Community Fund!

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” (Audrey Hepburn)

We are thrilled that Gardens of Refuge, our new partnership project plan has reached the final public voting stage of the Aviva Community Fund! The project is centred on the refugee and asylum-seeker community who are supported by the Tooting charity CARAS.

Read the description of the project online here.

For the future: bulbs for 2017

Gardens of Refuge is listed under 'CARAS' on the Aviva Community Fund website.
You'll see that the project is all about growing the therapeutic benefits of gardening plus greening the community we share in Tooting.  
And it's about building ways to enable refugees to share their knowledge and skills locally to imagine and create a more beautiful neighbourhood as a legacy for all.

Legacy: flourishing from 2015's cuttings

There are three partners in Gardens of Refuge:

CARAS - with whom we have worked in depth for 18 months  on Rooting in Tooting.

The Grange - a residential respite and permaculture centre in Norfolk who work with CARAS. Please see The Grange.

& Transition Town Tooting

As of today, the website is live for the public to vote for the projects they would like Aviva to support. 
Voting is open until 18th November: but please don't delay!
Please vote and encourage Aviva to support Gardens of Refuge!  

You have to register individually before you can vote: to register, please click here for the Aviva webpage
Then search for CARAS or Gardens of Refuge to vote!

Thank you so much for your support, 

and please contact us by email if you have any queries.

Two inspiring & successful sustainability projects!

Sharing two inspiring projects! 
Both projects aim to demonstrate and create something that is beautiful and functional, creating results which please people and show that sustainability is achievable and attractive now.

One is in Tooting: a front garden restoration that takes into account affordability and biodiversity.
One is north London-based: an bamboo bicycle enterprise which is imaginative and practical.

Tooting Front Garden Restoration
The project has been a partnership between a housing association, residents, project leader and a professional team including Community Gardener Rose deFalbe. The intention was to carry out the restoration in a way that is participatory, affordable, adaptable, biodiverse and with zero environmental footprint. There's a full description of the project downloadable here.
Here's the result photographed earlier this week. 37 Manville Road - go and have a look as it's a beautiful sight!

In April the restoration was Commended at the Wandsworth Design Awards. Here's the team in front of their display with the Mayor of Wandsworth who gave out the awards.
Congratulations!


Bamboo Bicycle Club
Engineer James Marr has established this business designing cycle frames out of bamboo (imported at the moment) and hemp (grown in Yorkshire). All the details online here.

A unique element is that BBC sells no finished bikes at all: the new owners and riders make the frames and fit out the bikes themselves. James want to offer cycles that are sustainable, recyclable and designed collaboratively according to need.
As a consumer, the maker-rider is in charge and makes all the decisions. Each maker practices or learns new skills.

Over 200 have been designed and built in all shapes and sizes (look at their Hall of Frames) - either from kits at home or on weekend courses where the output is a bamboo cycle frame that you then fit out with the drive train, wheels, handlebars, etc. Track bikes, tandems, balance bikes...and a new project in Africa where farmers will make their own bikes that can each carry 100kg.

Growing Tooting finale - the 8th weekend of TTT's local grow-your-own classes completes the series

In the final local growing sessions in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth we celebrated progress and looked at what comes next now the programme is complete. 

We discussed harvesting and preparing food (and bringing any surpluses to the Tooting Foodival), and asked about what the participants might need next in their growing journey. 
Suggestions so far: 'local gardeners' question time', a Facebook group, occasional meetings, visiting each others' growing spaces.

Plus, local community gardens including Tooting Community Garden and Wendelsworth Community Garden can offer support.

Exploring the herb bed

With the Balham group, Rose identified plants and explained how the herb bed at Tooting Community Garden is managed, in particular how foliage is cut and left lying to suppress weeds and help prepare the ground for sowing - and the group raised a glass to celebrate.

Fresh produce laid out on the Eatwell pie chart

With the Tooting group, Belinda took us through the new Public Health England Eatwell Guide. The Guide illustrates how to achieve eating a healthy dietary balance of good food - including what we can grow in our gardens.

Our 8th Growing Tooting Handout is available for all: please click here. To see all 8 handouts, and to read each fortnightly blog post, click on GROWING TOOTING in the quick links above.  

Hats off to Martin for writing the handouts and facilitating the delivery of Growing Tooting so brilliantly! And to the others who co-facilitated: Eleanor, Belinda, Rose, Jeni and more.

In summary the Growing Tooting series of 30 local workshops reached 24 people who came to each session, another 24 who came to some of each local series, and another two dozen who are interested for another time.  70+ people are connected in a new way to local growing and each other. 

3 current and vivid research projects about climate change and UK communities - Tooting included

In 2015 TTT helped facilitate a research project by the University of Westminster all about the impact of urban heatwaves - for the details please see past blog posts by clicking here on Urban Heat.

TTT worked with the researchers and with many local partners in Tooting: voluntary and community groups plus borough-level and statutory bodies.



The funder for this research project is The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and yesterday TTT took part in a workshop comparing the early research results of three JRF-funded projects.  
Each of them explores the links between climate change and UK communities and households. Each aims to give new information to local and national policy makers.
Participants included national bodies such as Public Health England & Defra, & the Cabinet Office, local authorities and universities.

An overall view? That there are synergies of relationships between all the topics outlined below..and that communities with local knowledge and energy have an opportunity to get involved and contribute.

Report from the seventh weekend of Growing Tooting 'grow your own food' classes

Here's the report from the seventh weekend of our Growing Tooting 'grow your own food' local fortnightly classes. We've been offering these in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth since April.

The common themes this week have been exploring more ambitious planting schemes, visiting other local gardens, and looking at forest gardening.

So: here's a group planting a 'Three Sisters' bed in Balham: 
That means establishing a bed with three complementary crops (sweet corn, beans, pumpkin) which combine well in terms of habit, shade needs and care. It's a fascinating traditional native american method making good use of limited cultivated land.

The Tooting group visited the Tooting Community Garden
Here they are comparing our bread wheat with an experimental bed of teff, a 'wonder grain' from Ethiopia.



One of the Wandsworth groups
visited members' allotments in King George's Park.
That's a nice scene!





This fortnight's Seventh Growing Tooting Handout is available to everyone by clicking here.
The focus is Forest Gardening: as a development of the permaculture conversations in the 6th weekend of Growing Tooting. It's a fascinating method where short-term crops are not planted, and the plot is managed to produce from perennial ground cover plants, bushes and trees.

That's very different from the experience most of us have on our allotments or balconies! 

Growing Tooting - the sixth weekend of our local grow-your-own food workshop series

Last weekend we enjoyed the sixth crop of fortnightly 'triple-header' Growing Tooting workshops - one each in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth. (Plus there's the fourth series: an extra Wandsworth group running on the intervening weekends).
As ever, thanks to Martin for the energy and co-ordination!

What did we do this week?
As a comprehensive gardening topic we looked in detail at Permaculture - a growing approach that aims to integrate natural systems with social and individual needs for food, clean water, energy... (click here or here for two in-depth web resources).

To make that practical, in one group Donna presented her own garden as a case study.

She filmed a video of the back garden, plus photos of the front, for us to get an idea of the spaces and how the garden fits into her life.

Donna's team of advisers - an unusual opportunity!

'Observing' before diving in is as useful in gardening as it is in swimming. Thank you Donna!

How is the potato progressing?

Secondly about observing - in our classes we encourage participants to be 'grower scientist - investigators' alongside enjoying being outside and putting good food on the table.
Here's an example from someone who likes to measure and celebrate her plants' progress! Why not try it - you learn a lot.


We have our latest Growing Tooting Handout 6 available - click here to download. The handout includes interrelated features of good common-sense gardening (and of permaculture):

• Attracting wildlife to control pests
• Mulch
• Compost
• Mycorrhizal soil fungi
• No-dig gardening 

Growing Tooting: the fifth weekend of our enjoyable local grow-your-own classes

Gardeners in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth are seeing results in the soil, in trying out new skills and having some fun together.
As our fortnightly free Growing Tooting classes continue, have a look below at what we've been doing, and do get in touch to share ideas or with any queries.

Very proud gardeners! 

Basil seedlings transplanted into the ground at Melanie's allotment.





 

 
More proud gardeners, indoors this time:

Veronica, Diana and Morena sowing seeds, transplanting lettuce seedlings (Sainsbury's, 60p), dividing Moroccan mint to take home in pots.



 
Back outdoors, gardeners of all ages at Ravenstone School are getting their school raised beds going






Growing Tooting Handout 5 This is now available for participants and for TTT friends who read this blog and who would like to catch up on the details. 
Themes are Pests, Companion Planting, Square Foot Gardening. 
Please click here to download and keep a copy of Handout 5.

Square Foot Gardening is useful for the home gardener because it helps you focus on making best use of space, putting plants together that make sense, and creating an interesting mini-landscape.

What's in the square foot bed below?
Tallest plants top RH corner (= north side).
Gail's donated tomato and borage (top RHS squares).
Maxine's lemon balm and 2 strawberries (top LHS).
Seeds elsewhere - bell peppers (top), English marigold (centre), radish, dwarf nasturtiums, basil (bottom L to R)

Square foot bed planted with veg, herbs and flowers for pollination.

Here's a small bed full of different herbs, spotted at Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses

Growing Tooting: the fourth weekend of our flourishing grow-your-own classes

The fourth weekend in our fortnightly series of workshops on growing your own local food was fun and successful. We're half way through the run of 8 workshops at each of the sites.
The Balham-Tooting-Wandsworth structure is stimulating as there are differences and common ground in the settings and interests - plus there's healthy cross-pollination between locations and local partners. 

Have a look at the Fourth Growing Tooting Handout by clicking here - all welcome to download and use to help your own garden choices. Collect the set! (And any feedback welcomed, of course).

Do you know your Rooster from your Vivaldi?
One theme in the Handout is building awareness of varieties of vegetables and fruit. What's the benefit of there being so many?

So, here is a 'Brown Turkey' variety fig being planted at the Balham class site, St Mark's URC




 
 
TTT recently won a prize draw from The Conservation Foundation (see last item below). Our reward was a diverse bundle of 3 varieties of potatoes: 'Sherine', 'Rooster' and 'Vivaldi'. Each has different characteristics and cropping times...the result of plant breeding over the past 400 years. Thank you! - we have some to give away.
Plus there's 'Centurion' onions and 'Red Sun' shallots which we've planted.