After having had a busy autumn tidying and preparing all the gardens for winter most the staff and volunteers took a lovely long break for the Christmas festive period. Now we are back winter has properly set in, a bit of snow and plenty of frost have put the gardens to rest.
Llanidloes community food garden is all tidy and quiet with not many visitors now, so our Monday morning volunteer session has moved to the community wildlife garden next door. We are busy tidying the garden and this allows us to take cuttings and divide plants which are given to Seri on our nursery in Newtown to propagate and make us many more plants. In a couple of weeks we will be moving on to work on the back of Great Oak community shop where we have a plant sales area. We are going to give this yard a bit of a face lift so that we can expand the range of plants that we are able to hold at the shop.
Newtown garden is looking good with crops still being harvested for the veg boxes and Tuesday market. Our winter project is to transform the front garden in to a sensory herb garden, with a selection of herbs for the kitchen and teas. We had a lovely frosty snowy time last week, too frozen to do anything in the soil, so regular volunteer Sasha and I set about weaving a willow arch to give an entrance to the new paving stepping stones leading to the front door. Regular volunteer day continues each week on Tuesdays 10- 4pm, with lunch at 1pm cooked by our chefs Chris and Alistair.
Seri has been busy on the Nursery potting on hardwood cuttings from last year, using all the compost as fast as we can make it. We stock a wide range of plants now, all grown on site. We are specialising in edible plants, alongside ornamentals for bio-diversity and native windflowers. The plant for the season has to be the dwarf daffodils and irises which are just coming up and will be in flower soon, Seri has arranged some in baskets with a bit of ivy which will make a lovely gift.
The food hub still has plenty of locally harvested food available, with veg boxes being topped up with organic produce from the wholesalers. The on-line shop is now up and running for ‘click and collect’, a wide range of staples are available to go with your veg and fruit order. If you haven’t tried it yet just click here it is very easy to use.
The lottery funded ‘Get Growing’ project that we have been working on for nearly three years is coming to an end. We have worked with many schools, we have established three community market gardens, helped with many others and linked people with local food. It is sad to see the end of the project, but out of this project has grown Cultivate co-op. The site at Newtown will remain our main hub and the other community gardens will come under the management of local volunteers and the community that use them. The Get Growing team want to thank all supporters, volunteers and customers by having a Get Growing celebration on Tuesday 3rd February. 3 – 6pm. Hope you can come.
3 – 4.30pm Feedback and Brainstorming about the future (please come if you can)
4.30 – 6pm PARTY
With the end of one project new opportunities arise. Cultivate is expanding and last week we went to visit Cultivate’s new site in North Wales ‘Moelyci’ . We are developing an eight acre market garden, shop and cafe as part of the 350 acre Moelyci Farm that Cwm Harry are taking on as an environmental, education,enterprise centre. The site already has two large multi span polytunnels and a veg packing shed/ shop. We will be expanding this to field scale crops and a one stop shop/ cafe with regular opening times. We came back with some lovely Welsh grown kiwi’s from a neighbouring farm, they are delicious and just ready to eat.
This Get Growing web site is now coming to an end, future blog update will be on our new Cultivate web site. You can also follow us on Facebook and twitter.
Happy New year to you all………..
Join us to Celebrate Get Growing and new beginnings.
Get Growing celebration on Tuesday 3rd February. 3 – 6pm.