Category Archives: gardening

Potato Day

Posted on January 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,Please find attached a pro­mo­tional flyer for Bridgend’s annual Potato Day on Sunday February 20th. Please note that this event is being held at the Bridgend Allotments on Old Dalkeith Road and NOT at Inch House as in pre­vi­ous years. Parking is lim­ited, so if you’re com­ing by car, please try to park elsewhere.

If you are com­ing to buy seed pota­toes, we would appre­ci­ate it if you could bring your own bags! A list of seed vari­et­ies avail­able is also attached.

Hope to see you on the 20th.

Tattie Day 2011

Seed Tattie List 2011

Rob Ford

Project Officer

Bridgend Allotments Community Health Project

Tel. 07789 650878

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Food, gardening

Mushroom Growing Course

Posted on January 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

Learn to cul­tiv­ate your own mush­rooms, such as oyster mush­rooms on logs (as well as other environments/ sub­strates). 19th February 10am-1pm at the por­to­bello com­munity cen­ter.  The course will be led by mush­room expert Dr Neville Kilkenny. Please con­tact us for fur­ther details.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Courses, Food, gardening

Local Food Links Meeting

Posted on January 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

Local Food Links

Tuesday 25th January from 7-9pm

Portobello Community Centre

At the last Local Food Links get together we talked about what we wanted to to achieve in a years time…now we want to get things moving!

We want to bring together as many people as pos­sible who have been involved in PEDAL’s food pro­jects,  and people who are inter­ested in local food but haven’t yet man­aged to get involved.  Folk will be able to choose the topic they’re most keen on and work with oth­ers to plan what can be done over the next year.

There are exist­ing pro­jects like Fruitful Porty or the Portobello Organic Market, which has been incred­ibly suc­cess­ful, but is only fun­ded until the end of March, so it needs volun­teers if it is to con­tinue being the great com­munity event it is.  As well as ideas for new pro­jects rais­ing local food aware­ness or set­ting up a com­munity shop.

So, if you are inter­ested in the future of local food in Portobello, come along!

We hope to see you there!

For more inform­a­tion on the first local food links meet­ing see our earlier post­ing and food page

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Food, gardening, Market, Orchards, PEDAL, Volunteering

2 day Introduction to Permaculture

Posted on January 11, 2011 | Leave a comment

22/23 January 2011

Colinton Community Compost,

Edinburgh.

EH13 0PQ

Sliding scale price from £45-£75 — but please don’t let money be the reason you don’t attend.

For more inform­a­tion and a book­ing form, con­tact James Chapman — 

07790 265883 or 01337 842277 james [at] tree-wise-men [dot] com


→ Leave a comment

Posted in Composting, Courses, Food, gardening

FREE Community Gardener Training

Posted on December 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

In February and March 2011, The Edinburgh Community Backgreens Association (ECBA) will be run­ning a FREE Community Gardener train­ing pro­gramme, cov­er­ing all the skills you need to become a fully fledged com­munity gardener in your neighbourhood.

During the course of the train­ing, we will estab­lish a com­munity gardener net­work so the par­ti­cipants can sup­port each other’s pro­jects after the train­ing has finished.

This train­ing is for any­one who is involved in com­munity garden­ing pro­jects, or any­one who would like to start or get involved with a pro­ject.  The par­ti­cip­at­ory approach to train­ing means that we will draw on par­ti­cipants’ var­ied know­ledge and exper­i­ences to learn.

Course Content
some of the key themes we will cover are:

* Models for Community Gardening within a Tenemental Context
* How to recruit group mem­bers and pub­li­cise Community Backgreen pro­jects
* Design Issues and cre­at­ing a devel­op­ment plan for your site
* Carrying out your back­green plans: run­ning work­shops etc
* Running a Community Backgreen Group
* Establishing a sup­port net­work for the newly trained Community Gardeners

Dates and Location
The Community Gardener train­ing will run on four full Saturdays from 10am-5pm, (with reg­u­lar refresh­ment breaks). The train­ing will be held at the ECBA offices: 5 Rose Street  The dates of the work­shops will be:

Saturday 12th February
Saturday 26th February
Saturday 12th March
Saturday 26th March

Registration and Attendance
You can attend just some or all of the work­shops, as long as you let ECBA know in advance which ones you plan to attend.  To register for the course:
email courses [at] ecba [dot] org [dot] uk, or call 0131 248 2698

For more inform­a­tion see the ECBA web­site — www.ecba.org.uk

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Courses, events, gardening

Order your low-cost fruit trees now!

Posted on September 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

The Fruitful Porty scheme lets you order apple, pear, plum and cherry trees at sub­sid­ised prices through PEDAL. Download the fruit tree list and order now (or order online).

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Food, gardening, Orchards

Lourish ~ Spare produce that you want to swap?

Posted on September 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

Have you got a mil­lion mar­rows or too many tomatoes?

Swap your sur­plus for some­thing home grown & healthy near you in just a couple of quick clicks.

Lourish has been launched to help you share what you grow!

Lourish lets you swap your sur­plus fruit and veg with people grow­ing their own near you.

Sign up & share your own!

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Food, gardening

First Portobello Organic Market does a roaring trade!

Posted on September 9, 2010 | Leave a comment

The first Portobello Organic Market took place on a very sunny Saturday 4th September. Over a period of four hours, more than one thou­sand people des­cen­ded on Brighton Park to buy lovely local and organic food, drink and crafts. Initial feed­back from sev­eral local traders sug­gests that the event had a very pos­it­ive effect on High Street busi­nesses too.

The mar­ket was offi­cially opened with a short speech and rib­bon cut­ting by Councillor Tom Buchanan, Convenor of Economic Development at City of Edinburgh Council.

The mar­ket will con­tinue to run on the first Saturday of every month, from 10am to 2pm in Brighton Park. We are look­ing to ensure future events reflect the feed­back we have received — in par­tic­u­lar we aim to change the lay­out of stalls to reduce crowding, and to have a wider range of pro­duce for sale as well as stalls selling teas/coffees and hot and cold snacks.

You can view more inform­a­tion about the Organic Market and how to book a stall via these links.

http://pedal-porty.org.uk/food/portobello-organic-market/pom-stallholders/

→ Leave a comment

Posted in carbon reduction, Food, gardening, Volunteering

Federation of City Farms & Community Gardens National Networking Day

Posted on September 7, 2010 | Leave a comment

The Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens are hav­ing their National Networking Event on Friday, October 8th 2010 at Battleby, near Perth.

Workshops include New Allotments; a look at dif­fer­ent allot­ments mod­els, Livestock on Community Gardens, Social Return on Investment, Selling Produce at Farmers Markets, Orchards, Wildlife Gardening in Winter, Community Gardening and the 2011 Elections, Risk Management and more!

There will be a chance to meet fun­ders, find out about bee­keep­ing, Care Farming, Planning Aid Scotland and hear case stud­ies from other pro­jects. It’s a great oppor­tun­ity to net­work, meet like-minded people and share ideas.

For fur­ther inform­a­tion please con­tact naomi [at] farmgarden [dot] org [dot] uk Tel: 0131 623 7058 Deadline for applic­a­tions is Friday 16th September 2010.

You can down load book­ing forms at  http://www.farmgarden.org.uk/farms-gardens/your-region/scotland/506-news-a-events

→ Leave a comment

Posted in events, Food, gardening, Land Reform, Orchards

Summer Pruning course

Posted on July 19, 2010 | 1 Comment

Many folk would like to gain con­fid­ence in prun­ing fruit trees and fruit bushes. The Summer Pruning course to be run at the Community Orchard off Brunstane Road South on the even­ing (6.30pm-8.30pm) of Thursday 19th of August is for those who want to learn how to get the most from their fruit trees etc by judi­cious prun­ing. Contact Peter Upton or Polly Cooke if you’d like to register for this one-off even­ing course. There’ll be a book­ing fee of £10 to reserve your place, though there’ll be no fur­ther cost.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in events, Food, gardening, Orchards