Got a camera?

Want to win a prize?

Here’s how…

1. Take a picture of our eco cup – silly, sporty, beautiful, funny…get creative!

2. Email it to win@vegware.co.uk together with your name, daytime phone number and a UK address (in case you win).

3. Our favourite pictures will go on Vegware’s facebook page.

Every month for Summer 2012, one lucky winner wins an edible prize!

MAY’s prize: fantastic handmade artisan chocolate! We’ll send it out to any UK address at the end of the month.

Sean Jacques is stepping aside from his role as Community Gardens Co-ordinator at RECG but will still very much be involved and helping out from time to time. Everyone involved will wish Sean well as he switches attention for now to developing other nature based activities. There will be some sadness in this news. Sean’s special way with the land, nature and people is just that… very special.

Having been involved from day one, Sean’s DNA is in the place and the way we do things in the Community Gardens, so these things will endure. Volunteers and community groups will see Sean at events in the Gardens over the summer and have their chance to say thank-you for his massive contribution to date.

Sean Jacques said today, “Thanks to Cyrenians and NHS Lothian for the opportunity to be involved in such a positive and worthwhile project. To those who have collectively volunteered thousands of hours over the past two and a half years; for the goodwill, the humour, the friendship and wisdom you have my deepest gratitude. Hope to see you all soon.”

We welcome Daisy Muir to the team: she’s well known here at the gardens, having been on hand to help out quite regularly. She’ll be based at the new Midlothian Community Hospital Garden, but will be splitting her time between the RECG and the new gardens. We also look forward to welcoming a new coordinator at the RECG: more news on that shortly!!

Asparagus:

The asparagus plants have finally left the glasshouse and have been planted outside. A labour of love this plant, requiring two years of growth before harvesting, however the investment shall be repaid with 15 to 20 years of return. The real stumbling block with the asparagus was the hard clay soil in which we were planting it. We solved this problem by using the pinch bar to provide drainage and treated the soil with clay breakers. A few bags of sand were added for drainage and a mixture of topsoil and compost were the final ingredients for them to grow. One year and counting until asparagus joins the list of vegetables we generate here!

And Also:

The last week of April was spent planting onions, with thanks to John, as he provided over 300 of them! Grown from seed in his windowsill at home, they were transported to the glasshouse where they were kept in an onion box for a good few weeks to establish root systems and grow at an even temperature. Lettuces have come out from the glasshouse to harden off and have been planted with a view to providing a café with some locally grown garnish. Five beds in the top garden now have potatoes in them, and, although potatoes are straightforward to grow, a touch of frost could hamper their progress in the coming months.

The aim of our training is to share with the women soil improving & water saving techniques to enable them to produce a variety of produce, including organically grown chilli’s for Black Mamba’s red hot sauces.

Having secured the funding, Bongani & Wonderboy, from World Vision Swaziland introduced the Guba team to two groups of women farmers. The women at both sites were growing cabbages, a very heavy feeding monocrop. When they had the money they were adding fertilisers & pesticides to the soil in an effort to improve their yields. As you can see in this photo however, their soil & produce is tired & unhealthy.

The lowveld has notoriously erratic & low annual rainfall, high unemployment rates & a strong prevalence of HIV, so increasing resilience for the women & their land was top of our agenda.

To keep costs to a minimum & to improve the soil sustainably, we shared a range of organic methods to increase both soil fertility & water retention, which will positively increase their produce yields.

For these reasons, our first practical lesson was learning how to make swales along the contour of their garden plots to catch, sink & slow every drop of water. A simple method of finding the contours along any piece of land is to use an A- frame made out of 3 pieces of wood, which takes the form of a capital ‘A’. You hang a weighted piece of string from the top of the ‘A’. Then, mark the exact middle of the horizontal piece. Start from the place you want your first swale & manoeuvre the A-frame into a position where the string falls exactly over the middle of the horizontal marker. Peg both ends & swivel the A-frame around to find the next point. Keep going until you have navigated your way across your land. Now you have marked a swale along the contour of your land!

Using layers of organic materials easily found in every homestead & keeping the pile moist will produce a mound of healthy compost teaming with life & fertility. We encouraged the women to produce large quantities to regularly add to their soil. Their current soil, water & plant management has badly degraded the land, which has consequently had extensive exposure to chemicals, sun, wind & rain.

Using the marked rows along the contours, we interplanted the chilli’s with bush beans which act as great companions. The chilli’s protect the beans from pests while the beans add nitrogen to the soil, increasing soil health & produce a hardy crop adding nutritional diversity for the women.

Along the top end of the swales we also planted pest control plants & green manure plants with the women. The green manure plants are predominantly nitrogen fixing species & species that lock a rich variety of nutrients in their leaves. We encouraged the women to periodically crop the leaves of these green manure plants & throw them onto the soil around their cash crops – chop & drop.
The leaves will slowly breakdown & release nutrients into the soil improving the health of soil & plant simultaneously.

The simple practice of placing cut grass &/or leaves over every inch of the land – mulching – significantly decreases water run-off & related erosion & radically increases water retention in the soil, thereby increasing soil life & fertility. Fertile soil = fertile plants.

Both groups of women were noticeably motivated to learn from us for two main reasons:
1. The techniques they were learning were going to reduce their reliance on expensive inputs such as fertilisers & pesticides;
2. And they already had an identified market for their chilli production with Black Mamba.
Under such circumstances, working with these hard working women has been a real pleasure! We continue to enjoy supporting & offering advice over the coming year while the women practice what they’ve learnt & problem shoot using their newly acquired, flexible Permaculture skills.

This month we have been continuing development at Plot 20, our allotment at Redacre Growing Project. This has seen potatoes and seeds sown and a rabbit proof fence erected by the fledgeling group of allotmenteers, headed by CFH director, Kath Baker. The Calder Food Hub ‘Tool Library’, based at the site, continues to attract attention, and tools have been used at a number of ‘Community Days’.

The Calder Food Hub ‘Tool Library’, based at the site, continues to attract attention, and tools have been used at a number of ‘Community Days’.

We are nearing the end of our local food program grant funding for the ‘Information and Resource Hub’, and the administration of the project is being completed. This has seen us achieve most of our original aims and enabled us to enjoy a period of remuneration for our effort.

After some work and deliberation we have had to cancel a grant application to the local food program for our ‘Processing and Marketing Hub’. It was agreed that there wasn’t the infrastructure or venue available at the moment to make the project sustainable.

Thanks to Vegware for your continued support.

Additionally we hosted an exciting day with four Scottish Government Policy Makers, as part of a Learning Exchange programme organised by Community Food & Health Scotland, Community Health Exchange and Voluntary Health Scotland. They spent the day learning all about us, and the issues we face trying to run a local community health project at ground level. The day was a great success with them getting to meet many of our partner organisations, local volunteers and clients. We even got them working with some clients to help make their lunch!

There is nothing like allotments for happy gardening, good eating and peaceful social life. Newport is surrounded by land but it has proved very difficult to find anyone willing to allow allotments on it, because the owners hope that one day it will be a building plot and worth at least £300, 000 an acre!

Photo - A veg plot terraced out from of a steep slope in Cilgwyn.

Almost since the beginnings of Greener Leith we have been campaigning to have the tennis courts re-instated on Leith Links.  Sadly no more of these remained than an area of hard standing while elderly residents would regale us with colourful stories of the courts that used to be there.

In 2008 however, Greener Leith carried out a consultation to find out which bits of Leith Links were most important to the local community and where any improvements would be most wanted.  Not surprisingly, one of the most responded to questions of  the Leith Links ASK was whether the tennis courts should be re-instated.

Over 52 % of the 550 people who voted considered having tennis courts on the links a HIGH priority, so we published these findings and have been campaigning ever since to have the courts re-instated.  You can imagine that we are very pleased to see that our perseverance has paid off.

Funding is now in place to build two brand new courts on one of the bowling greens.  Siting them there will mean that players will be able to make use of the existing facilities of the bowling club house. The courts should be ready by the end of this year.

Greener Leith are still keen to have more than two tennis courts at Leith Links and we will continue to campaign for them.  After all, there are three schools in the immediate vicinity and a population of 57,000 people to keep in mind.  We are however very happy with this result and are looking forward to going down to the Links for a game.

THE GREENER LEITH SOCIAL – OUR HYPER LOCAL NOTICE BOARD

Want to improve the neighbourhood where you live? Fancy meeting some of the neighbours?  Looking for stuff happening in Leith? Find Like-minded individuals?  Look no further: http://www.thegreenerleithsocial.org/

The Greener Leith Social is a canny combination of a local newspaper, a notice board and a virtual street corner in Leith and has been going for about 3 years.  It was created in response to an ever increasing number of requests from local folk to advertise details of events, gigs and opinions on the Greener Leith website. Unable to comply, we came up with the idea for a hyper local notice board where nowadays some 400 members post online anything that is of interest to other people in Leit; from yoga classes, community council meetings, to the dates of the local history society.

Apart from an events calendar, there are forums and room for specialist groups to communicate and share information with each other.  There is a page to upload and share local photos or videos, ask questions, even share tools or skills.  Should you want to put a question to your local councillor, MP or MSP there is a section to do so.

Even more cannily, every activity on the GreenerLeithSocial is visible on the Greener Leith website, so you never need miss anything that is happening in Leith.  Furthermore, it’s all paperless and available 24/7!