Catherine’s child-friendly Open Food Garden

Catherine and Cameron invite you to come along on Sunday 18th September, any time between 2pm and 5pm, to 21 Woodstock Road South, AL1  [map].

This small garden in Fleetville is very much a child-friendly place. For each of the last three years the family have grown a small amount of lots of different fruits and vegetables to encourage their children to know where food comes from.

This is a wonderful garden to visit for people wanting to think more about using a garden for a variety of purposes, in particular gearing it to the needs of small children.

No need to book, just turn up, have a look round and ask all the questions you want. We will be suggesting a donation of £2 towards TSA projects for everyone aged over 16 (under 16s free). Free light refreshments will be available.

Note that this is your last chance to visit one of our Open Food Gardens this season!

Sandy and Len’s Open Food Garden

On Saturday 16 July, any time between 2 and 5 pm, you can visit Sandy and Len’s garden at 23 Tavistock Avenue, AL1 [map]. No need to book, just turn up, have a look round and ask all the questions you want.

The garden is large and very well-established, with lots of mature fruit trees and many different kinds of vegetables and herbs. Although it is north-facing, the long length means that the growing capacity is not affected.

Sandy and Len grow their produce in a mix of borders, raised beds, a greenhouse and containers. The garden incorporates numerous water-saving features and an aerobic compost bin, and the house has solar panels.

The garden is a delight to visit, even for those whose own garden is much smaller. The owners have worked on it for many years and have a wealth of knowledge which they are very willing to share.

Practical information:

  • No need to book, just turn up between 2 and 5 pm at 23 Tavistock Avenue [map].  Tavistock Avenue is in Sopwell, at the south end of the city, and is spacious with no parking restrictions.
  • Bikes can be locked in the garage or outside.
  • Light refreshments will be available.
  • We will be asking for a donation of £2 towards TSA projects for everyone aged over 16 (under 16s free).
  • Please do not bring dogs (except Guide Dogs).

June’s Open Food Garden – Maximising space

On Sunday 19th June, from 3pm to 6pm, June and Arthur kindly opened up their garden for people to visit.

Although the weather looked a bit iffy at first, some 16 people took a gamble and were rewarded with an increasing amount of sunshine as the afternoon progressed, and no rain at all!

June grows vegetables in both her back and front gardens. She decided to use the front garden because it is south-facing and gets the best light.

In the front garden (pictures above and to the right), behind a shrub hedge, she has three raised beds with lettuce, beans, red cabbage, strawberries and more, and grow bags for tomatoes.

The multi-purpose back garden (picture below) is about 10 square metres in size, and has raised beds with more vegetables, newly planted minarette fruit trees, soft fruit trained on fences, herbs, planting to attract wildlife and a pond.

There are several water butts and compost bins, and the house also has solar panels.

It is amazing how much can be done in a relatively small space!

There was even space left for people to sit down after their tour of the gardens, and have nice cup of tea or coffee with a slice of delicious home-made fruit cake, with a secret green ingredient — hint: that’s what it rhymes with…  :-)

The next Open Food Garden will be on Saturday 16 July, from 2pm to 5pm. The location and a description of that garden can be found on the Open Food Gardens 2011 Programme page.

Transition St Albans is now on Facebook too!

Thanks to Catherine we now have a page on Facebook too.

Everybody can view our page, even if you are not on Facebook. So please do go and have a look.

If you have a Facebook account, then you can do more: comment on individual posts or simply click “Like” if a post resonates with you, or write something new on our “wall” to let others know. And if you “Like” our page then our posts will automatically show up in the News Feed on your Facebook Home page, making it easy for you to keep up to date with what is happening in Transition St Albans.

Alternatively, you can access our Facebook page, or any of our other internet presences, on Twitter and YouTube, by clicking on the small logo for each, located at the top of the sidebar on the right.

Sharing seedlings and food growing experience

At our Open Meeting on Weds 18th May, members of the Home Grown Food Group organised the sharing of seedlings.

As you can see on the photo (click for a larger version), there was an abundance of young plants & seedlings available, including: tomatoes, lettuce, courgettes, celery and celery leaf, globe artichokes, runner beans, sea kale, broccoli, watercress, melons and various herbs.

Many came and took some plants away. And if you wanted to experiment with growing something new, written information on care and harvesting was provided.

The evening also included a mini “Gardener’s Question Time“, a question and answer session where growers shared their experience and knowledge.

 The panel of experts consisted of Nadine G, Heather, June and Sandy, with the session skilfully moderated by Romayne.

There are some more pictures of the evening here.

Nadine’s Open Food Garden – Companion Planting

On Saturday 14 May, in the afternoon, Nadine opened up her garden in Church Street, a big long family garden near the city centre, with various fruit trees, many different kinds of vegetables and herbs, an experimental edible hedge, a walk-in plastic greenhouse, a bucket pond etc.

Nadine’s guided tours were really inspiring. She has a lot of knowledge and experience, and there is something in the way she talks about it all that makes it both informative and entertaining, a winning combination.

An interesting aspect of Nadine’s vegetable garden was her frequent use of the technique of Companion Planting as a natural form of pest control and to increase yields. Basically, planting different types of plants together that are known to help each other to grow or to deter or distract pests!

Apart from explaining it on her guided tours, Nadine also put up a poster describing how the concept had been applied to her garden. There is a copy of the Companion Planting in Nadine’s Garden poster here.

Everybody thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon, as you can tell from the pictures. There are a few more pictures here.

Bonus: the last couple of photos in the album linked to above show Nadine’s “Raised Bed Community Garden” project. When a large publicity board on the corner of her street was removed, and it became clear that there were no plans to replace it, Nadine and several neighbours decided to give the corner a green make-over. Both help and feedback from fellow residents have been amazing!

Environment Matters on Radio Verulam

Environment Matters” is a new programme on Radio Verulam, St Albans’ local radio station.

It’s on the air on the second Thursday of each month, from 9pm till 9.30pm.

If you live in St Albans, tune your radio to 92.6 FM. Alternatively, you can  listen live on the internet on www.radioverulam.com.

Jack Easton, Claire Sherman and Amanda Yorwerth will be covering all sorts of environment-related issues:  from cycling to solar power, from Green Ambassadors to Green holidays, from what’s in your bin to what’s on your plate.

Both the wider issues and the local perspective will investigated, with plenty of information and advice relevant to everyone.

And listeners will also be kept up to date with local environment-related events.

If you want to propose an item or even a theme for one of the programmes, have an environment-related event to be advertised, or want to give feedback, then you can contact them by email to  environmentonrv@gmail.com or by telephone on  01727 839 926.

The first episode aired on Thursday 12 May 2011 and was devoted to cycling, including an update on the government’s Cycling Demonstration Towns project with a report from nearby Aylesbury, and an interview with Stephen Wragg of the St Albans Cycle Campaign (STACC).  You can listen to it here.

The next programme in the series will be aired on Thursday 9 June, at 9pm.

Free compost on Sunday 8th May

St Albans City and District Council (SADC) is giving away 10 tonnes of free compost to mark International Compost Awareness Week (1st – 7th May) which is aimed at encouraging people to recycle their waste for composting.

Residents will be entitled to take away up to three bags full of peat-free compost on Sunday 8th May from the Enterprise depot at Ronsons Way, St Albans, between 12 noon and 4pm.

Shovels will be provided, but residents are asked to bring their own bags to load compost into their cars. Council staff will be on hand to provide useful tips on composting.

The compost is supplied for free by Agrivert, an organic waste management company which takes green waste collected by the Council from households in the District.

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Sharing seedlings at our next Open Meeting

At our next Open Meeting, at 7.30pm on Wednesday 18th May at Fleetville Community Centre, members of the Home Grown Food Group are organising the sharing of vegetable plants, seedlings etc.

The young plants & seedlings available are likely to include: tomatoes, lettuce, courgettes, celery and celery leaf, globe artichokes, runner beans, sea kale, broccoli, watercress, melons and various herbs.

Do come and take some away – you might go home with ideas about experimenting with growing something new. Do also bring spare seedlings if you have any.

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AGM & Open Meeting on Wednesday, 20th April

Another year has gone by. Time for our Annual General Meeting aka AGM again.

Not the most exciting stuff maybe, but hey, it’s got to be done. We committed to it in our Constitution.

After a quick review of the year’s activities, we did the formal AGM business: presentation of the Annual Accounts and the election and election / re-election of the Steering Group (SG) members.

One new candidate for the Steering Group had come forward, Catherine R, but because of a proviso with her candidacy, that there should be at least 5 SG members, with only 3 members in the SG currently, we could not formally elect her.

One current member of the SG, Peter S, stood down per the consitution rotation rules but offered himself for re-election and was re-elected.

The SG thus continues with  the same three members:  Jack E, Rick H and Peter S, but note:  the SG can co-opt new members any time. Please, do get in touch if you think you might be able to help.

With the formal bits over, we then gave the floor to Kathryn H to share with us her experience on ”How to organise a ‘Big Lunch’ in your community“. 

Last year, Kathryn organised a very successful Big Lunch in her street: happy smiling faces on all her photos, and very multi-cultural it was too!

Based on her experience, she was able to give us many good tips, such as:

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