Urban Food Fortnight Open Day: final harvest and sowing green manure

Saturday 21st September: core team Fiona, Emma, Fiorella, Victor and David had a big tidy up today. We pulled out the pumpkin and bean plants and took off the beans for drying in the pods. These will be shucked at our feasting cook ups. The final pumpkins had been taken by strangers – oh well. If you helped yourself, we’d love to hear what you cooked and how the produce tasted. Thanks to Harvey and Manuel of Veolia for kindly taking the copious vegetation to the compost depot.

Thanks too to the musicians at the Common People festival – follow them @CommonPeople.

Then we sowed green manure, vetches (Vicia sativa), a legume which will fix nitrogen and do the good job of green manures. When summer crops come to an end, rather than leave soil bare, it’d a good time to sow green manures. Green manures bring organic matter to the soil, protect it and its microflora from beating rain, and make nutrients ‘bio-available’. In the spring we will cut it down to be incorporated in to the soil before we plant spring crops.

Sowing green manures is the best organic practice, especially if you’re working with crop rotation. This isn’t so easy growing in containers (as we are) but at least we’ll get the benefits outlined above.

Watch out for info about our feasting at Notredame Community Hall on Friday 4th October, 2 – 6.

We’re always happy to welcome new members such as Diane who brought a membership form and joining money today. Also join via this page using paypal.

Also great to see Larissa and John who can help with a mailchimp newsletter! All skills, time and effort really welcome.

Help needed right now:

  • helping at  our second feasting day at Oasis cafe on the Common
  • managing our crowd funding for insurance and currants

Get in touch! ccbandstandbeds@gmail.com