The Grow Elgin project continues to find its way into new places to grow food locally with all kinds of people. The last week in June found us at Spynie Carehome, where we were joined by some of the residents and their carers to harvest the last of the spinach, garlic, cabbage and kale(about 3kg in all) from the 1m square raised bed we installed last autumn. In their place we planted potatoes, lettuces and garlic chives and sowed a line of carrots. The care-home had also put a couple of raised planters in their courtyards for people to be able to work at standing up, which we crowded with a mixture of herbs, salad plants and strawberry plants. For at least one of the carers it was the first time she’d ever planted and started to grow any kind of vegetable and she was enthusiastic to do some more, which is great ‘cause that’s what Grow Elgin is all about!
We ran another of our small and personal gardening courses last week. During an afternoon participants had a chance to look around the GardenShare allotments, and learn how easy it is, with a little ‘knowhow’, to grow all kinds of vegetables. Participants asked questions, learned how to take cuttings, divide and pot-up plants, how to make compost. At the end of the afternoon we all sampled some freshly picked raw edible leaves in the salad we made, and the participants were be packed off with their cuttings and potted up plants, information pack, seeds, and in this case loads of enthusiasm to get going in their own gardens! Watch this space for more ‘Grow your own food’ gardening courses coming soon!
We’ve also been approached by two other organisations to help them establish vegetable gardens in raised beds. ENABLE in Elgin, who work with older adults with learning disabilities, have a small garden all laid to lawn which they want to make most of for their service users, so we will be working with them to install some raised beds, taller planters for access by wheelchair users, compost bin and, in the autumn, some soft fruit bushes and a dwarf fruit tree.
Similarly, children’s charity Aberlour Child Care Trust have asked us for help converting their larger grassy area at their Youth Point for teenagers in Elgin into a garden that will include vegetable plots and fruit trees as well as an area of wildlife garden with miniature wildflower meadow.
As with our other projects the service users with both these charities will be involved with the construction of the raised beds, planting, sowing, weeding, growing plants indoors for later planting out and of course choosing what edible plants they want to grow as well as eventual harvesting.
Finally, the herb planters in and around Elgin High Street are thriving! The Elgin Fire Brigade kindly came and filled the reservoirs in the bottoms of the planters, small signs have been attached to the planters making people aware that all the plants are edible, and a leaflet about the planters with pictures to help identify the different herbs (we’re presuming everyone knows what a strawberry looks like!) is about to go out to various venues around the town, and you can download the leaflet here.