New course for the spring

We’re delighted to announce there will be a new course, Basic Gardening Skills, starting later this month.

Fresh from the success of the Pests and Diseases course, which the participants enjoyed, tutor Aisling Judge has started signing up recruits for the new course, which starts on February 19th and will run for 15 weeks.

I can’t believe that it’s not even 9 months ago since we started the training in Growing Green’s own meeting shed. Since then, we’ve had two more successful courses in the Taff Community training shed and this will be our fourth course.

This is a good opportunity to thank tutor Aisling for all her work with the learners and for keeping them motivated over the cold winter months. It’s a logical time to be doing things like training on the one hand, but getting people to turn up in the cold, rain and snow is something quite different.

I was very impressed with the learners information displays about pests and diseases and I look forward to seeing everyone putting their new found knowledge to the test this year – although, hopefully, there won’t be as many bugs and diseases as we battled with last year.

Meanwhile, we’re looking at investing in some cheap membrane to cover a small area of weeds and improving the signage and layout of people’s plots, so everyone knows who’s where in 2013! We’re expecting most people to trickle back and begin working the plots and communal areas as the weather gradually improves – all the ‘old timers’ on the site have dissuaded us so far from planting garlic and onions, as it’s been perpetually wet and cold for months. But we must get them in later this month or miss our chance.

Plus, there are plans to install the guttering on the training shed roof, now the weather is improving (slightly!) and we’re chasing some funding for a few project ideas we have on the site. In fact, the funding meetings have kept us busy for some weeks, behind the scenes, as we look to improve upon the site infrastructure. More about this in future posts.

Someone suggested linking a photo from sunnier days, to keep us motivated!

Tapping into funding

Brave souls at the allotment course

The allotment group committee officers had a very productive meeting with Environment Wales this week.
The group is keen to get registered with Environment Wales, not only to open up more doors for funding, but also to access support with writing policies suited to an allotment, volunteer training, advice on grant bids and other great opportunities.
The committee members were very positive after the meeting, feeling that it is a very positive thing to have a hands-on grants officer coming out to the allotments on a cold, winter’s day and offering to
First things first, the group has to get busy with registering and that involves adopting the right policies and making sure all the paperwork – constitution, etc. – is all in place.
Given the incentives of the funding and ‘hand holding’ by the grants team, the feeling is that something positive can come out of getting involved with Environment Wales.