Gardeners Question Time at Dig Deep


Last Wednesday night at ASCEND, we were delighted to welcome Radio 4 Gardeners Question Time. Chairman Peter Gibbs visited our Dig Deep gardening project and was very impressed with the horticultural achievements.  The panel of Bob Flowerdew, Matthew Wilson and Christine Walkton answered lots of gardening questions with great knowledge and wit.   Peter Gibbs visited the plot and was blown away by what we have achieved.
Tune your radios to BBC Radio 4 on the afternoons of 1st and 3rd of June, when you will be able to hear the programme. 


Dig Deep Volunteer Russell (centre) with Farming For All's Jude and Ali (Right) and Matthew Wilson and Bob Flowerdew (left)

Allotment Panorama taken this spring!

Wheat Field

We took on the challenge set by the real bread campaign to “Bake our own Lawn” http://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/ this involves planting our own wheat, milling it and making bread that we can bake in our clay oven.  We have planted Amaretto wheat provided by St Albans farmer Howard Roberts and the first shoots have begun to appear.

Redbournbury Mill in St Albans (which is a mile from Howard’s farm) has also agreed to mill the wheat for us and let us visit the mill for tea and buns with a guided tour on 07^th June. We will also be visiting the farm that day where we will see the workings of the farm then walk through the fields down to the mill for our tour in the afternoon. Watch this space for the finished results!

Watford FC Business Club Corporate Day

We had a fantastic corporate day on 15^thMarch with members of the Watford FC Business Club. They helped us to dig over the area for our wheat field. It was full of broken glass, rusted metal and a lot of rocks. They also helped plant vegetable seeds and flowers across the plot. Dig Deep Volunteer Russell (above) led an activity to help clear an area of woodland space to plant wild flowers seeds including Cosmos to encourage bees to the plot. There were members of Watford Football club present who also helped on the day. One time Watford FA Cup finalist player Neil Price made tea for all the team.

Team Building Day

Dig deep hosted a fantastic team-building day on 17^th April. We built a Cob and woven willow planter to provide more growing room for mint that was propagated by the Dig Deep volunteers last October. One of the students attending was originally from the Gambia and was able to adopt traditional house building techniques used there to build the planter. We mixed grass with clay and water and trampled it together linking arms and using our boots as a mixing tool. We even sang a traditional Gambian house building song as we worked.

5 Students attended the day and built a smoker and smoked meet, cheese, olives and nuts over the course of the day. They also built a fire and cooked sweet potatoes, corn on the cob and mackerel fillets for their lunch. The day was a great success.