Workshop summary: Growing with what you have

After discussing veg seed sowing, sowing and planting times, and taking care of seedlings over the last three weeks, today it was time for some real hard-core lockdown gardening with Kate Treharne, Community Allotments Officer at Dundee Council. About a month ago, in the early days of covid-19 lockdown, she’s set herself a challenge of growing as much as she can with supplies she could find at home. This is how her Lockdown Gardening YouTube channel was born.

During the session Kate went through things that have worked and did not work for her so far, followed by a very informative Q&A where many ways of making sprouts were shared, and Kate and Helena discovered they were ‘sprouter twins’! Unfortunately, due to technical gremlins, the recording of our session did not work this time but thankfully you can watch Kate in action on YouTube here. In her next episodes she will cover fascinating and unusual topics of growing mushrooms and setting up an indoor wormery.

Below are some highlights from the session:

• Growing sucesses: seedlings from seeds dug out from shop-bought tomatoes (note: varieties will be adapted to commercial growing), marrowfat peas/whole peas for shoots, mustard seeds and coriander for microgreens, lentils and peas (not split) for sprouting. Variety of beans can also be used for sprouting but please check their toxicity before trying them out (many beans must be soaked/cooked to be edible, e.g. Red Kidney beans).
• Growing fails: barley and wheat from soup mix will not produce seeds themselves as they are likely to be genetically modified to be sterile, basil seeds don’t work as sprouts (they turn into slimy goo) but grow into fab seedlings.
• Equipment: Reusing packaging and loo rolls (see video from our first session for more tips on that), white plastic milk bottles make for fab labels and their bottom can be turned into a pot saucer.
• Compost: trickest of them all, you can make your own in a DIY tumbler (see Kate’s videos for tips), used coffee grounds worked for pea/bean seedlings but dry out really quickly.
• Sprouters come in many shapes and sizes, many can be bought online but you can use a normal glass jar and poke a few holes in the lid, or use bits of an old t-shirt and a rubber band as a lid/strainer. More tips on how to sprout seeds in upcycled jars here.
• Bob’s tip on testing manure/other non-commercial compost before using with your plants: grow some quick cress seedlings and water them with diluted preparation from your compost/manure. You will see yellowing/stunted growth if there are any problem chemicals.

If you are finding it hard to get hold of gardening supplies, you may want to check out local community gardens or covid-19 mutual help facebook groups as many people have started distributing or informally swapping seeds/seedlings/compost. Here are tips we shared in the session (please follow government guidelines regarding travel and social distancing when using any of the swap shops):

• Tayport Comunity Garden is holding a stall to distribute excess seeds/seedlings from the garden and allow people to swap their own: 3 May and 31 May, 2-4pm – full details here.
• St Andrews Edible Campus set up a swapping point at the Tennis Club (it’s been left unattended for a while so not sure if it’s still there)
• Dundee West End Community Fridge has had seedlings occasionally – get in touch with them if you are local as they may be able to become a local swapping point.
• Dundee Maxwell Centre in Hilltown distributed starter growing packs to families who usually attend their gardening club – get in touch with them as they may have more supplies to share.
• Strathkinness: Community garden has a swap table, contact Bob for more information (Twitter).
• Compost (please use peat free only – for the planet!!): Unfortunately, neither Dundee or Fife Councils have municipal compost available at the moment but it may soon be available to Dundee community growing groups. There is a pile of compost at St Andrews, made available by the Golf Course, but it’s poor quality and not advisable for growing veg, may work as a mulch (spiky gorse bits in it are great at repelling cats).
• Seeds: Andrea put together a nice collection of ethical UK suppliers (many of them still deliver) on her Yellow Wellies Gardening website (also worth checking out if you are looking for ideas on gardening with little ones:). Some supermarkets may have them in stock, and B&Q has reopened in Dundee. Also – see seed swaps above.

Our next workshop will be coming in a fortnight – please check PLANT Facebook page and website. In the meantime, you might want to browse through recordings from previous sessions here.

This workshop series is an informal collaboration between a number of local community food growers in response to increased demand for growing advice under covid-15 lockdown, including Edible Campus (Transition University St Andrews), Strathkinness Community Garden, Ninewells Community Garden, PLANT’s Tayport Community Garden. For this session we were joined by Community Allotments Officer, Dundee Council. We would welcome any other contributors, please get in touch with Kaska on blog@tayportgarden.org.