Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Growers

  • Our first ‘live’ seed swap event!

    Our first ‘live’ seed swap event!

    On Saturday 5th February the Seed and Vegetable swap group had it’s first live seed swap event.

    This event was to enable local gardeners to meet, have a chat with each other, bring seeds to share with others and pick up seeds they would like to grow. They were also able to have a go at making newspaper seed pots. Most people had a go at this, and were able to take these home filled with the seeds of bee friendly wildflowers.  

    The event was well attended and people enjoyed the opportunity to meet other gardeners. People enjoyed having a cup of tea and biscuit and chatting to other gardeners. Some of the comments that participants made of the day were: 

    ‘an enjoyable afternoon, with a bunch of friendly people happy to share useful tips and knowledge’

    ‘really enjoyed meeting people yesterday at the seed swap’

    ‘my best part was meeting so many warm people who are also very knowledgeable and experienced gardeners whom we can learn a lot from’

    It was great to see people mingling so easily and having discussions about gardening. People were enthusiastic about having further events, so we may well be holding a summer or harvest party. Watch this space! 

    To join, please contact us transitiontowntooting@gmail.com with your phone number so that you can be added to the WhatsApp group. 

  • Foodival 2019: “I Grew This”

    Most of this year’s Tooting Foodival growers are here immortalised in the traditional I Grew This montage!

  • Foodival Continues … Thank You Donors!

    Thank you to everyone who donated fruit and vegetables last night. We seem to be doing well for apples, but could do with more squash! 

    Head down to Hereward Rd off Tooting High St, by Mushkil Aasaan (see map) from 11-5 TODAY to see what our chefs cook up, tuck into the Community Feast, enjoy the music, stalls and creative spaces at Tooting’s sustainable food festival. Late entrants to Top Tooting Cook accepted!

  • Time to be growing for the Foodival!

    There are over two growing months until the Tooting Foodival.

    That’s plenty of time to grow local vegetables from scratch to donate or cook for the Foodival community festival on September 14th.

    What can you grow well in your garden, containers or window box in a couple of months?
    Who can you get involved? There’s a school summer holiday soon, and could the children be in charge? The RHS has a guide to getting children interested in gardening, here.

    The varieties below will all grow fast.
    Click on the vegetables in the list for more information from gardening websites.
    Are some of these new to you? Try them out:

    Coriander

    Cress
    Lettuce

    Mizuna

    Radish

    Rocket


    Kohl Rabi  and Beetroot
    are worth a try too.

    Click here to download a copy of these suggestions with the links to the gardening websites.

    What else could be grown quickly? Please share your ideas with us all: Tooting Foodival and Tooting Community Garden are on Instagram, and the garden is on Facebook too.

    Happy growing and see you at the Foodival. 
    It will be great to see your produce and we’ll add you to our ‘I Grew This!’ poster, 2019 edition

  • Foodival Menu

    For the 10th Foodival on September 16th we need lovely local growers to help us deliver this free menu to the streets of Tooting:

    Starter: Pakoras : Onions, cauliflower, courgette, spinach 

    Main Course: Vegetable Stew : Onions, carrots, potatoes, turnips, peas and any other veg including tomatoes, garlic, herbs etc.

    Dessert: Fruit Crumble : Any soft fruit – apples, pears, plums, berries 

    Are you growing any of these? Can you help?

    Some home grown donations from 2015

    For details on the Foodival and how to get involved growing, cooking, eating or celebrating please visit THE FOODIVAL BLOG

  • All welcome at The Tooting Twirl! This Sunday 16th July, 12noon – 4pm

    4 days to go to Tooting’s Pop-Up Village Green comes to life at the Bus Turning Circle, Longmead Road.

    We’d love for everyone in Tooting to come along to the Tooting Twirl on Sunday to celebrate all the cultures of our town, make a grey space green and have a good dose of fun by opening a highway to games, music and food!

    What’s happening when?

    12noon – 1pm: Come join in building the Village Green – hang some bunting, place some benches… give the Bus Turning Circle a beating heart!
    1pm – 2pm: Twirling Street Games and a sharing picnic
    2pm: Parade around the Bus Turning Circle in your Twirly best!
    3pm – 4pm: Meet, mingle and relax on the pop-up village green

    Do you do social media?

    Please do tweet, Facebook and share on the day #TootingTwirl

    We’ll also be joined by the Tooting Bec and Broadway Neighbourhood Plan…

    What is it about Tooting that you love? What might you want to change? What do you think we don’t have that we need? What stories or places from the past do you cherish? The Tooting Twirl is the perfect place to collectively imagine what good change might look like for our town.

    Would you like to take part? It’ll take all of us to make the town green… 

    Bring a colourful potted plant for the Giant Twirly Flowerbed or plant up a wheelbarrow to turn this grey space green…

    Make something Twirly to wear in the ‘What’s your Twirl?’ parade…

    Bring a skipping rope or a street game you’d be happy to share…

    Decorate your wheels to cycle in the ‘What’s your Twirl?’ parade…

    Bring a sharing picnic and a blanket…

    All images: Rachel Miller

    Jeni, Lucy and Rich – Co-Twirlers from TTT!

  • Join the 10th Foodival This September

    Tooting Foodival is back this autumn.  What are you growing now that could be cooked up in 3 months time?  
    On Saturday 16th September we’ll be celebrating the range of low food mile food that can be grown in and around SW17.  Come along and join in, in whatever capacity you like.  We guarantee it will be FUN!

    We Need Local Vegetable & Fruit Growers
    And We Need Local Cooks!
    Could It Be YOU? 


    For more information or to get involved please email transitiontowntooting@gmail.com

    Full PRESS RELEASE HERE

  • Foodival 2016 Celebrating Locally Grown Produce

    Foodival Growers
    Foodival Day One brought a glut of locally grown fruit and veg for the Top Tooting Cook competition and tomorrow’s Soup Disco at Tooting Market. See the Foodival blog for more. 

  • Foodival Stories

    Over on the Foodival blog we have been rounding up the stories from this year’s sustainable food event in Tooting.  There’s a Balham woman who grew bananas …

    Bananas grown by Susan in her Balham back garden

    And Sophie was the new face winning the prestige title of Top Tooting Cook 2015 with her beautiful culinary creation.

    Top Tooting Cook Sophie with her prize winning dish

    Pooja produced the tastiest dish according to the judges and Jenny Shand from SHARE Community Garden managed to cultivate the ugliest vegetable!  There’s more on the prize winners here. 

    Dave says: “Gimme Fracking not Solar!”

    Meanwhile, the Prime Minister tried to persuade us that subsidies for those dodgy polluting, diminishing, ever harder to reach fossil fuels are much more important than those for renewable technology.  Indeed this government plans to make community solar power generation unviable by slashing solar feed-in tariffs.  Sign the petition here to try to get this folly debated in Parliament.  Thanks to Furzedown Low Carbon Zone for highlighting this issue.

    Then there was the mysterious Giant Pea spotted up and down Tooting High St and featured in this Wandsworth Guardian video. 

    Children show off the Ugly Vegetables – the red pepper was voted the winner!

    Keep an eye out for more stories from the Foodival, some great pictures and a video over the coming days.
    Meanwhile what did you think of this year’s Foodival?

  • Foodival 2015 Rocks!

    Thank you to every veg and fruit donor, every restaurant cook, every great musician, every ugly vegetable, every volunteer, stall holder, artist, sponsor and Top Tooting Cook who made Foodival 2015 a fantastic celebration of home grown food cooked by local cooks. So many great connections made in a melting pot of south London’s food community. A mountain of photos and video will be sifted and we will report back on who won what. 

    But it’s back to the real world of (non-Foodival, non-Transition) work for most of us this morning, unfortunately, so bear with us! Keep an eye out of the Foodival blog for more in the next few days …

    If you missed the action over the weekend, you can see what you missed in the PROGRAMME HERE

    Roll on Foodival 2016 (10th/11th September 2016)