St Stephens Neighbourhood Centre, Greatfield, Kinston Upon Hull

The sisters and their keen volunteers at St Stephen's have been busy with Adrian growing some fine looking spuds on a verge nearby.

These are now in flower, and make a great addition to the streetscape.   Just round the corner behind St Stephens itself is some more container growing, with potatoes, herbs, squash, broccoli and tomatoes on the go, and more to follow.

View of the main building at St Stephens, Greatfield.

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St Hildas Church, Greatfield, Kingston Upon Hull

The gardening club are doing great with a good crop of spuds about to flower, some fine looking runner beans, peas, and some strong looking brasicas too.  Much of their fruit and veg is grown up the fence so anyone passing by will be able to pick their own.

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Tresure Corner - some of the amazing and less so things we have found digging

Its got nothing to do with food, but it is rather fun to look at some of the the things we have found across our many sites.This first batch is from Boulevard.


Here are a few pictures, and keep coming back as we will add new pics of things to this post. So far the oldest thing is a clay pipe from 1640 - 1700 shown below. Its a rare find by any measure.  At that point Hull only had a few thousand people living in it, and it was found on the Boulevard, which was the edge of town then, and possibly open fields.

Most other finds are 20th century including coins, one dating back to 1902.  The action man is of 1970s vintage, the car below is 1970s too.

 How it came to have a bramble root through it is pure chance, but it looks great.

How a 1980s ski binding got there we will never know and the car starting handle I'm sure was missed by someone, its a 1950s one we think. Remember that style of peps can, late 1980s, along with an old marmalade lid, a 1960s light switch and a Victorian brass tap.

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Visit to Incredible Edible, Todmorden

 Toddy, as its known to its locals is a place of inspiration and boldness. They have turned their whole town into an abundant basket of food growing spaces.  Here is a small glimpse of their genius and creativity. Do click on the link further down to see more on their website.

This visit was run by Food 360 and Longhill Link up Trust, So thanks to them both :-)

 A local front garden, Mary Clear's, a leading force locally, now a public larder of fresh food.

 Local produce, fair prices, in locally owned and run shops, does it get any better?

 The Health centre healing and herbal garden

 A rather fine planter and seat made from simple planking - one to complement by copying.

 Insect and bee home made from slices of bamboo, simple, cheap and a bee life saver

 BEEautiful high rise living, art and function mixed so well.

 Bird boxes made by local artists, all along the Green Route

More insect homes in a high rise style

One of the many signs around the 'Green Route' which shares ideas and plant identities

A huge veg plot by the railway station

The local church, now a community centre

Narnia like pathway in the church yard....is there a wardrobe in those trees ?

View of Toddmorden from the church

Pollination Street - bee garden next to the market place.

some fine squash and courgettes i think.

go look at their website its full of great ideas and some exciting new growing adventures
www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk

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St Aidans Church, Kingston Upon Hull

 

 We thought this place would be a quick clear with the digger.  What we hadn't banked on was that many years ago someone replaced a concrete roof on part of the church and had dumped it on this area. So instead of just clearing a small pile of rubble visible, we had 2 foot deep of rubble across the whole site under the brambles.

 

 We had a good, if smaller team to do the clearing, but thats not so bad with a digger arm swinging round so often. We will probably fill 3 skips by the time we have cleared the back here. But the soil is good to a depth of about 4 inches, and the church are very excited about doing some collective growing, and serving some of it in their lovely and very popular cafe. More pics to follow, as this place is is so keen there will be plants in a matter of days :-D

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St Michael's Youth Project Allotment Update

 Its been a long haul on this allotment plot, not only was it epically overgrown, but then even a power driven rotorvator could not claw up the boulder clay.  In the end we resorted to getting the digger in a again and after a long days work, the whole plot is turned over.

Sadly this place has pretty much the worst soil in Hull - well it has and inch of top soil, so we are doing minimal planting this year and very heavy manuring over teh winter to get next year off to a better start.   But we will pop some fruits, herbs and salads, and maybe some spuds if we can in all the same.

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Bodmin Road Church, Bransholme, Kingston Upon Hull.

It was with some deep disapointment that a week on many of the plug plants had died, the french beans looking least happy. We think its due to cat urine, we have tried our best to revive some and will replace others.

Time waits for no man tho and so we carried on with bed number 2 and soon enough we had a good team of diggers again and by the end of teh session we had some squash and broccoli planted in it too, kindly donated by Food 360 in East Hull, as they had some spare.  They are a cool bunch check out their work too here. http://www.probeltd.co.uk/community/community/community/f360future.html

I

To make sure cats wont bother the plug plants this time we enlisted the help of spiderman, I guess he will scare off flies too :-)

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