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Harvest update
Harvest training courses
What's on
What to eat & grow now
Project support
Harvest update
Grow It! Growing your own veg & fruit isn’t just for the home garden or allotment – you can get growing at work too! Grow It, our new growing competition for businesses, is all about encouraging more people to get growing in whatever space they have, greening the streets of Brighton at the same time! Why not encourage your workplace, or favourite bar, restaurant or cafe, to enter? Find out more info, how to enter and who's already signed up.
Big Lunch: The Big Lunch is a day devoted to sharing a meal as a community, particularly home-made, home-grown food. There will be lunches across the country, all taking place on 18 July. Let us know if your neighbourhood or street will be running a Big Lunch event and we can help you publicise it. If you’re thinking about organising a Big Lunch, let us know and we can help you with some ideas too! For more info, have a look at the Big Lunch website.
Local Food Week: As a part of this year’s Food and Drink Festival we’ll be running Local Food Week from 20-26 September, a week dedicated to celebrating the fantastic range of food grown or produced in and around Brighton & Hove as well as the fantastic food projects in our city. We’ll be organising some great events (more info to follow) and we’d love for you to organise an event to form part of the week’s programme too. It could be a food swap, an open day at your growing project, a mini farmers market, a community meal – there are many possibilities! If you’d like to discuss your ideas, get in touch with the Harvest team on 01273 431700 or email harvest@bhfood.org.uk.
Preston Park demonstration vegetable garden: Keep up to date with developments at the garden through our garden blog!
The Food Partnership is recruiting! We are seeking a part-time coordinator for our Healthy Weight Referral Scheme. Find out more...
Harvest training:
Seasonal summer cooking: Interested in learning more about cooking with the seasons? Starting 10 June, our new hands-on 6 week course will teach you all about cooking with early summer produce. Find out more...
Harvest Summer and Autumn Food Growing Courses: we’ll soon be announcing our full line-up of courses for the summer and autumn, but in the meantime, two of the courses on the programme include Dealing with Pests (3 July) and Seed Saving (24 July). Both of these courses will be run by the very knowledgable guys at Whitehawk Community Food Project. Please call 01273 431700 or email harvest@bhfood.org.uk to register your interest.
More info about courses and events can be found on the Harvest website.
What’s on: As ever, there are lots of great food-related events coming up...
A couple of things to do this weekend:
- Big Sussex Market: 15-16 May, New Road, Brighton. A two-day Sussex food extravaganza.
- Plant Swap and Big Nature Wildlife Garden: 16 May, 12:00 – 5:00, Hanover Community Centre garden, Southover Street, Brighton. Bring along your seedlings and plants to swap (there will be plant stalls too), plus between 2:00 – 4:00 you can receive expert advice about attracting more wildlife to your garden. There will be a fair-trade cafe and an art exhibition running thoughout the day in the main hall.
And more food-related events later down the line:
- Vegetables in Containers: 18 May, 7:00 – 9:00pm, St Leonards Church hall, Glebe Villas BN3 5SN. A talk on growing vegetables in containers organised by the West Hove Horticultural Society. Admission £1.50.
- Roedale Valley Allotment open day & plant sale: 22 May, 10:00 – 2:00, Lower Roedale Valley Allotments (off Lynchett Close, Hollingdean). Cakes, games, plants and more!
- Plant Sale - West Hove & District Horticultural Society: 22 May, 10:00 – 12:00, St Leonards Church Hall, Glebe Villas, Hove BN3 5SN. At this annual plant sale you'll find herbs, vegetables, flowers, perennials, shrubs. To top it all off, there will also be home-made cakes, tea and coffee! All welcome, entry 30p.
- Plant sale - Sussex Chrysanthemum and Dahlia Society: 22 May, 10:00 - 12:30, St Peter's Church, Brighton. All the annual plants and shurbs you could need! Free entry.
- Gorgeous George Street Artisans Market: Saturday 22 May, 10:00 – 2:00, George Street Hove. Monthly artisans market with a range of stalls selling locally produced food and crafts.
- Brighton Spring Food Fair: 22-23 May, 11:00 – 5:30, Hove Lawns. Come plant a seedling in a recycled newspaper pot with the Harvest team; lots of local food too!
- Springwatch: 6 June, Stanmer Park. A day of fun for all ages, celebrating Spring and the importance of biodiversity. There will be information stalls, activities (Harvest will be making seed bombs for bees and some salad planting) and much more.
May growing & eating tips
In the kitchen...Lots of leafy green things around like chard and spring greens, but there’s also lemony sorrel about and gorgeous wild garlic to be foraged. Wild garlic leaves and flowers can be used in salads, and the leaves can also go into soups, under the cheese on your cheese on toast, or into a risotto. Sorrel leaves are delicious chopped up and added to an omelette; they’re also a delicious addition to a potato soup with a bit of grated nutmeg and cream.
For more spring eating ideas, see our recipe index...
In the garden...It’s been unusually cold lately, and we’ve even had a frost this week! Be sure to harden off the plants you’ve started off indoors, like tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes, before putting them outside for the rest of the year. This means gradually exposing them to the cooler outdoor temperatures by leaving them outside for a few hours a day, then bringing them in at night. Wait until the end of the month or early June, when the weather and the soil will have warmed up, before leaving them outside for good.
If you started your salad box under cover last month you should be able to start harvesting leaves towards the end of the month. Hooray for fresh salad leaves!
If you’ve not planted your late potatoes, be sure to do it soon – a gardening task for the weekend, perhaps?
More May gardening tips…
Funding & project support
East Brighton Healthy Neighbourhood Fund: funding for projects in East Brighton that support the physical, mental or psychological health and wellbeing of residents in East Brighton. Community and voluntary groups and organisations can apply for up to £350. Please see the attached application form for more information.
Finally, our attention has been drawn to Thorne’s Foods, a new business venture which would be a local food retail outfit, supporting small growers and producers. “Thorne’s will make purchasing quality locally sourced food convenient, accessible and affordable to busy food shoppers in urban areas across the UK, starting in Brighton”. They are currently raising the capital to get the business off the ground, and as a part of this have entered Take One Small Step, a competition to win £50,000 from Barclays Bank. If you would like to vote to support this business idea, please visit https://www.takeonesmallstep.co.uk/Entry/View/2068/Page.
Have a great weekend!
The Harvest Team
To find out more and keep in touch with Harvest, you can find us at www.harvest-bh.org.uk or become a fan of Harvest on Facebook.
Harvest is a city-wide project, delivered by a wide range of partners and led by Brighton & Hove Food Partnership and Food Matters. The Food Partnership is a membership organisation, and membership is free to anyone who lives or works in Brighton & Hove. For benefits of membership and to join go to: www.bhfood.org.uk
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