Taste, Grow, Enjoy

As part of our new Inspired to Grow project, young people aged 13-18 joined us on the farm to learn, grow and taste a rainbow of home-grown produce! We’re encouraging people to get involved with ‘growing your own’ as it is a great opportunity to have a positive impact on our own health, increase biodiversity and reduce the negative impact of food production on our planet.

The workshop started with a walk around the farm in the Chilterns ANOB, identifying wildlife, bugs and insects lurking in the crops, wild areas and farm landscape that are essential for food production. We had mini-beast magnifying glasses so we could examine them closely, and then released them after that. A badger ‘latrine’ was spotted!

Next we headed to the polytunnel where we found out about what was growing, why we chose to cultivate traditional heritage plants and the nutritional benefits of some of the things we are growing. Everyone got hands on, helping tend to the existing crop, harvesting tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, picking out any wilted leaves and so on. It was also a chance to see how well the broad bean seeds we planted during our first Inspired to grow workshop were fairing – and they are thriving, as are the transplanted second-crop of tomatoes.

The attendees sowed spring cabbages into seed trays and perpetual spinach. Both of which are packed with nutrients. We ended the session with a tasting of homegrown radish, an array of coloured tomatoes, peppers, baby courgette and cucumber. Delicious!

Inspired to Grow is our new growing project, helped with funding from Heart of Bucks, which aims to build confidence in young people and communities to have fun sustainably growing diverse and nourishing varieties of heritage plants, and to explore the important connection between fungi, soil and biodiversity. By having the opportunity to grow and learn about fruit and vegetables, we also hope to have a positive impact on both people’s physical and mental wellbeing.

We hope to hold more Inspired to Grow workshops monthly, find out more here: Future Inspired to Grow sessions.