horticulture

Growing Manchester Launched

Date:

29 March, 2010

Growing Manchester is a new programme to support community growing projects in the city to become more sustainable in the long term and covers a wide range of issues such as maintaining soil fertility, your legal responsibilities, micro-trading and involving more people. The Programme offers a unique package of support including:Read more

Apple Grafting Course

Over a weekend in March 2010, Kindling in partnership with Abundance Manchester and OTAGS ran an introductory course on Apple Grafting (cutting & combining a shoot of one tree to the rootstock of another and binding them together until they grow into each other).
The following gallery gives a simple introduction to apple grafting with photos from the Sunday course at Parrswood Rural Education Centre kindly run by Adam Davies.

Sustainable Urban Food Production

Kindling's Chris Walsh gave a presentation to several hundred Manchester School of Architecture students on the issue of sustainable food in Manchester in mid-November 2009. As part of the students’ first year project they are exploring urban food production and consumption and the talk raised the many and interlinked problems with our present unsustainable food system and offered some potential solutions.

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Defining Sustainable Food

Date:

1 February, 2010

As part of the FeedingManchester events we have collectively been working on a definition of sustainable food. This is to ensure that future action to green Manchester addresses our unsustainable food system, as well as being the foundation for the growing sustainable food movement in Greater Manchester.Read more

Apple Grafting Workshops

Date:

13 March, 2010 - 14 March, 2010

Kindling in partnership with Abundance Manchester and OTAGS are running two day-long workshops in March 2010 to introduce gardeners to the art of apple grafting (cutting & combining a shoot of one tree to the rootstock of another and binding them together until they grow into each other).Read more

Orchard Management Course

We’ve attended a few orchard management courses (the latest by Cheshire BTCV in December 2009) to learn the basics of looking after apple trees & have a go at some winter pruning. The following gallery of pictures gives a taste of the issues and techniques involved.

A History of Feeding Manchester

This chronological narrative of how Greater Manchester has been fed through the ages, looks at each decade from 1750 to the present day: looking at how a changing Manchester was fed, we can see our changing relationship with the countryside. How the ‘urban’ has come to dominate the ‘rural’ to make the most of market opportunities. A detachment from and disregard for the pastoral, and a reverence for the metropolis.

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Love your local farmer!: Valentine’s Day 2009

Date:

14 February, 2009

On Valentine’s Day 2009, Kindling launched its pocket-sized seasonal food calendar "The time is ripe", produced with the support of the Local Food Fund. The booklet and accompanying website aims to make the process of shopping for locally produced, seasonal fruit and vegetables easier. Alongside the seasonal food calendar are details of where to buy local, seasonal produce in Manchester as well as tips on selection and storage.Read more

Seed Saving Workshops

Date:

26 October, 2008

We were very pleased to host Vicki Cooke, Seed Officer at the Heritage Seed Library, for seed saving workshops at allotment sites in both Levenshulme and Old Trafford.

The two workshops involved over twenty allotment holders and introduced the benefits of saving seeds from your successful plants, the basics of pollination and how different plants are pollinated in different ways and finally how to harvest suitable seeds.

For further information visit the seed saving gallery.

New Smithfield Wholesale Market Report

Report into Manchester's New Smithfield Wholesale Fruit & Vegetable Market (NSM) and its’ role in the city’s food supply. The report aims to: • Illustrate how New Smithfield Market works, defining the roles of traders, agents, transporters etc. • Locate the source of fruit and vegetables sold on NSM, how they are transported to NSM and who they are sold to. • Identify good practice as well as potential and innovation of local growing. • Summarise the interest in and demand for locally produced fruit and vegetables. • Provide detailed information about how waste is managed at NSM.

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