The last couple of months have been busy on our sites in Clissold and Springfield Parks and Allen’s Gardens. Our interns Warami and Larissa and new Kickstart employee, Kaya, have been working hard sowing seeds, harvesting our winter crops, and planting out our new spring crops. They have been working alongside our volunteers, who have been booking in for morning or afternoon slots at the sites. We're all quite fed up with the cold weather.  For the plants however, it has had its benefits and downsides.

Our winter salads have lasted much longer than usual in the ground. Usually when the weather gets warmer our winter salads bolt (they start to flower and go to seed, which is the end of their life cycle.) But as the weather has stayed quite cool, they've kept on going. But on the other hand, some of our seeds haven’t germinated at all because it's been too cold. Equally, some of our more tender seedlings like our cucumbers have not liked the lower temperatures at all. They are now in the ground and we’re hoping that they will be much happier there.

Warami, Kaya and I went to volunteer on Sitopia Farm in Greenwich in mid May. The peri-urban community farm has been set up by a graduate Growing Communities’ trainee, Chloe. We spent the day making new beds for Chloe to plant her veg in, which will be feeding south Londoners in the months to come.

Sadly, our interns will be finishing with us at the end of May and we wish them all the very best in their future growing adventures. Fortunately, Kaya will be with us for another 5 months, learning all that we can teach him about growing and distributing local organic food.