See our month-by-month page for Growing tips advice, encouragement and sharing!
Month-by-month growing tips and advice!
We work with Bradford Council’s Public Health team and My Living Well to promote the Community Led Food Growing strand of Bradford Council’s Good Food Strategy across Bradford District, as part of Bradford’s Sustainable Food Partnership.
To find out more about this work have a look around our website. visit the My Living Well page or visit Bradford’s Sustainable Food Partnership page to see what’s happening across Bradford to improve sustainability and accessibility to food for all.
By signing up to the Sustainable Food Places system Bradford is part of a Good Food Movement
Sign up to the My Living Well Newsletter to receive monthly updates, including growing tips from Grow Bradford!
Join Sarah and Martin for their regular BCB radio programme for local growing tips, chat and advice on Grow Your Own Way! Know you’re not alone in your endeavours whatever the weather!!!
Easy read gardening guides to read and share https://www.thrive.org.uk/get-gardening/easy-read-gardening-guides#
These guides are from the fabulous organisation Thrive who promote gardening for health and teach Social and Therapeutic horticulture courses and other training for those interested in developing knowledge or a career in this area!
Companion planting – helpful advice from https://www.allotmentonline.co.uk/
Companion planting is a term used for planting vegetables and flowers/plants together that will be beneficial for the others’ growth. It may be that one will deter certain pests that will likely eat the leaves of the other. They may help with pollination and to fight disease. Some will help to attract pollinators. Likewise, there are plants that should not be planted together as it could result in a poor crop and be detrimental to it’s growth.
Look here for a list of growing friends, growing enemies and plant benefits –
https://www.allotmentonline.co.uk/companion-planting
In a nutshell, it’s an organic method of balancing nature to maximise it’s effectiveness and can also be space saving when plants are grown together. Some companion plants can be planted together in the same bed, some will benefit from being close by or bordering the bed.
See our Month-by-month growing page growing tips and advice!
Follow Charles Dowding’s advice for what to do in June in a no-dig garden!
Follow Steph Hafferty from her no-dig garden for more growing advice!
For more seeds and growing advice see Real seeds various pages on different types of tomatoes https://www.realseeds.co.uk/tomatoes_bush.html
Garden Organic growing advice on growing tomatoes
Garden Organic Growing Card for growing Indoor Tomatoes
Garden Organic Growing Card for growing Outdoor Tomatoes
What to expect in terms of germination of different crops. A video from Charles Dowding, no dig grower. We highly recommend his Do Nig Growing Approach
Here we share top tips for growing using wildlife-friendly and biodiverse growing to help you grow the best crops and healthy, beautiful spaces.
What to Grow in March!
All advice is based on Bradford growing so may differ in other areas. Seed packets and formal advice (RHS etc) tends to be southern-focussed.
As Bradford based growers with years of experience we are keen to share tried and tested methods and what has worked best for us!
Please feel free to download and share! Please tag us when you do @growbradford
Let’s get Bradford Growing!
Visit the Garden Organic page for more info on growing broad beans!
In March it’s also a good time to plant your potatoes and which better advice to follow than our very own experts at West Yorkshire Organic Group (WYOG) who run their own potato day in Saltaire every February! If you didn’t manage to join this year’s event make sure you look out for it next year!
Did you know there are different types of potatoes which can be planted and harvested at different times to make sure you have potatoes all year round!
Find out more here with WYOG Potato Growing Guide.
We recommend Real Seeds and Vital Seeds for Open-pollinated seed and the Organic Gardening Catalogue for Organic seed.
We are currently funded by Bradford Council’s Public Health team. We are visiting and documenting food growing projects across Bradford to to raise the profile of food growing and to inspire other growers and a community led growing approach.
We hope you will find resources, share ideas, and generally help us increase the presence and popularity of food growing in Bradford.
See our pages designed to support you in your growing whether you are an individual grower, an allotment grower, a group or community organisation or a larger more formal organisation.
We also have a separate resources page where we share useful information about where you can share and learn, and find items you might find useful.
We also share inspiration via a blog where we host other growers and help build the growing community! Let’s get growing!
As far as possible we focus on raising the profile of activity in Bradford. Where useful, for example, for technical information or resources, links are included from further afield.
Are you part of a business or organisation in #Bradford district that owns a bit of land where you could plant a mini-orchard?
Successful applicants will be given 3-6 medium sized size apple, pear & plum trees (grow to approx 4m high).
Find out more: https://mylivingwell.co.uk/news-post/ready-set-grow/
Offer closes 8/3/24
