Grow Bradford is an initiative to unite people and places around the themes of food growing, biodiversity and developing ourselves within community
Welcome to Grow Bradford! Are you a grower or want to learn about growing your own food in biodiversity and wildlife friendly ways? You've come to the right place! We are working with Bradford Council's Public Health Team and Living Well to develop resources for people in Bradford District around Community Led Food Growing. Check our links above and below or scroll down to find out more.
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Month-by-month

Growing tips and advice for Bradford growers

We share a monthly growing sheet with a focus on a particular vegetable as well as our monthly #LoveYourVeg social media campaign where we encourage people to share the veg they love to grow or eat. We ask people to share a photo or recipe and why they love the veg they are sharing.

Will you join us by sharing our growing tips or your favourite veg?

This upload is a description with images and text boxes of what to sow in July

“Permaculture is a revolution disguised as organic gardening”, according to Bill Mollison (RIP)!

Want to find out more about permaculture.
Read an interview with him here where his is quoted

A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate—once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself. Something essential happens in a vegetable garden. It’s a place where if you can’t say “I love you” out loud, you can say it in seeds. And the land will reciprocate, in beans.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Author of Braiding Sweetgrass

Map

Click on the pins to find out more about food growing spaces near you!

Add a food growing space to the map! Click here

Fill in our here to add a space to the map. Please share as much info as possible (with the relevant permissions).

Thanks for helping us increase the visibility of Community Led Food Growing across the District!

To see where allotments are located across the district see our allotments map on the allotments page!

Allotment growers

See more info and updates info below the map! We liaise with allotment growers and the allotments office in simple ways to see how we can support those who want to access allotments and the allotments office in their huge endeavour to get more plots under cultivation and let out. We do this as part of our work with Bradford Council’s Public Health project to promote Community Led Food Growing across the city. Read more below!

Bradford council manages an allotment service across the city. If you are interested in starting or continuing to grow in Bradford then one option is to apply to the council for an allotment. Some areas also have allotments not run by the council’s allotment service, such as parish councils, and some are even run independently by the allotmenteers themselves, such as the site at Northcliffe in Shipley.

Grow Bradford have created a map of where allotments are based across the city. See below! If you know of sites that are not yet listed please let us know via the contact tab .

Click here to see a list of council run allotment sites

Allotments updates and opportunities!

Here’s a video of the fabulous growers from Northcliffe Allotment Society and the #ShareYourSpare scheme they are promoting!

If you’d like to share from your allotment as an individual or project please tag us in your updates @growbradford #growbradford.

Let’s get the city growing!

At the moment the waiting list for allotments is closed, rents have increased by 50% and some concessionary rents have been removed – but there is also good news! 

The allotments office has some funds via Public Health and the Community Infrastructure Levy to bring ‘unusable’ allotments back into use through clearing them – the Public Health fund will bring 30 plots back into use! The clearing process has gone out to tender – hopefully work will start soon.

Also good news is that the allotments office have listened to some great ideas coming from current plot holders and have said ‘ Where plots require cutting back but not heavy clearance, we have been contacting people on the list to see if they would be prepared to take a plot and there would be no charge until 31st March 2024. We have been undertaking this for the last 6 weeks. In the last 4-5 weeks we have offered over 40 plots to people on the waiting list,’ 

Public Health added ‘Most of their work is dependent on funding, which is rather short at the moment so we’re working with them on trying to be as creative as possible. So any assistance you can provide from that perspective will be duly appreciated.’  

 If YOU have ideas on creating different ways of getting the plots cleared and let – please share that with Grow Bradford via our ‘contact’ page. 

Growing

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!

See Garden Organic’s Organic gardening advice page for how to grow organically and seasonal tips and step-by-step 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

Growing your own food provides you with fresher foods that are bursting with flavour and it is an easy, fun way to reach your 5 a day! It also means that you are playing your part towards reducing food waste, saving the planet and helping you to be “greener”. Read on to find out how to get started! on the Living Well website.

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

Home

Grow Bradford is working with Public Health in Bradford to promote Community Led Food Growing across Bradford District. Check out our Growing Pages. Tag us @growbradford and share what you’re growing.

Let’s get the city growing!

Grow Bradford has 2 main aims.

1) It aims to promote and increase food growing and biodiversity in Bradford.