Fruit, especially soft fruit
The easiest and most rewarding for new growers. Great projects around
- planting fruit trees on public land. In Boscombe, trees were given to people to plant in their own gardens. Some of our ideas of greening Poole could be to provide free food trees for harvesting
- Abundance – harvesting crops that would otherwise go to waste – many people have big fruit trees and no desire/ability/confidence to crop and store them.
Produce share vs landshare – comment on the amount of wasted/windfall fruit and how we could tap into this.
Harriet found a good idea from Sheffield, organising harvest, collection and distribution of fruit going to waste: http://www.growsheffield.com/pages/groShefAbund.html
Sheffield give produce to charities eg homestart, boxes to schools for free distribution
The idea would be to agree with the owner that we could crop the tree, and in exchange, they get to keep part of the crop, or perhaps if we juice the fruit, some of the juice.
Cherry is keen to get this going as a project for 2010. She is also keen to work with local shops rather than undermine them. Perhaps we can offer recipie cards (we did an Apple recipie leaflet last Autumn)
It will need some organisation.
- map the locations of the trees – apparently this has already been done for the old town
- establish with the owners – fruit going to waste and willing to participate
- identifying varieties
- possibilities for vegetable/flower growing and other benefits on the same land
- potentially buy/make a press to juice excess crop
- investigate local shops selling local (ungraded) fruit
- possibly take their surplus of other crops
- temporary shop – with consent, – free distribution/swap for surplus
- encourage cooking/preserving skills
- Use freecycle and fortheloveofit to seek volunteers, trees, skills and tools
- advert in local paper
Timescales
- Cropping season August – November
- Dorset Food week – 23-31st October
Links to other projects
- planting trees and cropping plants on common ground and public space
- edible playgrounds
We have mapped out some ideas for places where trees might yield crops
and the tasks involved in the process