FoodSmiles Newsletter – April 2025

TLDR:

Spring is well underway, and so is our growing season! All groups have been busy sowing, planting, and prepping for a fruitful year. Infrastructure upgrades, compost improvements, and team spirit are blooming across our sites. Read on to see what everyone’s been up to!

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Hixberry Group:

Mild winter weather meant sessions continued weekly through the season. The team focused on infrastructure—building seed covers, extending the fruit cage, and rejuvenating the edible hedge for wildlife. Beds were prepped with donated compost, and over 300 broad bean toilet roll starters were planted alongside 60 squash/cucumber pots. Germination has been excellent thanks to Sylvagrow compost and warm days. Chitted potatoes and beans are in the ground, and rhubarb is expanding. Coming up: more planting, a rebuilt raised bed, and a trial run of land cress in place of artichokes.

Yellow Group:

New member Roxán has joined the team just in time for a busy spring. Potatoes have been chitting since February and will go in the ground soon. Tomatoes are doing fairly well; chillies and peppers, not so much—backup seeds may be needed. Salads like radishes and spring onions are already sown outdoors. Other seedlings—cabbages, leeks, chard, and parsnips—are growing in the PT, with squash and cucumbers coming soon. A steady stream of lettuce sowing is planned for an ongoing harvest. It’s nearly peak season, so watering and weeding will soon become top priorities.

Blue Group:

With fortnightly attendance over winter, work was lighter but steady. Harvests continued, and compost/manure was added to inactive beds. The team cleared areas behind the polytunnels and helped apply compost inside. Rhubarb was refreshed, potatoes planted, and early turnips sown (possibly too early!). Home-growing efforts include tomatoes and aubergines for May transfer. The group proposed a new irrigation system—funding secured, implementation in progress. Polytunnels were cleaned externally, with interior still to come. The group is on schedule and ready for the busier months ahead.

Red Group:

Returning after a long absence, one member was stunned by the transformation! Red group planted onions and potatoes, nurtured spinach seedlings, filled 200 toilet rolls with Hamburg parsley seeds, and saw new salad crops sprouting. Melon staging is up in PT3, where carrots and lettuces are also growing. Tomatoes have germinated well; peppers and melons are still shy. Courgettes and kale will be sown soon. The previously rodent-invaded raised bed is getting a fresh start with potatoes and lettuce. Team morale is high and so is excitement for the season.

Cooking with Wild Greens

Spring is the best time to enjoy the free greens available in our Incredible Edible gardens, as fresh new growth is always the best to eat, and there is plenty of it at both gardens right now! Take advantage of wild garlic, winter purslane/claytonia, Good King Henry, caucasian vining spinach, bladder campion, sorrel, hogweed, oxeye daisy leaves, nettles and more – it’s all available for you to pick your own. Greens like these can be used in place of spinach in all sorts of dishes, and used alone or as a mix.

Mixed wild greens and kale ready for cooking!

It’s important to remember that different leaves will require different cooking times, for example kale or nettles need a good few minutes to soften, while thin leaves like wild garlic and sorrel need only the lightest wilting. Take this into account when cooking, and if using a mix, add tougher leaves first and more delicate ones right at the end of cooking.

Here are two recipes ideal for using a variety of our wild or cultivated leafy greens, including all those mentioned above, chard, spinach and kale:

Spaghetti with Greens and Anchovies (for two)

Put 150g spaghetti on to boil.

In another saucepan, melt a knob of butter, add a small tin of anchovies in oil (use the oil too if you wish), and cook over a low heat until the anchovies melt into a paste. Add a pinch of chilli flakes or cayenne and 1-2 cloves chopped garlic (unless you’re cooking with wild garlic!).

Finely chop 200g leafy greens. When the spaghetti is nearly done, add your greens to the anchovy butter and wilt to your satisfaction. (Alternatively, wilt your greens separately, squeeze the water out, chop finely and then stir into the anchovy butter.) Season to taste.

Drain the pasta, reserving a little of the water. Toss the spaghetti in with the buttery greens and add 40g freshly grated parmesan. Add a dash of the cooking water to loosen as required.

Sorrel

Mushroom and Wild Greens Risotto (for two)

In a small pan, bring a pint (half a litre) of good chicken or veg stock to the boil.

In another pan, heat a knob of butter or some olive oil and add a chopped onion. Cook five minutes until beginning to soften, then add 140g risotto rice and cook 1-2 minutes or until there is a white spot in the middle of each grain. Add 125ml white wine, stir, and simmer until evaporated/absorbed. Add a good pinch of thyme. Add the stock to the rice, half a cup at a time, stirring often and allowing it to absorb before adding more. Keep adding until it is all absorbed and the rice is cooked (around 15 minutes).

Meanwhile, in another pan, cook 100-150g sliced mushrooms in butter or oil until soft. Add 1-2 cloves chopped garlic (unless you’re using wild garlic) and cook for 1-2 minutes, then add 200g leafy greens and cook until soft. Season lightly.

Stir the mushrooms and greens into the cooked rice and add 30g freshly grated parmesan. Check seasoning and serve, with additional parmesan if desired.

Wild Garlic

 

Spring Newsletter 2021

Welcome to Spring! As with many things the seasons and growing cycles have decided not to pause whilst Covid runs its course. Thanks go out to everyone who has helped to keep the sites ticking over, the harvests productive and continued enthusiasm during what has been a largely wet, cold and restricted time. We look forward to warmer days, greater on-site activity as restrictions permit and to taking the best from our past practices and what we have learned during the pandemic. Like the tomato seedlings (below) that our members are nurturing at home we expect that bigger and better things will emerge.

At Hammonds End we have made it through the winter months and are now starting to think about spring. Vegetable boxes have been fortnightly with 2 members harvesting Tuesday and Wednesday and delivering boxes to 3 main locations in the area for members to pick up. Over the last 3 months boxes have contained leeks, kale, purple sprouting broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, parsnips, rocket, pak choi, beetroot, spinach and chard.

Hammonds End Cauliflower and Leeks ready to harvest

Polytunnel 2 Lettuce and Pak Choi/Polytunnel 4 Beetroot

Over the next few weeks we will harvest our way through the remaining polytunnel and outdoor crops as we enter the UK Hunger Gap (the period when last year’s crops have finished and this year’s crops are yet to produce). As ever it’s very hard to predict if last year’s crops will produce for long enough before our early sowings for this year are ready – all down to the weather (and a fair bit of luck!).

In addition to the garlic and onions planted in autumn, we have sown the first of this season’s crops: 300 Broad Bean seeds, along with the first of the cabbage, lettuce, and spinach. These are all covered by mesh to stop the mice feasting on the seeds.

In addition, we have sown 60 tomatoes, 30 aubergines, 30 peppers and 8 chilli peppers which members have at home to bring back to site once the last frost has gone.

Over the next few weeks we need to weed and broadfork the outside beds to prepare them for planting at the end of the month. We will plant out potatoes and broad beans and sow calabrese, cauliflower, leeks, celeriac, beetroot, chard and spinach.

Lockdown continues to restrict the number of people on site which means we have lost the communal aspect of growing but hopefully before the summer is out we can be back to normal! We have made a number of videos viewable on You Tube to show members what to be done (available for all to see on the FoodSmiles YouTube channel).

 

Garlic outside and the first lettuce and broad beans growing in the polytunnel

Over the winter months we managed to dig through the clay to sink the final rainwater harvesting tank for polytunnel 4 which now needs to be linked up to the irrigation system. We have used our compost to top up the beds in the polytunnels and have expanded our rhubarb beds which we hope to be harvesting from in the next few weeks.

Rainwater harvesting tank, filled up beds in PT3 and Rhubarb bed

Hixberry Lane

A very wet winter resulted in waterlogging at the Hixberry site. So it is with some relief that we see signs of new growth. Garlic and overwintered onions grown from both set and seed are growing well and the rhubarb is bursting into leaf.

 

We started sowing seed in the polytunnel early in the year and have beetroot, turnip, red onion, Brussels sprouts and broad bean seedlings growing strongly. In previous years we have lost a lot of seedlings to hungry mice so members have constructed some fantastic covers to go over the seed trays and these are working well. 

Over the winter we have also been working on eliminating wireworm from the polytunnel bed. A lining barrier has been put around the bed to prevent wireworms entering from the land outside. We are now trying to eliminate any wireworms already in the bed. We are using potato, one of their favourite foods, to entice them. The potatoes are on sticks which can easily be regularly checked.  We then plan to grow a lettuce crop which we know from experience is another favourite food to see how successful we have been. Fingers crossed.

Incredible Edible

The Incredible Edible team are very much looking forward to resuming activities after Easter. 

Foodsmiles AGM 2020

We had a well-attended zoom AGM at the beginning of March where it was heartening to see so many members who have not been able to gather together in person. In 2020 we grew 2,008kg of vegetables, a small decrease on 2019, remarkable in the circumstances. At Hammonds End we grew 1,414kg and at Hixberry Lane 549kg of vegetables. A new five-year lease has been signed for the Hammonds End site and both Hixberry Lane and the Incredible Edible gardens are doing well.

Special thanks went to the Site Managers, Treasurer, Secretary and existing Committee Members who will all be serving again this year and three new members were welcomed to the committee.

We continue to delay the introduction of new members until more individuals can gather together on-site but look forward to greeting new faces when the opportunity arises. Planning for future events continues to be cautiously considered and details will be shared when we can be more certain that they will take place.