Growing Communities' Starter Farm at Central Park Nursery in Dagenham is up and running - with not just one - but four growers in post! Alice Holden, our grower, Beth Stewart,Assistant Grower and Shelagh Martin- Apprentice Grower. Even tho' Alice, Beth and Shelagh have only been on site for a total of two weeks, the transformation is incredible.  We're prioritising getting the main polytunnel, which is the only one with plastic on, up and running. The soil, after many years of pots of ornamentals being stacked up on it, was very compacted..So Alice dug! and when she was joined by Beth and Shelagh a week later, they dug too.  Taking the polytunnel from first photo, (taken in April) to the second picture in the first week.

After a delivery of 15 tonnes of compost and lots of work by the growers barrelling in the compost and spreading it into beds, the polytunnel now looks like this. 

And the first tomatoes were planted out into the new beds on Thursday. The transformation in the smaller glasshouse that is going to be the propagation area is also exciting and the once empty glasshouse is now full of seedlings which are growing in a scarily fast way, (scary because we are going to need more beds to put them into pretty soon!)