Estates

The kitchen garden relaunched in April 2023.

Whilst still growing the usual potatoes, courgettes and broad beans, we’ve tried out utilising hemp bags from Stokes Coffee to try to grow potatoes and strawberries. We’ve finally had our first successful crop of Rhubarb and the fruit bushes are starting to spread throughout the area. There’s also a few sneaky tomatoes that have self seeded from last years plants!

In April 2022, we launched the kitchen garden in conjunction with the Student Union Make a Difference week. We had over 15 students coming along to help prep the soil and sow the first seeds.

This year the students will be growing potatoes, courgettes, lettuce, beetroot, broad beans, carrots and they’re trying to grow broccoli for the first time – learning as we go that they need netting to stop the leaves being eaten!

By the end of the (on occasion challengingly hot) summer we’d had over 30 different volunteers and had donated surplus food to Mint Lane cafe.

Bee orchids were also spotted in the kitchen garden wild flower area!

As students returned to campus we opened up the kitchen garden with a couple of green thumbed student volunteers; growing many courgettes, potatoes, broad beans, carrots and tomatoes that were donated to the Mint Lane cafe. 

The herbs continued to grow with staff and students able to come and pick them to use at home.

The lavender was dried out at the end of the year and lavender bags were hand sewn and given out during freshers week. 

We are temporarily pausing our weekly meetups for the Kitchen Garden, these will be reinstated once we are back on campus.

The relaunch of the Kitchen Garden is scheduled for 18th March 2020. We will be weeding and seeding the beds, as well as planting some bulbs around the garden area. You can register your interest for the event here: Year of the Garden Facebook Event

Thank you to everyone who took part in our Big Climate Fightback tree planting event on November 30th. It was an absolutely beautiful day and we’re excited to see our trees flourish on our Brayford campus! Missed out and want to plant a tree? We’ll be inviting people to come and plant a sapling at Riseholme soon. Watch this space.

Also check out our fabulous new sign at the Kitchen Garden, which was designed by Elizabeth, a University of Lincoln Illustration graduate 

Broad beans, lettuce, beetroot, onions & potatoes were all harvested from our Kitchen Garden. As we had a great deal of fresh vegetables from the garden this month, we decided to donate the food to the Mint Lane Café. The café provides an inclusive social space, using food produce that might ordinarily be completely wasted. Meals are affordable – priced at only a couple of pounds – and the space also includes a small clothes shop, showering facilities and a garden. 

We harvested any remaining vegetables from the Kitchen Garden, enlisting the help of several volunteers to help dig out and weed the beds, ready for the next stage of work in the Spring. Our harvest included; red onions, potatoes, carrots and garlic!

The Kitchen Garden is relaunched! We held an event, publicised to staff and students at the University of Lincoln. We weeded, seeded vegetables and started to plant the herb garden. New staff came along to the event and were introduced to the concept. 

In preparation for work this Spring in the Kitchen Garden, we gathered together a group of volunteers to weed out the beds and fill them with fresh top soil, replanting some garlic and onions as we did so. Top soil was brought in from our Riseholme Campus. Another event to relaunch the Kitchen Garden is scheduled for later this Spring.

Anyone who looks after the garden can take some of the produce home to use. We donate some produce to Mint Lane Cafe and would love to be able to support any other community cafes if we are able. Got an idea? Let us know.