We are happy to announce Grow the Growers is returning for a third year!

One of our key aims here at Locavore is to build a better local food network. One way we’ve been working on making this a reality is by helping people get starting growing vegetables for profit through our Grow the Growers programme at the Urban Croft, a small growing site right next to Queen’s Park.

We are looking for participants with a strong interest in making organic food production into a livelihood. We don’t have entry requirements as such but ideally you should have been gardening enough to know it’s not just a passing fancy… We hope that after one growing season at the Croft, you will be confident to forge ahead independently.

You have a 25 sq m plot to yourself where you grow approximately three crops you choose in discussion with us, taking into account our crop rotation and what we expect to be able to sell. You then cultivate this bed yourself in your own time. In addition, we will have weekly gardening sessions at the Croft where we maintain the communal plots. In recent years these sessions have always been Wednesdays but we will decide on a day with the participants.

We also meet once a month for a Saturday session at our other growing sites (Left Field, Rouken Glen) so you can experience some larger-scale production and techniques and equipment relevant to that scale. We’ll go through all the steps from planning and bed preparation through sowing to harvesting, packing and selling together.

Once your crops are ready, you can sell your produce to us. It will then be available in our shop, for wholesale to other shops and cafés or might go into our veg boxes and then on plates all over central Scotland.

Some things past new growers have gone on to do:

• Some of last year’s intake are the process of forming a growers’ cooperative and looking for land.
• Jackie started a market garden, adopted our chickens and ducks, and now supplies us with fresh veg and eggs.
• Several people have expanded their home gardening
• And last but not least Louis had a plot at the Croft before the scheme in its current form existed. He’s now our main grower.

If you are interested to take part, please answer the questions below. Submissions close February 25th.