Growing and Learning Together Locally

We have had an excellent growing
season at the Community Allotment

If you are a gardener or grower, we hope you have had a successful year. The late summer and autumn has been a time of wonderful surprises. During a Saturday session in September,  I heard cries of ‘Oh Wow, come and look at this”! We were overjoyed to have spotted a large perfectly white cauliflower hidden under its capacious leaves. It’s those joyous moments that make growing produce so worthwhile. We felt the joy that the pupils of Marsh Primary School had experienced in July when they harvested potatoes – unearthing buried treasure.

The cucumbers, of which we had a great crop this year, are also good at hiding. We are all familiar with courgettes hiding until they become the size of a marrow, but this year we grew some yellow courgettes which are easier to spot. We are fortunate to have inherited four fruit trees on the plot. The cherry trees produced a good harvest, but it was the Mirabelle plums that had an amazing harvest; we used them in jam, crumbles and cakes. I still have some in the freezer.

Even our grape vine did well this year, producing a few bunches of grapes. We won’t be making wine any time soon, but we had enough for us each to enjoy the taste of the sweet fresh fruit.

As summer gave way to autumn, and the leaves of the squash plants died back, a bounty of produce appeared! This year we grew Sweet Dumpling squash, one of the smaller squash, which are very pleasant roasted. Crown Prince remains our favourite for taste; being green they blend in but gradually become visible as the vegetation started to die back. We have made our autumn plantings of broad beans, garlic and onion sets to give them a head start in the spring.

We try to keep growing beds productive at all times. Between crops, in the autumn we top up beds with manure or our home-made compost to maintain a healthy soil microbiome.

Our new shed

Autumn tasks include fitting out the new shed (part funded by MMBL) with shelves to make it easier to store gloves, toilet roll inners which we use by the hundred in the spring, in which we plant bean seeds to germinate in the greenhouse. In the Spring we will be putting up a second greenhouse, (also generously funded by MMBL), dedicated to growing seedlings for schools.

Upcoming plans

After helping refurbish and make safe the growing space at Ash Hill School in the Spring, and running taster sessions during the summer term, we continued through the autumn term with lessons there. Our lessons at Marsh School have now finished but thanks to 'Men in Sheds', we are building some large vegetable planters for the school front playground before we finish up for the year.

At the time of writing we are still firming up our schools programme for 2026, but our aim is to give pupils of other schools in the area the experience of practical growing sessions.

With the ground grid and raised beds completed, in the spring of 2026, we will welcome wheelchair users to our accessible growing beds at the Community Allotment. So far, the beds have been very productive for carrots and salad crops; we grew straight carrots for the first time, in a mixture of sieved home-made compost and sharp sand.

Sustainability is at the heart of what we do, at the allotment, in schools and with the volunteering days we organise at local venues (including Wycombe Arts Centre).

Although the allotment will be dormant over the winter months, and we cease the weekly sessions until the Spring, this year, we will be holding monthly sessions to cover practical activities such as ways to sustain ourselves with healthy food over the winter, when we are not able to grow fresh produce.

Visit the Grow Together Bucks website for more information.